Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Hockey Coach Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Good With Children, Homophobia, Hot Middle Aged Men, Second Chances, Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor Ilya Rozanov/Original Character(s), Top/Bottom Versatile | Switch Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-26 Completed: 2026-07-12 Words: 77,300 Chapters: 18/18

Sea Change

Summary

With the Montreal Metros suddenly in need of a new head coach, General Manager Shane Hollander turns to the one person who might know as much about winning as he does: his fellow Hall of Famer and ex decade-long situationship, Ilya Rozanov.

But what starts as a simple job offer soon becomes a life-altering sea change neither could have ever imagined.

Chapter 1: The Storm

Chapter Notes

Always Forever - Cults

Today was the sort of Saturday that, a decade or so ago, had become the beginning of the rest of Ilya Rozanov’s life.

Thermos of black coffee in hand, he stood in his usual hoodie, track pants, and sneakers from his patch of ice by the benches. In front of him, bodies moved back and forth like waves crashing against the shoreline.

Suicides, that is what coaches had called them when he was a kid. Then, bag skates when he played in the league. That was probably the better term for this particular exercise when the bodies executing the drill were no older than twelve.

Ilya took a pull of coffee as his eyes tracked their movements and his ears their desperate panting. Finally, the shrill relief of the whistle. His whistle.

“Good work,” Ilya barked from the boards. “Five minutes and we scrimmage.” The sea of black helmets practically nodded in unison. They looked like an army of bobble-heads, or a forest of saplings the slightest gust might push over. He loved them with all his heart.

As his team, the Saratoga Storm, skated towards the bench for their well-earned break, Ilya found his assistant coach by the stick rack.

Bill was a decent, hard-working guy. He was older than Ilya by at least a decade and had been a D1 defenseman long ago. Undrafted, but he never talked about that as if he had wanted to go pro. No, Bill was always generous, willing to escort the kids on whatever road trip took them deep into the heart of the Midwest, and Ilya always thanked him for his dedicated volunteering during their seasons working together.

Of course, Bill never did seem to have the courage to remind Ilya that he too was a volunteer of sorts. Coaching a U12 hockey team was hardly a full-time job for someone who had been one of the most dominant centers in MLH history, let alone a Hall of Famer. Coaching kids, to Ilya, should have been a hobby at best, or a good bit of pro bono work. However, that relied on Ilya being able to do anything he cared about at less than a hundred percent.

This job had become Ilya’s life slowly and then suddenly, suddenly he had woken up one day and realized he hadn’t had a prolonged conversation with another adult who wasn’t Bill for at least a month. And no, that was not counting the cashier at his local Dunkin’ Donuts or Stop n’ Shop, or god forbid the parents of the brats he coached.

Ilya didn’t mind this reality, necessarily. Children had always seemed brilliantly simple to him, and even at times like his allies and mischievous compatriots. Throughout his career he himself had often been described as child-like or youthful, even as he played well into his thirties.

He never quite understood why that was said with such surprise by fans and enemies alike. He still found it astonishing that he had tricked the world into paying him to play a game for a living, to extend this thing he had loved so preciously in childhood into a livelihood. It hadn’t remained so pure over the years. Not when hockey became an income, both for him and his family, and then a path to citizenship in this country Ilya now called home.

Then, hockey had become an impediment to the one thing Ilya had ever truly wanted. And, he had chosen hockey. Or rather, he had been given no choice but to choose it. Hockey had been the key to a series of transactions that had changed Ilya’s life. But it was still a game, and one, against all sacrifices, he couldn’t help but love.

He blew the whistle around his neck. Five minutes of rest went by quickly after a drill as brutal as that one. His kids groaned around him and ditched their water bottle as they skated back onto the ice.

“What is this?” Ilya admonished. “We are tired or something?”

“You are killing us, coach," one of his more rambunctious kids moaned. 

“Child murderer,” Ilya said thoughtfully. “That is a new one for me, I think.”

That got a tired laugh from the pack of bodies around him, albeit a pack he towered over. Not that they found Ilya Rozanov so intimidating. If only they knew how thoroughly they had domesticated him.

“There is no killing, yes?” Ilya said, crossing his arms. “Pain with a purpose. We train to get better, to get stronger.”

The black and blue bobble heads nodded. Their eyes were fixed on their coach as he spoke. Ilya would be lying if he said he didn’t love commanding a legion, even if it was one with an average height a little over five feet.

He continued. “Think of all of the boring things you could be doing today, eh?”

His kids grinned through their mouth guards and Ilya felt a pang of fondness in his chest. It really was this simple to love a thing, at least at this age. Loving didn’t come with the baggage of what it meant to love, to pour your soul into a thing, or person. That came with plenty of trip wires these children had yet to think about, let alone learn to navigate. But that wasn’t Ilya’s problem to solve. He was here to teach them hockey.

Five minutes into the scrimmage, the Storm were skating their hearts out. An early two-on-one had led to a clean and well-earned goal and a joyful, shrieking pile on by the net.

The Storm were good, Ilya thought modestly. What he could have said was that they were one of the best U12 teams in North America, at least if records were anything to go by. But apparently he'd retired his bragging along with his number when he left the league, or so he liked to think.

Just as he was about to shout at his top line for that particularly glorious goal, Ilya’s eyes found Bill’s panicked ones. For a brief moment, Ilya thought something horrible had happened.

Always a captain at heart, he immediately ran through his kids in his head. Who could it be and were they ok?

“There’s someone here to see you.”

Ilya frowned. “It is an emergency?”

“I don’t think so, but—“

Thank god, he found himself thinking reflexively. Not an emergency.

“Then tell them to wait. I’m busy.”

Bill looked appalled, as if Ilya were crazy to say such a thing. The man rarely if ever disagreed with Ilya—if anything, that was Bill’s problem—and so Ilya knew any sign of insubordination meant this had to be serious. Even after all these years coaching together, Bill was starstruck. He was patiently waiting for the day that he woke up from the fantasy of working with the great Ilya Rozanov, who had for some reason or another found himself coaching a youth league in the wastes of upstate New York.

“What is it, Bill?”

“I don’t think you should make him wait.”

Him.

Ok, so an angry dad. This dad wouldn’t be the first or last, Ilya reasoned. He was lucky that Saratoga was a town far past its glory days, the days when this part of New York was the industrial heartland of the Northeast. Try coaching in Stamford, Ilya thought with a grimace, and its gaggle of trust fund kids.

“Fine,” he relented. “Give me five and watch the kids.”

Bill nodded gratefully. “He’s by the locker room.”

Ilya stepped onto dry land and ambled down the tunnel. Just as his eyes adjusted to the dim lights that led to the rink’s facilities he caught a figure by the doors.

Then, the man turned and Ilya thought he might be hallucinating.

There was a middle-aged Shane Hollander.

The gleeful shrieks of his players suddenly sounded miles away. The vision in front of him, it was a cruel mixture of fantasy and curse, and Ilya was struck with the sudden feeling that he had found his salvation or was about to stumble to his death. 

The man just looked at him warily as if he was quietly assessing his threat level. For a brief moment, Ilya wondered: if he ran back up the tunnel, would he wake up? 

Infuriatingly, the man seemed to clock his thoughts.

“If it makes you feel better, you aren’t going crazy, Ilya. At least, not yet.”

Ilya.

Who did this man think he was? Coming here and calling him by that name. Only the most decorated hockey player of all time, Ilya thought begrudgingly. It had taken Hollander almost two decades, but he had gotten there eventually.

Hollander looked at him with a deadly serious expression. “Do you have a moment to talk?”

Ilya shook his head before he could think better of it. “Not here."

“Ok,” Hollander responded carefully. “What about out there,” and he pointed back out the tunnel.

Ilya nodded. It was harder to murder a man in public, he reasoned, as he swiveled back the way he came, not checking if Hollander was behind him.

By the time they had parked in the stands, his team was practically a live wire.

Glances, gasps. “Was that—”, or, “no fucking way—.” If Ilya had been more lucid, he would have admonished them for swearing, since apparently their parents had outsourced every aspect of parenting to a grouchy Russian man nearing fifty.

For once, he couldn’t help but feel as distracted as his kids. Hollander seemed to take it all in stride, waving affably at the Storm in their oversized pads.

Ilya stood up. “Have you forgotten how to skate?” And that seemed to do the trick, the scrimmage continuing once more.

“They’re adorable," Hollander observed after a minute had passed in silence. 

Ilya looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “You will not say that when they beat you."

“So I’ve heard. What, you had Perez go first round?”

Ilya dipped his head, realizing with gratitude that he was still clutching his thermos in his hand. He took a sip. “Perez, yes, and Nikitin the year after.”

Hollander nodded. “And now, maybe Moore.” He pointed at the winger grappling for the puck against the boards.

“He is very young,” Ilya said reflexively, almost protectively. “He is good, but he needs time. Time without pressure.”

At that word, Ilya frowned at Hollander. Then he really looked at him. He hadn’t seen this man in a decade, at least. And unsurprisingly he looked like a day hadn’t gone by, if not for a few well-placed frown lines and streaks of gray running through his pitch black hair.

And the suit. The suit was new, along with the quietly confident energy of a man who now managed the league’s most decorated franchise.

“Why are you here, Hollander?”

The other man smiled, looking like he had expected that question, like he was surprised it hadn’t come sooner.

Before he could answer, Ilya added, “not scouting, I hope. U12 feels like too much, even for you.”

Hollander ignored the comment. “I’m here to see you, actually.”

“Got bored of Montreal? Figured you'd look for a new gig?”

Hollander remained silent as he appraised him.

Ilya continued on, filling the silence with whatever he could find. “I never took you for much of a coach."

“No,” the man beside him agreed. “That was always more your thing.”

Ilya felt his stomach tighten at the familiarity of that line, of their shared history. The atmosphere felt thick with it.

“I’m not good with words,” Hollander began, “especially with you.” The man beckoned at him as he spoke, and Ilya had to imagine he looked like a wolf with his hackles raised.

Then he took a deep breath. “I came here to offer you a job.”

Ilya stood up without thinking. “That is funny, Hollander. A funny joke.”

“Sit down, Ilya.” Hollander plowed onwards. “I'm offering you a job, should you want it.”

Ilya wanted to shake Hollander or himself, but tried to suppress that instinct. Whatever dream this was, he had been ready to wake up from it since the moment it had started.

“We have twenty four hours to reach an agreement,” Hollander continued. “It’s a critical year, obviously, and if this isn’t for you, I get it. Trust me, I get—”

Ilya shook his head like he was clearing water from his ears. He liked to think he had been one of the sharper tools in the league, but even he was at a loss. “Hollander, what are you talking about?”

“Ah, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.” He paused. “Coaching, of course.”

What had felt like water in his ears now felt like someone dunking him in it. Hollander clearly caught his shock, because he slowed down, his deep brown eyes meeting Ilya’s.

“We want to offer you the job. Of head coach.” He said that last part slowly, as if he were administering a particularly vital concussion test.

Ilya felt crazy. Then he remembered Hollander was the crazy one, and always had been. Geniuses were, weren’t they? Alienated from the world by their excellence. There had been a time when Ilya thought he was the only person who didn’t find Hollander alien, who actually understood him in some fundamental way.

“You, what, you want me to coach the Montreal Metros?” Ilya said back slowly, almost laughing as he said it. What an odd and strange dream.

“Ilya, I know what you are going to say, and nothing you are going to say is something we haven’t already thought about.”

Ilya couldn’t fathom who the we was in this case, but he held his tongue.

“We don’t care that you haven’t held coaching jobs in the AHL or OHL. That’s actually your appeal.”

Hollander continued. “I’ve seen firsthand how good of an on-ice coach you are. Trust me, I resented it for most of our careers.” He waved to the ice and Ilya’s kids upon it. “They know better than anyone what you can do.”

Then, “I mean, Ilya, really? Two first round draft picks? In a program that no one had ever heard of until you decided to coach it.”

Ilya just shook his head, covering his face with his hands. He felt the beginning of a headache.

“You really thought we wouldn’t notice?”

Again, with this we.

“Hollander, not everything is about the league. So, no, I didn’t.”

The man beside him nodded. “I know that.”

Ilya was pretty sure he didn’t, but his body still felt like it was in shock, submerged fully in ice water, frozen, and desperately waiting for rescue. He was hardly in a state to argue.

Hollander paused, and then he tried a different strategy. “You’ve really never thought about this? About coaching?”

“I am a coach. I am coaching.”

“U12, sure. But Ilya, what I'm talking about—”

“Stop, Hollander.” Ilya opened his arms wide, like he could embrace the image in front of them, of the kids weaving back and forth, the tune of their blades against the ice. “This, here. This is enough.”

“You don’t miss it?” Hollander asked him slowly, cautiously. Suspiciously, even.

Ilya frowned, meeting the man’s eyes once more. “No, not for a minute.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t need you to.”

“I know you,” Hollander said. “I know you better—”

“You knew me," Ilya corrected. 

Hollander shrugged. “The parts I knew, those aren’t parts you can easily change.”

Ilya exhaled a long breath. He was tired.

When had he gotten so tired? Had it been this year, or the year before? Or had it been as early as the first year of his retirement, when he had stared down the rest of his life and hadn’t been so sure he liked what he saw?

“You can’t trick me, Shane.”

Shane.

That was his name after all, and calling a thing by its name made it less powerful, or so his mother always said about the monsters under the bed.

“I’m not tricking you, Ilya. I’m asking you.”

Hollander went on. “When they brought me on, I needed convincing too.”

“I’m sure you did,” Ilya said, not believing that for a moment.

“I did, trust me. When I retired, part of that was making my piece with this whole thing. Promising myself the goodbye was real.”

“Until it wasn’t.”

“Until it wasn’t,” Hollander agreed. “I don’t regret it. Managing a team, it’s different than playing on one. So different, really. But you know that.”

Ilya nodded. He loved coaching, loved it so much he sometimes wondered if this had been why he had been put on this earth. Not to score goals, but to motivate other people to score them. He knew that it probably sounded lame to say his life’s purpose was coaching a bunch of kids. He didn’t care. He had never really cared what people thought of him.

His problem was something else entirely. It was that slow-burning fire within him, somewhere in his chest or stomach. A hearth that had slowly cooled to warm coals over the years, but still let out tell-tale heat. Heat for competition. Earth-shaking, sweat-pouring competition. Battles that would make most people crumble under the pressure of them, but for whatever reason Ilya had spent the better part of his entire life chasing like a drug.

He hadn’t realized he had tried to quit cold turkey until this man had found him here, on this spring Saturday, and opened up his palm to offer that drug once more.Though, looking at Hollander beside him, Ilya wasn’t sure if the drug was hockey, or something else entirely more destructive.

Obviously Ilya would say no. He had done too much good work not to. He had built a life with a beautiful home and only one barely driven sports car in the garage. He had a dog, for Christ’s sake.

Hollander looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “I’m only going to offer this once. Not because you aren’t worth waiting for”—well, that made Ilya’s stomach do all sorts of things—“but because we don’t have time.”

His eyes met Ilya’s. "It’s now or never, Rozanov,” and Ilya could suddenly feel the man exiting the neutral zone, puck in hand.

And then Hollander went for the net. It was a simple move, and one which Ilya would look back at months later and grimace at, and at himself, for such weak defense, for being so easy to read. It was like it had been for so many years, Hollander always reading his tells without even realizing he was doing it.

Hollander was a foot from the crease now. “Haven’t you ever wondered?”

Ilya frowned.

“Wondered what it’s really like?” The man paused, raising his eyes towards Ilya's, and with that his stick.

Then he swung. “To play on the same team?”

“Yes." The word fell from Ilya's mouth like a puck hitting the back of the net, spoken before he had even registered it.

He covered his face. If he was going to drive off this cliff he wasn’t going to watch himself do it. “Ok,” he muttered, head in hands. “I'm listening.”

When he finally looked up, Hollander was grinning. It was the expression of someone who knew he had won the first game in the series.

“If I had known you would look so annoying—”

“You can’t take that back and you know it.”

Ilya sighed. Hollander was probably right.

“So, what would this look like exactly?”

The other man's brow furrowed and Ilya could see a million plans racing through his brain in an instant. “We'd need to get you to Montreal. Tonight, if possible. And then—”

“Tonight?” Surely Hollander didn’t mean that.

“The draft is next week,” the man said slowly, as if Ilya had forgotten English. “And a quick search told me you don’t have, ah, a wife, or kids.”

Ilya ignored that last part. “Right, the draft.”

“Obviously management will shoulder most of that. But your input would be critical, and we—”

That we again. Ilya began to tune out what Hollander was saying. He could see the man’s lips moving, his eyes animated and focused. The freckles on the bridge of his nose wandered up and down as he scrunched it. In that moment, Ilya realized he had never really had a choice. Happiness aside, he refused to live with the regret of not knowing where this road might take him, not when the way was laid bare for him.

“Fine,” Ilya interjected, again not clocking what he was saying until the word was halfway out of his mouth.

Hollander stopped his rambling. He seemed genuinely surprised. Hopeful, even.

“I just need to know one thing.”

The other man nodded.

“Why me?”

Hollander paused, taking him in with a wide, unblinking eyes. “We need you, Ilya. I just know it.”

And, for a moment, Ilya could almost pretend that we was an I, even if twenty years late. He rolled his shoulders back. “If we do this, we do this the right way.”

“I need to tell ownership that you are open to the conversation,” Hollander said, frowning in thought. “The rest is easy. We can get a press release out. And obviously there’s your salary—”

“I don’t care about that.”

Hollander looked shocked. “As the person who would control your salary, I will pretend you did not just say that to me. And we’ll add getting you an agent to the list.”

“I have an agent, I think,” Ilya said, more to himself than the man beside him. Maybe some things about Ilya Rozanov had changed after all. His preferred currency was no longer sports car.

By this point, his kids were by the bench on a water break and Ilya took them in. He felt a pang in his chest, and an itch in the back of his throat as he was overwhelmed by what this would mean.

God, not here. Not in front of Hollander. He would miss this team. But he had never really had a choice, had he? From the moment he had happened upon Shane Hollander at his rink.

He had had about as much of a choice when a man—a boy, really—had walked up to him outside of a rink in Regina and introduced himself almost thirty years ago. He couldn’t think about that now, about what he had agreed to then, and again, and in this moment.

He was hardly a child now, and a lot of life had been lived in between that handshake and the one he was about to give Hollander.

He would handle Bill today, and the kids and parents later. It had to be what, three hours, to Montreal? He could get to the border before sundown with Anya asleep in a crate in the trunk of his truck.

Hollander insisted the rest would be handled, and Ilya believed him. The man was a lot of things, but impulsive had never been one of them.

He laughed to himself as he saw the kids clamber over one another, roughhousing as they cooled down after a hard-fought practice.

What would he say at the border?

“I’m here on business,” he supposed. And the agent would laugh and say, “what business does Ilya Rozanov have in Montreal?” And he’d shrug and say, “I’ve come to help Shane Hollander win it another Stanley Cup."

He looked at Hollander, who caught Ilya’s smile as he ran that particular scenario in his head.

“Something funny?”

“Is there a part of this that isn’t?”

The other man took that in for a moment, before nodding slowly. A small smile stretched across his eternally handsome features. And, for a moment, Ilya felt the bitter prairie cold and tart smell of cigarette smoke. He took a deep breath and stuck his hand out for Hollander to shake.

“I’ll see you in Montreal.”

Chapter 2: Teenage Wasteland

Chapter Notes

Baba O'Riley - The Who

Lafferty.

Koskinen.

Müller.

Abaturov.

A sea of faces.

Malinin

Connors

Bélanger

Kim

Ilya rubbed his eyes as the headshots began to blur. All young, mostly white. Varying degrees of pubescent facial hair and pimples as far as the eye could see. A sea of boys wearing awkward grins.

Ilya was sure he had spent more time staring at this binder of faces than he had any other single object in his life, except for maybe a hockey puck. It hadn’t been a very glamorous activity, flipping until the early hours of the morning in his apartment in the Plateau. Anya had been his sole companion and spent most of that time curled at his feet.

Hollander told him not to worry about housing. Management still needed to iron out Ilya’s deal and, as GM, he was more than happy to lend him one of his many pieces of real estate. 

On Ilya’s drive to the border, he had received a text from Hollander with an address and no explanation. Upon his arrival, he couldn’t be sure whether he found the whole thing hilarious or heart-breaking. It was, after all, all too familiar: an untouched fully furnished apartment gifted to him by Shane Hollander.

Of course, Ilya had wondered about that apartment above the cookware store. So many years had passed since then that he felt himself taken over by a clinical nostalgia for the place, and for the years surrounding it. He had accidentally walked by that corner one morning on his desperate search for coffee and realized the building had been completely leveled and rebuilt into an office high-rise. His dominant emotion had been relief. A slow and seeping sadness too, but mostly relief.

His first week in Montreal had been a whirlwind of meet and greets. Ownership. Various members of Metros management team. Multiple video calls with an agent and lawyer he hadn’t talked to in years. The negotiating had been for show. Ilya wanted this job. He wouldn’t have driven to Montreal without knowing that.

About halfway through that drive to the US-Canada border, Ilya had finally processed what he been offered. He felt winded, like he had just completed a particularly brutal shift on the ice.

Head coach of the Montreal Metros. It didn’t matter that he had played for the Raiders, that he had spent his career being the scourge of Montreal. This team, the Metros, was one of the most decorated franchises on earth, regardless of sport.

He could be cynical about his circumstances, wary of how hard the task he had been handed was, of how foolish it was for Shane Hollander to think Ilya of all people was the coach to transform this team. He could be dismissive of the league, and of professional sports as a whole. He could scrutinize this whole endeavor, pretend it wasn’t what it was.

Which was a dream. Maybe not his dream, or a dream he had ever thought or dared to have, but a dream nonetheless. A dream he was miraculously, somehow, living.

Hockey was endemic to Montreal, and by extension to Canadians, in a way it simply wasn’t below the border. It was more than the glory of saying he would help lead this franchise, it was the feeling of leaving a mark on the league’s most iconic team, and maybe even on the sport itself. And, yes, maybe even doing that with him, the person who had looked him in the eyes and said they needed him.

Ilya had never been motivated by grandiose thinking. If anything, that was Hollander’s thing. But even he could be susceptible to this stuff occasionally, which he most certainly was as he drove into downtown Montreal and caught sight of the Metros arena looming down the road.

He had always had a healthy sense of confidence. But even he had to ask the question: really, him? Luckily those thought patterns were powerful enough to keep him from wondering the harder question, the one of why Shane?

Over Ilya’s first week in the city, Hollander’s promise kept and he continued to shoulder the majority of the remaining preparation for the draft. A month or so prior, Montreal hadn’t made the playoffs. This was in large part why the team’s ownership had been willing to support Hollander in razing their coaching staff and building it from the ground up.

Since his visit to Saratoga, Hollander had been laser-focused on the draft. He talked about it like it was the single most important event in human history, which to him it might as well have been.

He and Ilya hadn’t had a moment alone together. Most of their days had been spent at a long conference table in the franchise’s office, debating their needs and shortlist. The room was on the twenty-fifth floor of a skyscraper with wide glass windows that revealed the city below. Around them, various screens showed relevant information: the Metros’ allotted and traded draft picks, salaries, their current roster, and complicated data maps displaying player and team performance.

Ilya had never gone to college. It hadn’t even been a thought. Everything had been hockey. It had been a religion as much as his schooling. But in that moment he briefly wished he had. He didn’t know where to begin with some of these charts and graphs. It had been hard enough to learn English as a teenager, and apparently now French, if he was going to coach this team properly.

Hollander always seemed to have an eye trained on him, often walking him through the more complicated analytics.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a particular chart. “This measures our average stride against our turnover rate.”

He went on. “And here, our defensemen. Look at the takeaways and you can see the problem.” The rest of the management team patiently watched Ilya take in the data.

Finally, Ilya turned to group of silent men in collared shirts and puffer vests. “So, what, you need taller guys?”

Hollander nodded emphatically, looking relieved that Ilya had so quickly pieced that together. “This league has gotten bigger and faster, especially with the European marketshare growing. It doesn’t matter how fast you are if you have to skate twice as hard.”

He continued. “So, yes, we need taller guys, or we need to wait for some of our guys to grow taller.”

Ilya massaged his temple. Then he spoke. “Hollander, please tell me you did not make me move to a foreign country to share this grand discovery of yours.”

The rest of the management team froze.

A thin lanky man named DeLisle, Hollander’s right hand, looked like he was about to have a stroke. Ilya took that in. Clearly this was not a cultural in which you disagreed with Shane Hollander. Hollander frowned, but remained silent.

“Why did you hire me?” Ilya said, crossing his arm. “Let’s start there.”

“Ilya, we went over this—”

“I make good little hockey stars. I know. What else?”

McNamara, heavily bearded and broad, looked to DeLisle, who looked to Hollander. It all seemed to go back to Hollander, inevitably.

“Let me tell you what I think,” Ilya continued, eyeing the row of silent men, who suspiciously eyed him back.

“By all means,” Hollander said wearily. “When have I ever stopped you, Rozanov.”

Ilya ignored him, the evoking of his last name feeling oddly familiar. His eyes ran down the length of the table. “I think you've built yourself a youth league.”

It was like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

“Excuse me?” Hollander said, finally breaking the silence. His lips twitched as he spoke and his face had already begun to redden.

“You heard me. Your team, it is a bunch of children.”

Now management was livid. DeLisle looked like he was about to wring Ilya’s neck. McNamara looked like he wouldn’t be the one to hold his colleague back. Ilya would like to see DeLisle try, he found himself thinking briefly.

“We have spent years building—”

“—I know, I know. Your charts, and your statistics,” Ilya waved off. “Very pretty.”

He continued. “I will tell you why I agreed to this job.” That seemed to get Hollander's attention, whose dark eyes met his and whose face was now a shade less red.

“I agreed because I think your GM is right,” Ilya said to the room, pointing at Hollander.

“The average age of your team is twenty-four. That is two years younger than the next team in this league. You are men at a conference table talking about these boys like they are objects, prizes you have won.”

He went on. “When you spend so much time up here,” he said, waving his arms around them, “you forget what they actually are, which is children.”

Ilya took the remote from McNamara and turned off the screens, the charts and graphs flickering out with them.

“Hollander, these boys, they don't even remember us playing in the league.”

He dug in. “Dimitrov. Lassiter. Pavlovski. What, nineteen, twenty?” Hollander almost grimaced at that.

Ilya continued. “This is not the handicap you think it is. This will make them win, if we give them what they need.”

Hollander raised an eyebrow. “And what is that?”

“Their hockey, it has not been corrupted,” Ilya said, his tongue rolling over that last word as if he were tasting it.

Then, “that has started, yes, but it is still the game they played as children.”

Ilya sat down at the head of the table and leaned back in his chair as the management team continued to tower above him “In my experience, when someone loves something—love it like boys do at that age—everything else is a complication.”

He looked at Hollander, who seemed utterly focused and a million miles away.

Ilya went on. “You need to let them have what they want.”

At that, Hollander abruptly stood up and walked out. That jolted Ilya back to the reality of this situation, to the room of men glaring at him and the wide view of downtown Montreal and the glittering Saint Lawrence behind it.

DeLisle rushed after Hollander, as if he was consoling a child or a temperamental dictator.

Ilya did his best to crack a smile. “Meeting over, I guess?”

The remaining men looked at their shoes rather than meet Ilya’s gaze. He shrugged and picked up his cold cup of coffee before exiting the room, and the building shortly after. This time he skipped calling a car and wandered back towards his loaned apartment and the dreaded binder.

Getting to know the inner workings of any team was like excavating a cadaver, or so Ilya had to imagine. Poking around various organs and circulatory systems to understand where the problems were, what exactly had gone wrong and what might be mended.

It hadn’t taken him long to understand Montreal. The team was very young. Hollander and his crew had made a lot of calculated risks. Smart, calculated risks Ilya thought begrudgingly. But risks like that took time to pay out, and required patience that Shane Hollander and the city of Montreal did not have.

The first round draft picks were always for show. Everyone knew who the top five or so players were and it was more a question of if a team was lucky enough to get the first or second pick and find themselves with a potentially once-in-a-generation player on their hands.

The real prizes were never in the first round, at least not the spoils one could strategize and angle for instead of the ones won through sheer dumb luck.

The Metros had Raskind and Pierre. Older, wiser defensemen who had been traded to Montreal over the years and become a formidable pair.

Their forwards were a school of guppies. Talented, rambunctious, but all over the place. Led by a twenty-five-year-old captain who was about as quiet and even as Hollander had been all those years ago.

It had taken Ilya approximately an hour to realize they needed a star two-way player. Probably a defensemen, but with the brain of center. A proper stickhandler. Someone who thought before they hit.

Ilya continued to flip through the binder. All of these boys had one or two of the characteristics this team needed, but not at all.

Then, at the back, on one of the very last pages, a headshot that made him pause. The boy looked painfully young. An eighteen-year-old who looked fifteen on a good day.

He had bright blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Even in the picture, he looked small. Ilya ran his finger down to his height and weight, and saw that size confirmed. Five foot nine, which meant he was probably something more like five seven.

And a defenseman, somehow. That part made Ilya scratch his head. This boy was built like a forward, if he was built like a hockey player at all. Maybe it was that he seemed light on his feet, or like a deer in headlights. More flight, than fight.

Ilya walked to the freezer, which was entirely empty except for an expensive bottle of vodka he had bought his second night here. He cracked open the bottle and poured himself a drink.

Then he turned back to this kid’s stats. Stats that were, frankly, phenomenal. So much so that Ilya, for a moment, wondered if there had been an error.

He scratched his head again. It didn’t make sense, which made it all the more impressive. Who was this kid? And where had he been hiding?

Columbus, Ohio, apparently.

Callum Marin.

DOB 4/18/2019.

A bolt of anxiety ran through Ilya. By 2019, he was already a Stanley Cup champion two times over. Maybe he had been spending too much time around Hollander, but he couldn’t help but think about the fact that this kid hadn’t been alive in a world where he and that man were anything but battle-tested rivals. No apartment in the Plateau, or various hotel rooms across the Northeastern seaboard. That chapter had all been prior to Callum Marin's existence on this earth.

Ilya debated pouring himself another shot and tried to not dwell on that, odd as it felt. He rifled for his phone and searched for Hollander before sending a text.

A single word. “Marin.” And then, “I am sorry you were grumpy today.”

Ilya received a text back immediately. “You call that an apology? I’m not grumpy, I’m your boss.”

“Lucky you,” Ilya sent back without thinking.

Finally from Hollander, “Marin?”

Ilya grinned. He would explain in person.

Days later, Ilya found himself on the road once more.

Thankfully, the draft was in Buffalo this year, an easy drive from Montreal. Being on the floor of the city’s arena in chairs populated largely by teenagers and their anxious parents, Ilya was transported to his own draft day. How painfully focused he had been then. Ilya couldn’t remember a single person in his draft class, except for Hollander, of course.

This was different. This time, looking across the sea of boys, Ilya recognized face after face. It all felt a bit too human. That damn binder. Montreal had picks in the first and second, and multiple in the fourth. The rest had been traded over the years to great and little success.

Their first pick was uncomplicated. They had the sixth overall and would lock down Kucerka, a towering Czech defenseman who looked like he been on human growth hormones since birth.

It was the second round pick Ilya had his eye on. This was Hollander’s circus, not his. Coaches were handed the chess pieces and told to figure it out. That being said, he had been promised input and had given his, should Hollander actually listen.

From Ilya’s perch in the stands with the management team lackeys, he watched the pageant begin.

Abaturov went first, obviously.

The Russian boy grinned and grinned as he shook hands with Vancouver’s GM. Ilya felt a pang in his heart. This kid had not a clue what was coming. Funny thing to become a millionaire over night and to professionalize your greatest hobby only to never really be able to take it back.

Finally they arrived at Montreal’s first round pick and, sure enough, Kucerka was theirs. He towered over Hollander like a gentle giant as he shook his hand and looked nervously into the camera.

Then, the picks started to blur together.

Many hours in, Ilya suppressed a yawn. How were they still in the first round? He glanced at his phone. Nothing from Hollander, though there was no reason there would be.

Finally, as evening approached, the second round. This was where Cups were won and lost, where franchises could take risks on a diamond in the rough and use a precious pick to snag someone they saw the value in who might be overlooked by others. If the first round was a science, the second was an art.

Ilya leaned forward in anticipation. Beside him, McNamara scratched his beard absentmindedly and scrolled through his emails.

And then, Hollander stepped onto the podium once more. “With the Montreal Metros second round pick—"

He paused, and for a second Ilya swore the man was searching for someone in the crowd, only to arrive at him, at Ilya.

He knew that was impossible. It was dark in the stands and there was no way Hollander even knew where he was. But then the man winked, and some crazy part of Ilya’s brain was sure it had been meant for him.

“—we select Callum Marin.”

There was a pause, as if the crowd was trying to figure out who that even was, and then slow applause. Ilya looked to his right and into McNamara’s sour expression.

“This has you written all over it,” the man said, crossing his arms over his ridiculous black puffer vest. “The five foot tall defenseman? Really, Rozanov?”

Ilya just shrugged. He didn’t need to publicly celebrate this victory, let alone explain it. This was one victory in a much longer and more complicated battle. At least Hollander had kept his promise, or so it seemed. They were a team.

After two days and close to twelve hours of drafting, their time in Buffalo had come to an end. Ilya had been pleased with their spoils, including a Finnish goalie in the fourth round that might prove useful one day.

Back at the hotel, he tossed and turned that night. Hotels had always been a bizarre home to Ilya. He had spent so much time in them during his years as a player that he appreciated their specific comforts. Bottles of water, miniature shampoo battles, tiny razors that did little to combat his stubble.

He opened the mini fridge and frowned. Pulling a sweater on and shoes on his feet, Ilya took an elevator down to the lobby’s hotel bar. It was close to midnight and he had no clue if it was even still open.

Thankfully, it was. A lone bartender was leaning on the bar, immersed in his phone. He looked up and motioned for Ilya to sit.

“Big day,” Ilya said.

“Huh?” the young man asked back. He had a neat haircut and looked barely old enough to drink alcohol, let alone serve it.

“The draft,” Ilya explained, waving his phone as he sat down.

“Never been much of a hockey person. I love the Bills though."

Ilya laughed. Just his luck. Some peace and quiet tonight. “I’ll have your most expensive vodka.”

The bartender got to work as Ilya fiddled with his phone. Finally, placing it face down, he took in the last two days. The last two weeks, really. He still felt like a guest in someone else’s house. He supposed, literally, since he was still using Hollander’s Plateau apartment. But with Metros management more generally.

Part of the problem was that he had never cared about this, the strategy and machinations of managing a major sports franchise. He cared about players, about the game. He cared about having fun, as silly that sounded. He realized he hadn’t coached in two weeks and wouldn’t until August since his direct reports would oversee the development camp. He tried not to think about what that absence might feel like.

Just as the bartender slid a glass along the marble, Ilya felt a body sit down beside him.

He looked over. Why was it always Shane Hollander?

“Can I get you something, sir?”

“Water, please,” Hollander said politely, throwing a nod Ilya’s way.

“Of course,” the young bartender said. “I just have to say, I’m such a fan.”

“What was this about only liking the Bills?” Ilya grumbled.

“He’s an icon,” the bartender explained with a wink, motioning to the man beside Ilya.

Hollander looked bashful, but remained silent. The reaction was more annoying than anything, Ilya insisted to himself.

“What, because he won more Stanley Cups than me?”

“What? I don’t care about that, no offense,” the bartender said with a laugh. He turned to Hollander. “What you did, it was important to a lot of people.”

Right, Ilya recalled. That.

Ilya hated that what, for any intents and purposes, certainly for someone like him, should have been a celebratory event—legendary hockey player Shane Hollander comes out as gay!—was anything but that for Ilya.

It had happened in the sunset of Hollander's career. It had been a massive deal at the time, and then eventually not at all. Ilya did remember holding his breath to see if something bad might happen, the things he and Hollander had worried about as boys. The dragons and jail cells they had dreamed up in their worst nightmares.

But nothing had happened, and in a way that made it worse. Had they made everything up in their heads? Or wasn’t that what nightmares were? Fictions drawn from reality, but not always completely representative of the real thing.

In the intervening years, the world had begun slowly to change around them, thanks in no part to people who were far braver than they had been. It had never been about their physical safety, or even their place in the league.

For Ilya, it had been about Russia, for a long time, but that had all but vanished when he had secured a green card. For Hollander, it had always been about that imperceptible change, or fear of it. The fear that people might view them differently in some small but fundamental way. That all of their successes and hard-fought battles would be reduced to somehow less than because of who they were.

None of that appeared to happen when Hollander finally came out. He was still the most dominant hockey player in the league’s history, gay or not. People said nasty things online, and some podcasters and commentators made off color remarks. But none of it mattered because Hollander had spent twenty years of his life building a resume that was so impeachable practically nothing could mark it.

There had been mourning their close-to-decade long entanglement coming to an end, and then there had been whatever this was, which was more like mourning sacrifices no one had ever really asked them to make, and yet ones they had made willingly all the same.

Hollander's voice pulled him back to the empty bar.

“What?” Ilya asked, rubbing his temple.

“I said, productive day." Hollander raised his glass.

Ilya raised his in turn. “You listened to me,” he agreed. “It is a start.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” Hollander murmured, taking a sip.

Kucerka. Marin. Astala. Not bad for a few days work, Ilya thought.

“Training camp will be here before you know it.”

“Is that so?” Ilya replied, rolling his eyes, as if he hadn’t thought about that every moment since setting foot in this city. “I thought I had a vacation first.”

“Well, of course, all employees of the organization—”

“Hollander, I was kidding,” Ilya retorted with a laugh. “I can take a vacation when I’m dead, or when we’ve won your team its precious Stanley Cup.”

“Our team, Ilya.”

Right, their team. That had been the hook that had snagged him and pulled him here. Ilya nodded. “To our team, Hollander,” and he raised his glass once more.

A vodka later, Ilya’s limbs were feeling looser as he listened to the man beside him tell him about his cottage, which apparently not only still existed but had been renovated twice more in the years since Hollander had first built it. Ilya had never made it to the cottage. It had been an offer, something slid along the table for Ilya to silently weigh and review, like he was signing a new contract. And then, of course, like any offer could be, it had been revoked, or rejected, depending on who you asked.

Ilya pretended to listen as Hollander continued on, but mostly he was taking the man in. He realized this was the second time they had been alone together since that day at the rink. The bartender had left them to their own devices long ago.

He really was pretty to look at, prettier even than Ilya remembered. Certainly no longer in the boyish, coltish way he had been when they had first met, or later in the manly, capable way as he captained a team and grew into the face of this sport. It was different, of course. They were older and certainly grayer. What had once been lean muscle and bodies trained into precision instruments were now men who no longer looked at exercise as a mandated full time job. Though judging by what Ilya could see of the man next to him, someone had never properly given Hollander the memo that he was no longer paid to run and lift weights.

Then, “you aren’t listening, are you?”

“Tell me about the exposed beams, Hollander,” Ilya moaned loudly, throwing his cheek dramatically onto the bar like the monologue had killed him.

The man just scoffed. “What were you so focused on?”

Ilya looked up at him. His cheek remained resting on the cool surface. 

“I was taking you in,” Ilya said, truthfully. “When was the last time we actually saw each other?”

“My Hall of Fame induction,” Hollander said quickly, as if it was a question he had already asked himself. “I was so happy you came.”

“Were you?” Ilya asked, genuinely surprised.

“Well, yes. I didn’t think you would.”

“I see.” Ilya pulled his cheek from the bar and took a sip once more.

“I didn’t think I deserved it, I guess,” Hollander admitted after a moment’s pause. “Not after the way things were.”

“Which was what exactly?”

“I’m not interested in arguing, and I don’t think you are either, Ilya,” the man said. “We have lived long lives since then.”

“Yes, but, it is not ever day your—” Ilya paused, tried to think of what the word might be in English, in Russian, in any language on earth, really.

He tried again. “Your, you know,” and he waved a hand in the air.

Finally, he gave up. “Your, ah, ex-lover. It is not ever day he offers you a job.”

Hollander took that in. Ilya waited for him to correct the word or argue the point, but he didn’t. Instead he took a breath and he nodded. “It’s not every day you offer your ex a job and he says yes.”

Ilya laughed at that. “That's true.”

Why did it feel so good to hear Hollander call him that, that thing they had done for so long but never been able to find words for. Ilya was surprised by what it felt like to have that out in the open.

Hollander's eyes met Ilya’s once more. “I never told anyone about that, you know.”

He continued. “Not because I couldn’t, or we couldn’t, talk about it now,” he corrected. “But because it didn’t feel like just my story to tell, if that makes sense.”

“It probably wasn’t,” Ilya agreed. “But now, I’m not so sure, Mr. Gay Icon.” Ilya let his Russian accent loose on those last few words and it got the reaction he was looking for.

Hollander blushed in a way that was shockingly charming on the face of a man his age. “Shut up,” he eventually said. “I’m not trying to lead a movement.”

“No, that was our problem, I think,” Ilya said, more seriously than he intended.

Hollander let out a breath. “Ilya, I’m happy you’re here. Beyond everything, the rivalry, whatever it was we—”

He stopped himself. “No one knows me like you do.” He tried again. “And as annoying as you can be, you are the only person who will disagree with me.”

Ilya remained silent, waiting for him to finish the thought.

“I know you have built a life for yourself. I guess what I’m saying is I think we could be friends. No one gave us the chance to be that. We certainly didn’t.”

Ilya snorted. “You want to be friends?” In his vodka-laced state, the idea of that was far more hilarious than tragic. 

The man's lips twitched, but Ilya beat him to the retort. “Hollander,” he said, leaning towards him. “I think maybe we already are.”

Hollander squinted at him suspiciously.

“To friendship?” he finally said, raising his glass once more, and Ilya snatched it out of his hand—his fingers briefly rubbing against his—and downed the remaining water in a single gulp.

The man beside him looked shocked, and then he smiled, something so brilliant that for a moment Ilya had to look away.

Chapter 3: Language Lessons

Chapter Notes

Ça va - Émile Bilodeau

July in Montreal.

A city like this was built for months spent under blankets of snow. Ilya knew cities like it, having grown up in one himself. Labyrinths of underground passages and connecting walkways, thick concrete walls and tightly sealed doors. In Montreal, summer was a test all its own, and one Ilya wasn’t sure he could handle if not for the first class air conditioning Hollander had installed in his apartment.

Ilya had spent a lot of time alone this month. After the draft, Metros management had taken their annual vacations to cabins and cottages in Lanaudière, Rideau, and even further afield, and Hollander had been no different.

Ilya hadn’t asked Hollander questions about how long he might be away, or if others would be with him. He had only recently embraced their tentative friendship, and the man was famously private. No one knew that better than Ilya himself. It wasn’t like Ilya couldn’t have done the same and decamped to some lake for a few weeks. For him, it was more a question of with whom.

He had remained in contact with his Raiders teammates overs the year, and Svetlana, of course. But they all had sprawling families and children that, in some cases, had even graduated college and were planning families of their own.

Adulthood was a series of choices, choices that no one had bothered to advertise the cost of to Ilya. As he aged, he felt himself further along a parallel track, one where his life grew more and more distant from most every other person in it. In his thirties, that burgeoning distance had felt bold and transgressive. He slept with who he wanted and embraced his messy entanglements. In the off season, he traveled the world and partied on its farthest shores. He assembled an armada of luxury sports cars.

Thankfully, he remained handsome throughout it all. In fact, many people insisted he only grew more attractive as the years passed. Blessed with an eternal mane of curls and salt-and-pepper beard, and thick, defined biceps that had no business belonging to a man approaching forty. Then he retired, and the next decade had been a harder, crueler one. The parallel had widened now, to such a degree that he could barely see the other track, his friends and their families blissfully moving along it.

When Ilya was a boy, he had assumed he would get married and start a family. He had always liked the idea of being a father, even if he had hated his own. He never could have guessed that fatherhood, to him, would look more like raising hockey players from boyhood to draft day.

Of course, he was not one to complain about these minor hardships.His fame and fortune had never made it hard to find people—women, really—to sleep with, but it had made it hard to settle down when the time had come. No one seemed to do the trick, or could possibly understand the contours of his life, and so the years went on. He still maintained his playboy reputation throughout it all, but a fundamental part of himself began to slowly but surely shutdown until, one day, the key was thrown away, seemingly never to be found again.

That was the part of him that loved men.Ilya had loved boys, then men, as long as he could remember. He couldn’t recall a part of his life where he hadn’t known in one way or another that that urge existed within him. It was like a critical bone in his body. He couldn’t explain why he was this way, and had never been very interested in that question to begin with.

With Hollander out of the picture—at least, in that way—and his celebrity growing without limit, that piece shrunk and shrunk like a plant removed from sunlight, until one day it had all but disappeared. Sometimes he encountered men and felt those old, unused parts of himself peak out once more, but it never felt like there was anything to be done. Women remained available, but something about not accessing one part of his desire made it seemingly impossible to truly enjoy the other parts.

As the summer passed, Ilya quickly realized that living in this city would only make his problems worse. Saratoga had been a tiny place with a nonexistent dating pool. Boston had been better, and at least he had been able to go to New York and slip into anonymity occasionally. Everyone in Montreal knew Ilya Rozanov. In fact, it had taken time to get used to strangers approaching and asking for pictures instead of cursing him out, as they had done in his Boston years.

He had gone to a bar earlier that month, looking for something, really anything, to do to distract himself as the weeks ticked by. There were only so many hours he could stare at his coaching plan for the preseason before he started to see the schedule on the inside of his eyelids.

That night, a woman approached him. She was stunning and age appropriate. Clearly someone who knew what she wanted, and on any other night he would have invited her back. Then he remembered the borrowed apartment and he felt a wave of discomfort wash over him.

Ilya excused himself and went to the bathroom. As he unzipped at the urinal, he could feel a man to his right. He glanced. The man wasn’t overly masculine or feminine, but pretty, with thick dark lashes and wide, sparkling eyes. He was unfortunately Ilya’s type.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the man tilted his head.

Ilya sometimes went months without speaking a word of Russian, and yet his fluency always remained. But this language, he hadn’t spoken this language—of quiet, loaded glances between men—in years, and yet he found fluency at his finger tips. He knew exactly what the man’s head tilt meant, and, more than anything, he was concerned with how easily he might tilt his own head right back.

It was like the man could sense Ilya at war with himself.

“What brings you here?”

Ilya zipped up his fly. “To the bathroom?”

The man laughed, joining him at the sink.

“No, here,” he said, and his nose scrunched in a way that made Ilya want to eat him alive.

For a second, Ilya wondered if he knew who he was. Gay men didn’t usually, probably even ones from Montreal. Maybe he could take a chance.

Ilya side-eyed him from his place at the mirrors. “Needed a distraction. You?”

“Same here,” the man responded carefully, and turned so that he was facing him.

Then, “need some help with your distraction?”

Ilya could feel himself standing at the cliff’s edge, the wind on his face and the smell of salt water around him scenting the air like sweat. He licked his lips.

When had he done this last? He hadn’t slept with a man in many, many years, certainly not since he had retired from the league. That realization made him feel like he couldn’t breath.

He couldn’t possibly crack that door open once more. He had no problem with loving men and wanting to fuck them. He did have a problem with loving something so much and knowing he couldn’t have it, at least not in the way he wanted. It was easier to not love the thing at all.

He looked at the man. “Someone is waiting for me.”

“Ah,” he said. “She’s a lucky woman.”

Ilya felt a twinge at that barb, that of course he, this cowardly man, would find himself in the arms of a woman tonight.

“Have a nice night,” Ilya said, before stepping out the door and back into the fray.

He hadn’t had the heart to take the beautiful woman at the bar home with him that night. Instead, he fell asleep with Anya in his arms, holding onto her for dear life. He woke up the next day and inexplicably texted Hollander.

“When are you back?”

Thirty minutes later, he got a selfie of Hollander lounging by a dock, the beautiful blue of chilly lake water behind him.

“I’m bored,” Ilya sent back. “There is nothing to do in this city.”

“I’m back next week,” Hollander texted ten minutes later. “You’ll figure it out.”

Ilya was annoyed that that immediately excited him, and that Hollander had understood the question he was silently asking and given him an answer unbidden.

God, he needed a life. And friends besides middle-aged Shane Hollander, lamest man alive. Hollander would probably suggest they play chess or knit.

Then, an hour later, another text. “How are the French lessons?”

Ilya pointedly ignored that one. Any head coach of the Metros had to either speak French or take intensive lessons in the language. Coaching was in English, but press was a bilingual affair in a town like Montreal.

Hollander had immediately hooked him up with an instructor upon arrival. An instructor he had proceeded to blow off. It wasn’t that Ilya didn’t like French, or the vaguely European flair of this bilingual city. If anything, as a European himself, he appreciated it. It reminded him of the continent that had been home. 

But Ilya was old, and tired. Now was not the time to teach a dog new tricks. At this point in his life, he was perfectly fluent in English and still spoke Russian with ease. He wasn’t one of those idiotic Americans who barely had fluency in their own native language, let alone another. So why, oh why, did he have to learn French?

About halfway through July, he broke. He had grown so bored that apparently a French class was worth taking if it meant an hour of guaranteed human contact. His first session was at his house. As he let the instructor in, he frowned.

This man was a decade younger than Ilya with smooth dark skin, full lips, and the sort of muscle definition any athlete would envy. Maybe tutoring French was a part-time job to support this man’s burgeoning modeling career, Ilya thought sourly. Leave it to Shane Hollander.

“Hello,” he said a bit gruffly. 

His instructor greeted him in French, and then proceeded to speak in nothing but the language for the next hour, much to Ilya’s chagrin.

He caught a few things along the way. The man’s name was Ben. Apparently his family was from Haiti and had immigrated to Quebec when he was a baby.

Ilya had always had an expressive face, and a lot could be communicated with a well-placed raised eyebrow or pursed lips, he quickly realized. Ben seemed to think he was hilarious, which he found himself preening at. Ilya could be deadly charming when he wanted to be.

The man slowly explained in French, using hand signs along the way, that he was the go-to instructor for the Metros. So Hollander hadn’t sent this man from the heavens to specifically torture him with his biceps and pout. That was good to know.

The hour slipped by quickly, and at its end Ilya found himself wishing they had an hour more. Maybe learning a new language wasn’t so bad after all, anything to keep him from going insane in the boredom and heat. They made plans for next week, and after Ben left Ilya bee-lined to the fridge.

Beer in hand, he turned a movie on, but didn’t even make it past the credits before he was out like a light. A few hours later, he woke up to complete darkness and the worst hard on he had had in recent memory.

It wasn’t like that couldn’t happen to a man his age. But not like this, not the sort of hard on that made him feel like a teenager again, like he had one incredibly important all-consuming job at hand.

He looked down at himself. This was embarrassing. He got Anya’s leash and took her for a quick walk in the dark. Once back, the problem hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had only gotten worse. He groaned, marching to the bedroom and shutting the door. He climbed into bed with a bottle of lube and took a deep breath, letting a hand slip into his sweatpants.

The feeling of his hand was an old comfort. He let out a sigh as he slowly stroked, rolling back his shoulders and gazing up at the ceiling. He ran his other hand up his chest, along pecs covered with a curly mat of greying hair. This brought him back to his body, and to the ridiculousness of this whole thing and he paused, feeling his cock twitch in frustration.

This time, he shut his eyes tightly and continued his pace. In the self-imposed darkness, he felt removed from this room, this apartment, this city. He could be anywhere really, and with anyone. Suddenly, the hand didn’t feel so much like his own. He could feel the presence of a person beside him, and the grip now someone else’s. He couldn’t have told you a single defining feature of this person, just that he wasn’t alone. That he could feel the heat of the body beside him and the steady movements pulling him closer and closer to the edge.

Then, he let his imagination run. He imagined that person on their knees. He imagined his cock in their mouth. He imagined a bobbing head taking him whole, and dark eyes looking up at—

He came.

It was almost unpleasantly abrupt, like a fuse had blown. He opened his eyes. Panting, he took in his surroundings. His bedside lamp seemed impossibly bright. He wiped his sweaty face with the hand that wasn’t covered in his own release. It took him an hour to properly come down from that, but eventually he reached some approximation of sleep.

Hollander returned a few days later. Ilya only knew this because he saw local news outlets report on it, as if the man’s return was an indication of the impending hockey season. Ilya had left Hollander alone. The man probably had many friends, and Ilya wasn’t about to look so desperate. He was a grown man and could fend for himself.

Then, he had gotten a text out of the blue. “Leroux.”

It hadn’t taken him long to know what that meant. While Ilya was wandering Montreal and taking his mandated French lessons, the league’s free agency period had begun.

Leroux was old enough that he had overlapped with Ilya and Hollander during his first few years playing for Dallas. He had a reputation for being brutal on the ice. He was the closest thing this league had to an enforcer, a species of hockey player that had slowly but surely been brought to extinction over the years as the fights became more infrequent and the concussion protocols more robust. He wasn’t a violent person, actually. Ilya knew him well enough, and he was sort of gruff and homespun but had a wicked sense of humor in the way that many great defensemen did.

Ilya’s fingers hovered over his phone. He smiled. Not a bad get, he thought.

“Ours?”

“Ours,” he got back a second later.

He ran a thumb along the text.

Ours.

“Someone needs to protect the kids.”

“Exactly,” Hollander responded. “He’ll be here in two weeks.”

Kucerka. Marin. Astala. Now, Leroux. Ok, they were getting somewhere.

He riffled for his coaching schedule. A date in early September was circled. Training camp. Ilya suddenly felt the pressure of the incoming season weigh down on him with full force. What on earth had he agreed to? And what if he couldn’t deliver?

Montreal would destroy him. But Shane Hollander, now that was something worse. Something impossible to think about. He had to win. He had to help this team win, and he shuddered to think of what might hang in the balance if he didn’t.

August continued on in its steady march towards what increasingly began to feel like Ilya’s execution. The French lessons continued, too. That was a welcome distraction, and Ben became the closest thing Ilya had to a friend, outside of whatever he called his dynamic with Hollander.

Ben had taken him to various neighborhoods and haunts, all the while explaining the complex history of this city. The various enclaves and pockets, and what each meant to the other. Ilya had quietly taken it in. Catching things here and there, but mostly nodding along and performing comprehension. He had been surprised by how quickly he had began to develop basic competency in French. Maybe it was because he had enough respect for other cultures to attempt the language with the baristas, clerks, and waiters he found himself in contact with daily.

Or, perhaps, he had never given himself enough credit. He was smarter than he looked. Ben was a great teacher. He never acknowledged Ilya’s circumstances. That of having been dropped into Montreal and told to build a life and team here. Instead, he provided him with welcome adventures, all the while tricking Ilya into French along the way.

As for Hollander, Ilya acknowledged that this was definitely what it was like to watch two full grown men play a game of chicken, and by early August he had had enough.

He set up a time to visit Hollander at his home in Outremont. The house was massive, palatial even. It felt even more so when Ilya quickly realized it was empty except for Hollander himself. There was the answer to that question he thought, and felt oddly weightless.

“Can I get you something?” Hollander asked upon Ilya’s arrival.

“One ginger ale, please.”

It had been a joke. Ilya couldn’t stand the stuff. Hollander, of course, took it literally.

“One moment,” he nodded, and dashed away to wherever his massive kitchen was hiding.

Ginger ale in hand, Ilya followed Hollander around as he showed him various rooms. The living room was covered in fine art, some of it quite abstract and expensive-looking.

“I never would've taken you for an art collector,” Ilya said, lingering on a particularly bold piece.

Hollander shrugged. “You have to put the money somewhere.”

Ilya laughed, and then felt relieved that Hollander hadn’t transformed into an aesthete in the intervening years.

“Let me show you the real collectors pieces,” Hollander said, his eyes twinkling. He led Ilya down a set of stairs. Along a hallway, and then another, they entered a large windowless room.

The walls were absolutely covered. Covered in jerseys, in press clippings, in photographs of a barely bearded Shane Hollander hoisting Cups to the heavens. Olympic medals hung like accent pieces. Ilya took it in. The sum of someone’s life, their victories, put together so succinctly and completely was staggering. Even for him.

“I don’t get to show this often,” Hollander admitted.

He went on. “You know, it would be sort of…” he trialed off, grasping for the right word. “Tactless, I guess.”

He continued. “But not with you, obviously. You get it.”

Ilya looked at the man beside him, and Hollander’s gaze held his for a second as they both took that in.

Ilya nodded. “Yes, my room is bigger than yours actually. More medals.”

Hollander laughed, stepping towards his Olympic golds. “Thank god I have you beat when it comes to these or I’d never live it down.”

“Only because Russia started a war and I couldn’t play,” Ilya barbed back, frowning. “What then, Hollander?”

“The world will never know,” Hollander responded with a grin.

Ilya’s mouth felt dry. He took a quick sip of his drink. He looked around. There was one conspicuous patch of empty real estate on the wall.

“And here?”

“My management awards.”

Then, “maybe another Cup or two.”

Ilya squinted at him. “Where is shy, modest Hollander?”

Hollander’s face looked somewhere between a blush and a frown. “He’s here, Ilya. Trust me.”

Ilya’s eyes roamed the room since that currently felt easier than the alternative, which was looking at the man beside him. Then he landed on a familiar photo. Ilya felt like the breath had been knocked out of him by a particularly brutal check.

“Where did you get this?”

His serious gaze found Hollander’s and the man just shrugged. “I tracked down the photographer.”

“I don’t under—” Ilya began, trailing off as he became enraptured by what was in front of him.

It was a photo of the two of them as teenagers at their very first CCM shoot. They were in a low face off, eyes locked on one another with grins a mile wide. 

“He had outtakes,” Hollander explained. As if that made perfect sense, as if it explained why he had gone out of this way to find this photograph, only to frame it in his trophy room. Ilya couldn’t begin to untangle that one, nor did he want to. And so he pivoted.

“Hollander, you are tiny. Like a tiny baby.”

“So are you,” the man beside him grumbled. “We were so young.”

He went on. “It’s like you said. Guys at that age, they're boys.”

Then, “we were boys.”

“Not any more,” Ilya found himself saying. For some inexplicable reason, he turned towards Hollander.

“No,” the other man agreed. “Not anymore.”

They looked at each other in silence. Ilya could feel the tension, obviously. He was not a teenager anymore. He knew what attraction felt like. He knew the muscle memory of it. When he had first seen Hollander at the rink in Saratoga, he had felt it then too. How could he not?

But feeling something was different than acting on it. That was a lesson one learned through trial and error. He had no interest in what acting on it might do. Let that door remain tightly shut, never to be opened again. Let them remain joint custodians of an ocean’s worth of shared history, and that was it. 

He stepped away from Hollander. “It's nice,” he finally said by the doorway. “I am glad you showed me all of this.”

Hollander nodded politely. “Me too.” And with that, they walked out.

Days later, Ilya found himself thinking of that photograph. He dug out his phone and texted Hollander.

“I want that picture.”

It was abrupt, with no context. But a second later, without a clarification in sight, he got a text back.

“I already left a copy on your desk.”

Chapter 4: Red Tape, Blue Tape

Chapter Notes

All By Myself - Celine Dion

As summer came to a close, the season’s infinite, hazy stretch quickly sped up until it felt like Ilya was hurtling towards some violent, awful conclusion.

Ilya had never been a nervous player. If anything, he got harmlessly jumpy before games, like a bottle rocket that might go off accidentally at some inopportune time. When he finally got on the ice, sixty minute games sailed by in the blink of an eye. Shifts came and went so quickly Ilya would have doubted he had even played if it weren’t for the points he routinely put up on the board.

Coaching had been different. He could enter a similar flow state as he had when playing, but this came with anxiety. He was preparing players to the take the test. He couldn’t take it for them, as much as he sometimes wished he could. Over the years, Ilya had found that both terrifying and exhilarating since true success as a coach meant understanding how to motivate others to perform at their best. It was a complicated and messy art, and each coach came with their own playbook.

Ilya had never ruled by fear. Reverence, maybe, but not fear. His leadership style was one borne from love and adoration. His players listened to him because they would march into battle for him at a moment’s notice. But that adoration wasn’t built in a day, and was no doubt easier to build with tweens than with grown men. 

Much like in the draft, where the second round picks often proved more instrumental than the first. Here too, training camp mattered more to Ilya than any potential playoff run.

The foundation built here, the relationships he did or did not cultivate with his players during these precious weeks, that was what decided the season. It was a lot of pressure. Not that pressure was new to Ilya. He just hadn’t stared it down like this since he was in his twenties and winning Stanley Cups with the whole of Boston at his back.

By this point in September, he had assembled his coaching staff and been pleasantly surprised with the results. Management had not been happy though, since, to them, Ilya had done the unthinkable.Three assistant coaches and all three of them were devoted to skills development—skating, stick handling,  skillsets you spent hours on in a youth league, not on an MLH team.

“This is suicide. Not having a power play specialist is suicide,” McNamara bemoaned about three seconds into Ilya’s presentation.

Ilya rolled his eyes and hushed him, explaining that he and his assistant coaches would collectively coach power plays, penalty kills, and offensive and defensive drills. It was how he had coached The Storm, where it was much harder to find coaches qualified to specialize and too much power play training was a distraction from the bigger fish they had to catch, like learning how to properly handle a puck. Ilya didn’t see a reason why he’d change his system here, MLH be damned.

“You are insane,” DeLisle warned. “What you are suggesting, it will make us a laughing stock.”

Then he looked at Hollander. “Are you listening to this guy?”

Hollander’s expression was stormy as he eyed his staff. Then he began to speak.

“When we talked about hiring a new head coach, there was only one candidate I proposed.”

He pointed at Ilya. “Him.”

So Ilya hadn’t been the last choice on some list. Hollander had wanted him, and only him. He tried to suppress what was no doubt a stupid satisfied grin.

Then Hollander turned his gaze to DeLisle, and Ilya immediately recognized that stare, since he had seen it during every face-off he had ever participated in against Hollander.

“It sounds like you are saying that I made the wrong choice,” the man continued. “Is that, in fact, what you're saying?”

DeLisle looked panicked. “No, of course not, I—”

“Good,” Hollander interrupted, “since that would mean you are disagreeing with the only player to win four Stanley Cups this century.”

DeLisle’s face paled. Hollander continued. “The only player to win the Conn Smythe three times.”

He dug in. “The Hart, six.”

“In fact," he added, "the only man who came close to that stat is the guy sitting at this conference table who you think is ‘insane.’”

Then, he went in for the kill. “I have so many Olympic medals I lose track of them, and here you are trying to give me advice on how to manage this franchise.”

“I would nev—“ DeLisle began.

“This time, I’ll pretend you didn’t just speak to Rozanov that way. I don’t care if he asks for ten assistant coaches, you will give him twenty. Do you understand?”

DeLisle, McNamara, and the rest of the management took a collective gulp. Hollander nodded, seemingly satisfied that the message had been conveyed. Ilya, on the other hand, felt like he was about to pass out.

He had never seen Hollander come close to this. He had just seen the equivalent of this man whip his dick out and put it on the table for all to see. Had he really won six Hart trophies? Jesus Christ. And why was Ilya half-hard?

Hollander was ignorant of Ilya’s state and plowed on. “Three assistant coaches for Rozanov, and you will make competitive offers to secure his top choices. We will keep goaltending, and most of video.”

And that had been that. Days later, Hollander had introduced Ilya to Harper, the Metros captain. Despite the last name, he was one of the few players of Asian descent in the league. It was hard to not immediately draw comparisons to Hollander, which was probably a pressure all its own.

Their lunch had been a solid one, Ilya thought. He could work with someone like Harper, who seemed like a fast learner, consistent, and acutely aware of what ills plagued his teammates. He was a little shy, which Ilya would work on. But nothing that wasn’t so hard to remedy over time. And it hadn’t hurt that Harper was fascinated by his and Hollander’s decades of history on the ice. He asked what felt like a million questions, and Ilya answered each one as patiently and honestly as he could.

The night before training camp, Ilya could barely sleep. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, he got in his car and drove to the team’s training complex in Brossard. He had already redecorated the offices with whatever material he felt he and the coaching staff would need over the course of the preseason, and it was starting to feel somewhat like home.

As he walked in, he nodded to Ahmanson, Moreau, and Zaborin.

Ahmanson had come from Toronto, and was the only female assistant coach in the MLH. Ilya had always admired her from afar. She was tough and precise, and deadly focused on fundamentals. Moreau was a bit of a character in Quebec, but had long since decamped for Florida, where he had been on the coaching staff that led Tampa to a Stanley Cup a few years prior. Loud and passionate, any scrimmage felt like a series final under his tutelage. And then there was Zaborin. He was a bit enigmatic, if Ilya was being honest, and had spent a good portion of his career playing in the KHL before coaching in various North American leagues. But he was very good, and he was good with European players, which Ilya needed on a team this diverse.

“How are we doing?” Ilya crowed, as he waltzed in, his beloved thermos of coffee in hand.

“Good, coach,” Ahmanson nodded from her position writing something down on the white board.

Moreau looked towards him. “The guys are ready to go."

"Then let’s get started," Ilya said, heading towards the ice with his staff trailing behind him.

When he stepped out, he could feel the telltale prickle of chilly rink air on his skin. He could scream with happiness. He was home. Except this rink in Brossard was a lot bigger than the shoddy arena he had trained kids in in Saratoga. This was state of the art. And there on the ice were sixty players ready to fight to the death to make this team.

As he moved towards them, the men froze, ceasing their gabbing as they clocked his approach. They all skated towards the boards nearest him and a terrified quiet settled over the crowd. Many of the faces he recognized through careful summer study. But like with the draft, it was bizarre to suddenly attach a living person to a series of stats he had poured over for months.

There was Harper at the center of the scrum. To his right was their Russian star, Dimitrov. Then Lassiter, who was twenty and miraculously centering the second line, and his left wing Bartek beside him. Newer faces like Kucerka and Leroux loomed in the back. And there, by the edge of the crowd, was Marin, looking like he might pass out.

Ilya stopped by the boards, and then, in one deft move, he slipped over them and onto the ice. The guys looked more than a little surprised.

“So,” Ilya began. “Here we are, yes? I don’t know many of you, but I think you know me.”

A nervous laugh ran through the group.

“Whatever you have heard about me, it is a lie. Ok?”

“Russian coaches, we are not so bad,” he said. “There is no gulag.”

He amended, “well, unless we lose, then maybe.”

That got a loud bark of laughter from Dimitrov.

“Dimitrov, zamolchi,” shut it Ilya shot back, and the winger nodded with a grin.

“Da, coach.”

“I am not hard to impress,” Ilya continued. “I like good, clean hockey. Fundamentals. No attitude. The opposite of what I did on the Raiders."

"Play hockey like Hollander," he added, "and you will make this team.”

He squinted at the herd of men in front of him. “Got it?”

The whole team was a mixture of terrified faces and players who looked like they were about to crack up, since playing like the greatest player of all time was a tall order on a good day.

“Easy enough,” Bartek said calmly. “When do we get started?”

Ok, so this kid was a little cocky. Ilya would keep an eye on him.

“We already have,” Ilya said with a wink. “Look at the tape on your stick. Reds with me and Moreau. Blues with Ahmanson and Zaborin.”

He added, “goalies, I don’t know what to do with you, so do whatever it is you do.” Their starting goalie shrugged and skated towards the goaltending coach, who was parked by one of the nets. The other goalies trailed behind him like ducklings.

By the time Ilya got home that night he was exhausted. He didn’t even have it in him to make dinner, and was about to pass out on the bedsheets when he received an incoming FaceTime from Hollander. He clicked it and the man’s face abruptly filled the screen. He had his reading glasses on and looked like he was sitting somewhere in his living room.

“How’d it go?” he asked without greeting.

“Good, I think,” Ilya yawned. “I need to eat. Tell you more tomorrow.”

“I ordered food to your apartment,” Hollander said, as if it were an afterthought. “Figured you might need it.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. “I will not eat your rabbit food.”

“It’s a big Mac,” Hollander said, trying to suppress his revolt. “It’s the only thing I remember you actually eating.”

Ilya smiled a wolfish grin. “Ok, maybe that. Thank you, Hollander.”

And he actually meant it. He gave Hollander the download on his day in Brossard. Their top six were in fighting shape and in no risk of being demoted. Harper had been beautiful to watch, both as captain and player. Dimitrov, Lassiter, Bartek, and others had all done their part. Marin had been ok. Nervous, but that was to be expected. Ilya needed to monitor that. And their goaltender was fine. Past his prime, but they didn’t have much of a choice. Not until recent draft picks like Astala sharpened up.

Hollander took it all in, asking relevant questions where they made sense.

“Guys like Marin, they’re probably just scared of you,” Hollander advised. “Give it a second.”

“Scared of me?” Ilya scoffed. “I am a youth coach.”

“You're Ilya Rozanov,” Hollander said matter-of-factly.

Then, “I would bet a thousand a piece that every one of those guys has your poster hanging in their childhood bedroom, Marin included.”

“Not yours?”

“Mine too,” Hollander laughed. “But mostly yours. You always had style.”

“Style?” Ilya questioned, trying to contain his grin. “Tell me about this style, Hollander.”

And the man on the video call took off his silly little glasses and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

“I’m remembering why I never complimented you.”

“No, you were very mean to me,” Ilya agreed.

Then, “very good at playing hard to get.”

The minute he said it he knew he had crossed a line. Maybe it was that he was so tired after a days work that whatever guardrails had always kept their conversations squarely in the realm of hockey, and not much else, were starting to crumble.

Hollander looked serious for a second.

“Not that good at it, Ilya.”

Then he said something Ilya wouldn’t have expected in a thousand years, not coming out of this man’s mouth of all people.

“If memory serves, it took about one shower.”

Ilya could feel his jaw dropping, and tried to school his expression.

“It must have been, ah, a very impressive shower,” he offered.

Hollander frowned. “It was ok. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

And Ilya laughed, it was a feeling so pure it bubbled out from him before he could stop himself.

“You are funny, Hollander. When did that happen?”

“When I retired, I had to develop other skills besides stick handling,” the man on the video call said with a shrug, the freckles on his nose bunching as he grinned.

“Mhm. Well. I am impressed.”

And they looked at each other silently for a second.

A doorbell’s shriek cut the spell. “Your Big Mac,” Hollander said, dipping his head.

“My Big Mac,” Ilya nodded. “Good night, Hollander. And thank you.”

“Of course, Ilya,” he said. “Let me know how tomorrow goes.”

Things progressed as expected over the next few days. The lines continued to tighten and new faces like Leroux added a injection of much-needed energy.

Marin, however, was still a problem. It was funny. When Ilya wasn’t looking, he played exceptionally well. But the minute, his head coach’s eye was trained on him, Marin folded like a house of cards.

A week in, Ilya had had enough and had him stay back. Marin looped around in slow circles as the rest of his campmates cleared the ice. Then Ilya called his name and he skated towards him, a furtive look on his face.

“Marin. What is going on?” Ilya asked simply.

“Nothing, coach.”

“I don’t think so,” Ilya corrected. “I know your stats. I told Hollander to draft you.”

“You did?” Marin asked, confusion in his eyes.

“I thought we could use someone like you," Ilya said. "A little outside of the box, yes? But good.”

Marin let out a breath, but remained silent, his eyes trained on the ice. He looked overwhelmed. Ilya was pretty sure he was about to cry. In that moment, he seemed so, so young.

“What is on your mind?” Ilya eventually asked.

Marin looked up at him, his eyes glistening and his lips pressed firmly together. “Honestly?”

“Yes. Always.”

“That I have a poster of you in my bedroom.”

“Or had,” he immediately corrected.

Right, because Marin had lived in his childhood bedroom until about a week ago, he thought.

Ilya just shook his head. “Hollander is always right.”

“Huh?”

“He thought you might,” Ilya said conspiratorially. “He told me to not be too scary.”

“But you aren’t though,” Marin bemoaned. “You are actually sort of chill and a very good coach. I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that I am playing in front of Ilya fucking Rozanov.”

“Well, this is good. Good practice,” Ilya said in thought. “Montrealers are not so easy to play in front of. Very demanding people.”

Marin laughed. “So, you’re saying if I can play in front of you, I can play in front of them?”

“Marin, it sounds like if you can play in front of me, you can play in front of anyone.”

And the boy grinned. It was an ear-to-ear thing that warmed Ilya’s heart.

“Tomorrow, I want you to have some fun, ok?”

He went on. “I chose you for a reason. Not Hollander, not the management team. Me. Got it?”

Marin nodded helplessly, his head awkwardly bobbing up and down.

“Good. Now get out of here. And tell the rest of the guys that I was very, very mean.”

Marin smiled. “Yes, coach.”

Something happened after that, something for which Ilya did take at least partial credit. Something had unlocked within Marin, and it became clear a few days that he had found a place on this team. As they entered the last days of camp, Ilya spent the evenings drafting up potential lines for the start of the season.

Mikkelsen, Harper, Dimitrov.

That was a no-brainer.

Bartek, Lassiter, Lindsay.

Attitude aside, Bartek could skate.

Then, Toscano, Varga, Branigan.

A rowdy bunch, but full of gas.

And Keller, Weber, Pavlovski

The Europeans. Studied and patient.

For the defenseman,

Raskind and Pierre, of course.

Benjamin and Kucerka.

Their shiny new toy.

And, Leroux and Marin.

A funny pair. But it was time to see what this kid could do. He stared at his notes, and then sent a picture to Hollander. He got a response a few seconds later.

“Looks like a hockey team to me,” he read off his phone, and grinned.

As he laid in bed later that night, Ilya couldn’t stop thinking about that line up. It was risky to throw recent draft picks onto an MLH squad. Most coaches let their selections cook, developing on farm teams until the time was right. But Ilya wanted players who hadn’t formed bad habits yet. And, if this team was going to be young, they might as well embrace that strength instead of wasting time apologizing for it.

Then, his mind drifted to his first season in the league. He had been put on the second line and seemingly overnight was moved to center the first. That was practically unheard of in the league, but made sense considering he ultimately had come close to scoring fifty goals that season, a number so staggering it almost sounded fake all of these decades later.

Coaches had put their faith in him and Hollander, and it had paid off. They had won their teams Stanley Cups because of it. Then, his mind drifted to Hollander, where it seemed to be spending a lot of time recently. The man had been on call to an intense extent these past few weeks. Every text Ilya sent went a fraction of a second before it received a reply.

Ilya wondered what Hollander’s life was like outside of this job of his. And then he laughed at the thought of a life outside this job, this sport, something neither he or Hollander had ever really been capable. Whatever disease Hollander had, Ilya always seemed to have to. They were meant for each other in that way, he supposed, though incompatible in so many others.

What was Hollander up to in this very moment? Did he have some loving boyfriend visiting his Outremont mansion? Or maybe he was too busy for commitments like that. Maybe it was whatever man was in the rotation that week. Men who were all muscles, tight abdominals, and thick biceps. Who wouldn’t fuck him gently, but take him like he couldn’t break, the way Ilya remembered him liking it.

There was something about that thought that Ilya couldn’t shake. Hollander, as he was now, in his GM uniform of a button up and slacks, getting bent over and fucked. He was fascinated by what the man was up to, obviously. That was to be expected. Hollander was an impossibly fascinating person. So controlled and tightly wound, every decision a calculated play in some larger match one didn’t even realize they were playing against him until it was too late.

And then, how he was in bed, which was the opposite. Boundless. Boneless and loose. Utterly wanton yet somehow polite. As Ilya recalled, this intoxicating mix of filthy, of proper. Hollander would fold his clothing as he took them off, only to then lie on the bed and order Ilya to fill him up. At least, Ilya was pretty sure that had happened once or twice. The memories were so distant at this point it was hard to tell if they were honest portraits, or something else entirely.

Then Ilya thought of this new Hollander in front of him, familiar to the old one, sure, but with some new tricks. The sense of humor was something. He replayed Hollander in the conference room scolding McNamara for his disobedience, for daring to question Ilya, and by extension him. His hand slipped into his waistband without thinking.

He froze.

This man had been his rival. His ex-lover, or whatever it was he preferred to call it. And now he was his boss, having pinned the hopes of an entire franchise on Ilya Rozanov’s shoulders. Just because it was familiar to fantasize about Shane Hollander didn’t mean he should. He pressed his hand onto his hard on, willing it to go away. After a minute, he was flaccid once more.

Only then did it hit him what he was up against. Quickly and too late, he was realizing his grave error. It wasn’t just coaching this team, or attempting to win it a Cup. It was doing it alongside Hollander. That had been the tantalizing promise, Ilya thought, and now a curse that would destroy him piece by piece.

How had he walked right into that trap? Thinking that he was somehow more disciplined and adult than his teenage self. He could have all of the wisdom in the world and yet he would find himself begging at Hollander’s door. That had always been the problem, hadn’t it. He had been helpless once it had begun. What little power sexual experience had given him was out the window once he realized his obsession with this man.

Like a drug he couldn’t kick. It was what all addicts said. Addictions last a lifetime, you just get better at managing the symptoms. And here he was inhaling that drug in its purest form.

Thank god the season was starting, Ilya thought. That meant road trips and time spent far away from the management team and this man. He’d win him his precious Cup, and then he’d be done. Like he was finally let out to wander the world once more, his soul his again.

Ilya wanted to be free of this. Whatever it was, in whatever way he could be. He wanted to be happy, a thing that had never come easy to him, as the daily pill suggested. Maybe there was still time to be happy, he hoped. Not in some medicated form, but something close to the real thing.

He just needed to stay as far away from this man as he could.

Chapter 5: Heeling

Chapter Notes

Mariners Apartment Complex - Lana Del Rey

Before Ilya knew it, the leaves were changing and he was staring down another season of hockey, though this one hardly like the ones that had come before it.

The press had made a lot of his arrival in Montreal. Ilya, to this city, had always been more symbol than person. Throughout his time in Boston, he had represented all Montreal couldn’t possibly want in a hockey star, or at least couldn’t possibly let itself want. He was brash, and arrogant to some. Leaderly, sure, but high-contact and short-tempered. Not like their beloved Hollander, who always seemed to be the best without having to stoop much at all. It was one thing to be great, and another thing to do it without compromising one’s integrity. From this city's perspective, Ilya only ever achieved the former, and Hollander the latter.

Then, with the approach of free agency in his late twenties, Ilya picked up his life and moved from Boston to Ottawa. That had been shocking, mostly because it hadn’t made sense. Players moved for plenty of reasons. There were all of the common ones, like fresh cap space leading to a pay day, or actually having a shot at the Stanley Cup. But sometimes it was about something as simple as playing for a hometown team, or, though they’d never say it out loud, living in an American state with a non-existent income tax.

But, with the world scratching its head, Ilya moved to Ottawa, and seemingly moved for none of those reasons. Only he knew the truth, that he had moved to be with a person. Or maybe, to put it more simply, he moved to finally get what he wanted. That being said, it didn't take him much time to realize he'd been played. While he kept up his side of the bargain, the other party had not.

What came next was the worst punishment, being trapped in that town for the duration of his contract with his wings clipped. He had done his best to get out, once it became clear that his private deal had fallen through. But Ottawa had spent far too much money to give Ilya Rozanov up for something as simple as his seeming unhappiness, and even Ilya on a bad day was better than most players at their best. And then, once that contract was up, the moment had passed and the thing he wanted most with it. By that point, all Ilya wanted was to be left alone to play out his days in peace, and so he had stayed in Ottawa until retirement, until Saratoga. 

Unsurprisingly, tonight’s Metros homeopener was against Ottawa, his old team and Montreal's closest division rival. Ilya was sure some reporter was making something of that right now, but the truth was that that team had never meant much of anything to him. Maybe in another life it would have, if he had gotten what he wanted, but not in the life he was living now. At one point, Ottawa had been a prison and the team’s management its wardens. Now, Ilya was presented with the task of beating them, and he was happy to do what he could.

With their homeopener finally upon them, Ilya felt the hum of anticipation reverberate through the arena, even from his staff's offices.

Ilya left the Metros alone ahead of the game. He wasn’t a coach who was interested in lingering in the locker room, or worse yet, trying to relive his glory days in some pathetic approximation of the real thing. Ilya had played at the highest level long enough to know that players knew what they needed ahead of a game. At this point, his job was to not get in their way, and to let Harper and the alternate captains do theirs to the best of their ability. 

Once warm ups wrapped, Ilya finally entered the locker room. First, the telltale smell. That horrible smell that had almost grown comforting over the decades, or at least, familiar in a way that made Ilya’s insides hot with the potential of victory. Then, the image in front of him: two semi-circles of men in the blue, white, and red, all seated. This startled him, not because it was unexpected, but because this very image was so out of the realm of possibility, so counter to any vision Ilya could have conjured for himself.

But there sat the Metros, in their iconic jerseys, awaiting his command. The room was silent. So silent that Ilya felt a twinge of anxiety at having to speak.

His gaze met Harper’s from under the visor of his helmet. The man’s eyes were tracking him like he was a game day puck. Ilya felt nineteen other sets of eyes doing the same. It was like an electric current was pulsing through him. He knew the feeling, had even felt it coaching the Storm. Most similar was the feeling of captaining Boston or Ottawa, but this was something wholly new.

“There is nothing I could say that you haven’t already heard," he began.

Veterans like Leroux, Raskind, and Pierre nodded silently. Their shiny rookie, Kucerka, looked warily at him. In the corner, Ilya could see Marin practically disappearing into his jersey.

“And, right now, there is nothing I could say that you don’t already know.”

Bartek let out a low huff of agreement.

“Isn't that right, Bartek?”

Their cocky young winger looked surprised that Ilya had called him out, but schooled his face.

“You’ve gotten here because you don’t need to hear it.”

He pointed at Bartek.

“Bartek, see, he needs to win. He needs to win so badly he can’t stand someone else telling him how to do it.” A small grin flashed on the boy's face for the briefest of moments until a placid expression returned once more.

Then, Ilya pointed to Dimitrov. “Dimi, he needs it or he will go crazy. He moved to this continent so he could win here, in this very arena.” The young Russian tipped his head in agreement, but his light eyes were focused on something a million miles away, like he was on the other side of the world.

Then, Harper. “And your captain needs it.”

Ilya’s eyes met Harper’s once more and they exchanged nods. “For whatever reason, he needs it even more than the rest of you, which is why he leads this team.”

He went on. “You all need it. I felt it the moment I walked through those doors." He pointed at the ground. "A win here. At home. In front of your fans.”

The group nodded as one, like a single organism waking up from some deep primordial slumber. A predator raising its big ugly head and blinking at the light.

“I want to hear their screams." And for a second it was unclear if Ilya meant their famously loud fans, their division rivals, or both.

The team took in what he said.  Then Harper stood up and the team snapped into formation behind him. They understood.

The first came and went, and before Ilya could even take it in he had coached a period of MLH hockey. The arena was somehow even louder than Ilya remembered. From his periphery, it was a wall of red and blue as far as the eye could see, both around him and up to the heavens.

He knew the Metros Cup banners were floating above their heads, like proud regalia or an impossible reminder. But Ilya was so focused he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of them or the tell-tale twenty four, and he hadn’t looked at the team's box either, where he knew Shane Hollander sat quietly watching Ilya and his players at work.

A period in, the Metros had played better than he expected, though that hadn't meant they were playing well. They were skating hard and winning a majority of their face offs. They seemingly could keep possession of the puck, but weren’t entirely sure what to do with it once they had it. It didn’t help that their goalie was unremarkable at best. Dimitrov had gotten one in near the end off a clean assist from Mikkelsen, but they were down going into the second.

The second was disappointing. Kucerka played well, and even came close to scoring, which brought the crowd to its feet. But Marin left his mark at a critical moment and let in a goal. The boy looked heartbroken as he skated to the bench at the end of his shift. The veterans hadn't done much better, with exception of quiet and consistent Harper, who had scored one near the end.

By the third, it was clear they were headed towards a loss. Ilya meant what he said in the locker room. Yes, he could talk strategy, or remind them of which players to double up on, of what techniques might dismantle Ottawa’s offense or lead to scoring chances. But he couldn’t play this game for them, nor did he want to.

They would lose if nothing changed, and Ilya was ready to accept that. Not losing, no. He hated that. But he was willing to accept that they might need to lose this game to win the ones that really mattered down the road. This team was young. Once the momentum was headed in a certain direction they were ill-equipped to right the course. They were learning, and perhaps in need of this particularly painful lesson. But they had played well enough that, for some brief moment, Ilya had almost tricked himself into believing there was a scenario in which they might actually win this game against Ottawa, the heavy favorites.

This wasn't some fairytale, though, where a team transformed in the blink of an eye, and so, they hadn't. Ilya found himself back in his apartment staring at the ceiling once more. He had a missed call from Hollander on his phone. Even if he was keeping his distance, the man was still his boss and he knew he would eventually need to return that call.

Exhaling, he dialed. The man picked up on the first ring.

Ilya was silent. He didn’t have it in him to start this particular conversation.

“Nice job," the familiar voice said.

He wasn’t sure what he expected, but this certainly wasn’t it.

Then, “what, you thought I was expecting you to turn them into a winning team over night?”

Hollander continued. “That’s impossible, not to mention unfair.”

“Probably,” Ilya said, biting his lip. “But it would have been nice.”

“I know you're under a lot of pressure right now, Ilya,” he said. “No one knows what it’s like to deal with Montreal like I do. But you don’t have to do this alone, especially when I talked you into doing it in the first place."

He went on. "You can talk to me.”

“Right,” Ilya said, rubbing his face with a hand. “Thanks, Hollander.”

There had been so many years where hearing something like this, an offer of intimacy in any form from Hollander, would have been a blessed gift. Now, Ilya was terrified of it. He’d win this team a Stanley Cup, or die trying.  But winning was it. There was nothing else to be done here. They exchanged pleasantries and said goodnight.

Ilya woke up the day after that, and the one after that, and continued to do his job to the best of his abilities. Practices in Brossard, games in their arena, flights on their private plane to New York, to Tampa, to Pittsburgh, to Detroit. Games lost, and some won too.

With the season in full swing, Ilya had his much-needed distance from Hollander. Every week Ilya met with the management team. Often in person, though sometimes over video while on the road. Those meetings were professional. Ilya was perfectly polite and never overly familiar. Hollander texted him every day about the team, about what they needed, and Ilya always responded quickly in turn.

Occasionally those texts drifted towards the personal. Did he like his apartment? How were his French lessons going? Did he have any friends in the city? And each time, Ilya skated out of the way like he was dodging a particularly brutal check.

He’d turn back to work, back to winning, back to anything that reminded them of what they were, which was colleagues. If Hollander was frustrated or confused, he didn’t let it show. It was like they were playing a game in which Ilya exclusively dictated the terms of play. Whenever the man received one of Ilya’s rebuffs in person, he would just slowly blink and take it on the chin.

“No problem, we can get dinner another time,” or, “I’m sure you have someone else you’d rather do that with.”

It was like nothing could offend Hollander. After a month had passed, it was enough to make Ilya feel like he could scream. He wasn’t even sure why. Hollander was doing exactly what Ilya wanted him to do, which was ultimately nothing at all.

So, why was he so angry? Of course, Ilya knew why in some small shadowy part of his heart, an inner cavern that had not seen the light of day for years. That thought only made him madder. He was attempting to build a life for himself here, but it was hard. He was so impossibly busy. He was recognizable. His life was hockey and only hockey, and Ilya was worried that any time spent doing anything but thinking about how to win this city a Stanley Cup was enough to offend its inhabitants.

His language instructor, Ben, had been gracious and continued to take him around the city during his off days.

“Your French is getting pretty good, Rozanov,” the young man had said in Quebecois one day with one of his glorious grins. “You may not need me soon.”

Then Ilya said, without thinking, “I'd have no friends."

Ben laughed. “So that's why you tolerate the lessons?"

“Yes,” Ilya nodded, laughing in turn. “You are boring, but the best I can get.

That had gotten another precious laugh from the man beside him.

“What about Hollander?" Ben replied in French. "Aren’t you two friends now?"

llya shrugged in reply.

“You two are funny. I still can’t tell if you're friends or rivals.”

Rivals, this was a word Ilya knew in French.

“Not rivals,” Ilya corrected quickly, continuing on in the language. “That stopped a long, long time ago.”

“So, friends?”

“Those are the only two options?”

"No, I guess not.” Ben looked at him appraisingly. "I can't figure you out, Rozanov.”

He continued. “For one, you flirt more than any straight man I’ve met in my life.”

“Flirt?” Ilya said back, testing the unknown French word on his tongue.

“Yes, flirt.”

“What does that word mean?”

“Oh,” Ben said with a grin, then, trying to explain it in Ilya’s limited French vocabulary, “you're very nice to men, like you want something from them.”

“Ah,” Ilya said nodding. “Maybe it’s because I do, sometimes.”

Ben looked at him with confusion, then painfully slow understanding.

“I see," he eventually said with care. “Is that something—is that something people know?”

“No, but it’s not like I hide it.”

Ilya went on slowly in French. “They are like you, not seeing what is in front of them.”

“Fair enough,” Ben nodded.

Then, “I can help you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t know that’s what you wanted, but I can help you.”

“What I wanted?”

“Men,” Ben said in explanation. “I didn’t know you wanted men. I know the right bars.”

“Not just men,” Ilya corrected.

Ben took that, and Ilya, in.

“You're not what I expected at all.”

Ilya shrugged. “So, what bars are these?”

That had led to a night of them going to some of Ben's favorite spots. Ben was straight, but had a lot of gay friends. “Being gay,” he said over his latest drink, “it's not a big deal here. Plus everyone is gay now," and he almost sloshed his drink all over Ilya and a handsome suitor beside him.

Ilya held back a laugh. For one, he wasn’t gay. He was also a decade older than Ben and a retired hockey player. As he had gotten older he realized he probably had more in common with a straight professional athlete than he did with a bisexual person who had never touched a stick. Identity was a thorny puzzle without an easy answer key.

But Ilya was happy that, to Ben and his generation, everyone was gay. Saddened by it too, though. So much had changed so quickly that, by this stage of Ilya's life, it had become painfully clear to him that he had missed a precious and critical cut off. What if he had been born a decade or two later? It was hard not to wonder what it would have been like. Though, he then reminded himself he would have born into a version of Russia that was a fully authoritarian state at war. Every generation had its unique set of challenges.

Ben continued to be a good tour guide, and in this way he was no different. It was thanks to Ben and his gaggle of French-speaking friends—who all found Ilya confusing and charming in equal measure—that he found himself going home with women, men, really anyone attractive who would have him.

The men had been a revelation, not because he had ever really had a preference, but because it had been so long. About halfway through topping an impossibly attractive thirty-something-year-old Concordia professor, Ilya realized how incomplete his life had been without this.

The man moaned and shuddered as Ilya piled into him, and Ilya felt utterly full of purpose. Completely aware of who he was, and what he needed. He grabbed the man’s cock in his hand and got him off as he fucked him, only for Ilya’s orgasm to rip through him a moment later like a gun going off.

Afterward, as they came down amid sweaty, twisted sheets, the man asked, “what is it you do again?”

“I’m a hockey coach,” Ilya answered truthfully, in a way.

“Right, you mentioned that. You coach kids?”

Ilya shook his head. “I used to.”

“And now?”

Ilya thought about what he should do. It was a fork in the road. This time, he took the forbidden path.

“I coach the Metros.”

The man pulled away from him, and Ilya could see the dawn of recognition in his eyes.

“Holy shit,” the man said, running a palm over his face. “Oh, fuck.”

Ilya began to get up. “I should go.”

“No, no. I’m sorry. It’s not a big deal.”

And then, “I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“They probably wouldn’t believe me anyway," the attractive professor continued. "‘I fucked Ilya Rozanov’. Are you kidding? They’d laugh in my face.”

“Technically I fucked you,” Ilya corrected.

“That’s true,” the other man laughed. “And you can do it again, you know.” And so Ilya had.

A week or so later, he was summoned to the Metros office. When he walked into the typical conference room where he met Hollander and his lackeys he was surprised to find only Hollander there.

“Sit, Ilya.”

“Am I in trouble, or something?”

The other man sat across from him, ringing his hands as he settled in. "No,” he finally said. “You aren’t.”

He continued on. “Ben says your French has gotten very good. He says you're probably the best student he’s ever had, or at least a student with serious aptitude.”

“Anything is easier than learning English without a teacher,” Ilya said, nodding.

Then Hollander switched course. “I’m happy you’re making friends. Montreal should be your home.”

As if it were a correction, “it is your home.”

Ilya squinted at the man across from him. “Thanks, Hollander.”

“Shane,” he corrected. “It’s Shane, Ilya.”

Ilya ignored him. “Why am I here?” The question Ilya kept asking. In this city, or in this conference room? Hollander took the easier route.

“I asked you here today to talk about something sensitive.”

Ilya opened his hands, the universal symbol for I’m listening.

“It has come to our attention that you're making friends,” Hollander repeated.

Then, “male ones,” he added a moment later, and a blush painted his face.

So that’s what this was about, Ilya thought grimly. Hollander must have the whole city bugged if that piece of information got to him so quickly.

Ilya looked squarely at him and crossed his arms. “And you have a problem with that.”

“No, no, of course not. The organization takes no issue with what you do in your personal life, as long as it’s legal, of course.”

“Then I do not see the problem here.”

“There is no problem. But surely you can understand that you being an openly…” he trailed off, continuing, “an openly, ah, out head coach might be a source of press right now.”

He continued. “We don’t want any distractions. The narrative is that you are here to usher this team into a new chapter, not that you are here sampling Montreal's bachelors.”

Ilya frowned.

“And would you be saying the same thing if these men were woman?”

Hollander’s eyebrows furrowed, but he remained silent.

Ilya continued. “Because it is women too, in case you were wondering.”

Ilya was angry. He felt like being a brat. “The women here, they are very beautiful. Hard to resist, especially when—”

“That’s enough, Rozanov,” Hollander said coolly. “I don’t need a play by play. You understand my point. No distractions.”

“Very little can distract me from winning,” Ilya retorted. “You of all people know that."

“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about the press.”

“Are they threatening to write something?”

“No,” the man responded wearily. “But they will. It’s not like when I came out. I was retiring, not newly leading this league’s most decorated franchise.”

“A lot has changed since we were boys, Hollander."

“Do you really believe that?”

Ilya knew, in a way, he was right. This was a front page piece of gossip at a time when this team didn't need it.

“So, what, I’m supposed to be a monk while I coach your team?”

“Our team, and no,” Hollander said, shaking his head. “Just be discrete, ok. Do it with the right people.”

“The right people? Tell me who the right people are then.”

“For starters, not someone in Montreal,” the man said matter-of-factly. “Probably not a man, either.”

“So this is about men?”

“No, it’s about the press. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I can’t with you, Hollander," Ilya said, throwing his hands in the air. "You've changed, but in none of the ways that count.”

Anger flashed in Hollander’s eyes at that.

He couldn’t help but dig in. “I have changed too, you know. You don’t own me.”

That seemed to do something to the man across from him. Hollander eyes went black. He looked past anger, and in some scarier and far more cruel territory.

“If we are being technical, I do, actually,” Hollander spat back with sudden venom. “I own you. This team owns you. For the length of your year-long contract.”

Ilya wanted to scream. How dare this man claim to have any ownership over him, a sad soul, who, for so many years, would have done anything to be owned by the man across from him.

“You will do as I say,” Hollander continued.

“Or what?” Ilya said, not able to help himself. There was no one better at goading Hollander than him.

The man ignored him. His eyes looked fierce and wild, like a predator let loose. "You'll not touch another man in this city, not while under my employment. Do you understand?”

And Ilya wanted to argue, of course he did. At the sheer insanity of any general manager saying that to their head coach. It was beyond unprofessional. It was a level of out of line that would dissolve a contract then and there. But all Ilya could find himself doing was bowing his head in compliance, as if he were an obedient dog being told to heel by its master.

Something about that posture seemed to bring Hollander back to earth. It was like he had been possessed and was suddenly waking up. 

“Ilya, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Hollander, it’s fine.”

“Oh god, no it’s not. It’s not, I—”

“I'll behave, ok?”

Hollander looked horrified. “I don’t own you, Ilya.”

Maybe not by the letter, but terms of the heart were stronger than any contract.

“I don’t know, Shane,” Ilya exhaled, shaking his head.

That startled the man across from him, whose dark eyes met his. And with that Ilya stood up and left, not looking behind him at whatever expression awaited him.

That night had been a restless one. Ilya hated this man, hated Hollander for thinking he could ever own him in the way he once had. And yet, there was something perversely satisfying about it all. Like there was no higher compliment Ilya could receive than Hollander ordering his compliance. He wanted to heel. To answer his every command, because that meant the man wanted something from him, wanted him at all.

Sleep finally found Ilya, thankfully. He was a month into his first season coaching an MLH team and every day felt like running a marathon. The impossible pressure, the amount of decisions he had to make on a given day. And then this, whatever this was.

Chapter 6: Shipping Up to Boston

Chapter Notes

Killer Shangri-Lah - Psychotic Beats feat. Pati Amor

A weight lift off Ilya's shoulders as the team’s plane landed at Logan. An odd feeling, no doubt, given Boston’s current ranking at the top of the Atlantic and an upcoming match up that felt formidable. 

But even with that pressure, Boston was Boston, which meant it was home. Ilya had experienced a string of important firsts here. First home to call his own, granted it was a multi-million dollar penthouse apartment; first proper job, if you could call being a professional athlete a job and not a calling; and first love, which was what Ilya had grown to call that relationship that ran down the center of his twenties like a spine.

On the plane, his players were packing up various tablets, books, and headphones. Bartek and Lassiter were horsing around, as they always were, and Harper was looking on with poorly disguised disapproval, as he usually was. If Ilya didn’t know better, he’d think Bartek and Lassiter were in love with each other. He smiled at the thought.

Marin sat at the back with Leroux. The two had grown inseparable for reasons that were a mystery to anyone but the two of them. Leroux was almost twenty years Marin’s senior and about twice his size. It was like watching a child play with a pitbull.

A few hours later, they were at their hotel and Ilya was debating taking a walk to blow off steam. After all, he knew the neighborhoods around The Garden like the back of his hand. Just as he was about to head out, his phone vibrated.

“I’m on your floor.” From Hollander, of course.

Two minutes later there was a knock on his door. Sure enough, there was Hollander, looking almost sheepish, if that were even possible for a man nearing fifty who typically wore a serious expression that felt like it belonged on a marble bust or a twenty dollar bill.

Hollander had decided to come to this game. Management usually had more important things to do than attend away games, though occasionally they found themselves there for one reason or another.

“You’re here,” Ilya said, more mild observation than enthusiastic declaration. 

Hollander nodded. “We have business with Boston’s GM."

It could be a number of things. Ilya knew if he asked, the man would probably tell him. He couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“I’m headed out.”

Hollander looked at him and slowly blinked, as if he were waiting for something. For what, Ilya had no clue.

“I’ll come with you,” the man finally said. It wasn’t a question, naturally. In the last decade, Hollander seemed to have gotten much better at telling people what to do, Ilya included.

“Fine,” Ilya shrugged. “Have it your way, and bring a coat.”

Thirty minutes later they had done a loop around the West End and were now headed towards Beacon Hill. Ilya had always liked this neighborhood and its historic brick row houses. Throughout the walk, he and Hollander exchanged only a few necessary words. It was a funny picture to any onlooker able to figure out who they were, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, coach and general manager, two historic rivals, walking aimlessly around Boston.

“I always liked it here,” Ilya finally offered as they turned down another cobblestone street.

“Really?” the man asked with a raised eyebrow. “You liked penthouse apartments, if memory serves.”

“I liked them because they were private,” Ilya explained. “Not like this,” he said, beckoning to one of the row houses, and a large living room window displaying a family in the middle of some afternoon activity. “Not all open and pretty like this.”

Hollander's eyebrow remained raised, even as he nodded.

"And I was twenty and had too much money," Ilya added. "Maybe that too."

The other man laughed and they slipped back into silence. 

“How're you feeling about tonight?” Hollander asked a few minutes later, as they turned back towards the hotel.

“The Raiders will be tough for us.”

“We're playing well, Ilya. Better than we've been in a long time.”

“Well, yes, your coach sucked.”

Hollander let out a laugh, and then he stopped walking and turned towards Ilya.

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

It was so abrupt that it took a moment for Ilya to process the question, let alone that he was expected to answer. Hollander patiently blinked. The low autumn sun was beginning to cast the streets in gold. The air was chilly and the other man's cheeks were red with cold. Ilya thought about denying it, but he realized he didn’t have it in him to lie outright. 

“I am here to coach this team, Hollander.”

“Shane.” Hollander looked pained as he corrected him.

“It is what you hired me for.”

The other man bit his lip, like a half-formed thought was about to fall out. Then he nodded.

“You’re right. I'm glad you're here."

By that point they had made it to their hotel. Hollander checked his expensive-looking watch. “I’ll see you at The Garden," he said, and he headed inside without checking to see if Ilya was behind him.

Every time Ilya thought he had their dynamic completely mapped out, Hollander would do something like this, like inviting himself on a walk in which they talked about not much of anything at all only to be leveled with a question like that. Ilya rolled his shoulders back. His team, their team, had a game to win.

Hours later, Ilya was at the arena and listening to the shrieking bagpipes and heavy metal of the Raiders iconic skate-on song. Around him, he could hear the roar of thousands of Boston fans. Then, as he moved towards the benches, the booming announcer’s voice, “and welcoming back Boston’s finest, former captain and two-time Stanley Cup champion, Ilya Rozanov.”

Around him, waves of black and gold crashed. Their sounds were deafening, their hands hammering the glass in a way that made Ilya concerned it might actually shatter. He waved politely and the cameras captured his tight smile, displaying him in his standard game day two-piece suit for all to see.

In front of him, his players banged their sticks against the boards and hooted. “That’s our coach,” Bartek and Lassiter bellowed, turning their heads to glimpse him at their back. Their mouth guards dangled out of their mouths as they grinned. 

“I won't be your coach if you keep losing, you idiots,” Ilya said, wacking Lassiter on the back of the head with his clipboard. 

Then, the Jumbotron cut to a video of a young Ilya during his first season playing for the Raiders. It cut to hat tricks, precious play off goals. Hits so hard he could practically feel them in his bones. And, an impossibly young Ilya hoisting the Cup and kissing it. His team swarming around him like a toothless, sweaty pack of animals. As the video played, the crowd cheered and cheered. It didn’t matter if Boston and Montreal were bitter rivals. For one brief glorious moment everyone in that arena was Ilya Rozanov’s fan.

Then the footage changed, and there was Hollander. Now it was Hollander and Rozanov. Face offs. Brutal scrambles for the puck. Grim handshakes.

“And The Garden welcomes the league’s most decorated player of all time, four-time Stanley Cup champion, Shane Hollander.”

Many fans booed Hollander. After all, many of his wins had been Boston’s losses. But the boos were loving, for the most part, and the camera captured Hollander stiffly waving from his seat in one of the VIP boxes. It was a classy move, acknowledging Ilya and Hollander as the Raiders had, and it made sense. So much of the drama of this team’s history had been written by the two of them.

“Focus,” Ilya muttered to his team as the video came to an end. A round of yes, coach ran the length of the bench.

Once the whistle blew, the game went at a break-neck pace and didn't let up. The Raiders were at the top of the Atlantic and had recently won a Cup. No matter how well the Metros played, they would be fighting for their lives.

Over the course of the last month and a half, Ilya had been pleasantly surprised by his top six. They had started the season in decent shape, but had recently started to sing. And it wasn’t just them, his fourth line had become goal scorers of a lethal variety. Pavlovski, the human equivalent of a golden retriever and with the intelligence of one, had been on his best run since he had been drafted a few years prior. So much so that Ilya had pulled him up to the second and sent the steady-handed Lindsay down to the fourth. It had been a new, special chemistry between this towering Slovak and tiny Lassiter, who centered the line like Napoleon at Austerlitz. 

As their fall progressed, the scoring opportunities grew more and more frequent, especially in overtime, which was when players like Lassiter, Bartek, and Dimitrov transformed into deadly weapons. There, they were able to out-skate opponents a decade or more older than them who were left with little to no gas in the tank.

A period into this game against the Raiders, and somehow the Metros were up. By a single goal, but up nonetheless. No goals made it through either net in the second, and by the third Ilya was praying that Raskind, Pierre, and their veteran goaltender could hold the line. But it hadn’t been enough to hold off the Raiders' star center, who tipped the puck in with a minute on the clock and brought the game to a tie.

At this point in the season, Ilya was well aware of Montreal's weaknesses. Their defensemen ran older, which is to say they were consistent but tired and hurting right now. During their brief downtime before they entered sudden-death overtime, Ilya pulled Kucerka and Marin aside.

“It’ll be you two. Marin, you’ll play left.”

Marin looked at Ilya with wide eyes. For a second, it was almost like the boy was going to say no. Kucerka, on the other hand, just looked at Ilya and wiped his sweaty face with a palm. He was not the sort to disagree, which was part of what Ilya appreciated about him. 

“You can figure it out, Marin. You’re a quick study.”

The first minute of play had been terrifying to watch. There were a few times Ilya thought Marin might cost the Metros the game then and there.

Then, suddenly, Marin began to sail. He had memorized the study guide and was now taking the test. His checks were smart and his edge work almost dainty, making him impossible to shake. It was like having a child stapled to any opposing player with the puck, a particularly annoying and tenacious child.

One particularly abrupt speed change allowed Marin to freeze a towering defenseman in his tracks. The boy slipped past him and threaded a pass between Lassiter’s legs and towards the goal. Bartek whipped towards one of the posts. Then, he tipped the puck in like it was an afterthought.

The arena gasped and Ilya roared as Lassiter pumped his arms and celebrated, Bartek gripping one shoulder and Pavlovski the other. The rest of the Metros hopped the boards and met in the middle of the ice in a sweat-soaked scrum. As disappointed Raiders fans began to file out of The Garden, the screens cut to the boxes once more and Shane Hollander’s pleased smile.

Ilya felt his stomach drop, only to feel angry at that. He didn't need Hollander's approval. Then he begrudgingly remembered he probably did, since the man was his boss. 

They flew first thing in the morning for three days of critical rest before a stretch of home games and then a two week trip to the west coast, their first of the season. Ilya was thrilled when their bus finally dropped him off at the hotel. He felt drunk with that particular victory, concussed by it even. This team was no question better than he'd found it. The Metros were now hovering somewhere in the middle of the pack on a good day. Now came the slow and painful climb to the summit.

He left the boys to their celebrations and took a long shower, trying to lower his spiking adrenalin as much as he could. But even that was futile and by one in the morning he was still awake.  He debated heading to the gym to work out and quiet his mind. Then he rooted around for his winter jacket and pulled it over his team tracksuit and hoodie. Pocketing a room key, he headed towards the elevator.

Up, up he went. On the top floor was a rooftop restaurant that had long since closed. He absentmindedly dug for a carton of cigarettes in his pocket until he remembered he hadn’t smoked in years.

In front of him, the Boston skyline dazzled. It would never be New York, but during his time here it might as well have been. It had been the perfect kingdom for a nineteen-year-old Russian boy who spoke ten words of English on a good day, woke up a multi-millionaire, and found an entire city had adopted him as their own. A boy whose mother had long since passed, and whose father was forgetting him day by day even as he lived off his child's hard work.

The soft ding of an elevator took him out of his reverie. Behind him, he could hear footsteps. Whoever it was, Ilya would pass them in the night. He hardly needed a companion at this hour. But turning towards the exit, he found himself face-to-face with the one person who he feared and hoped it might be.

Hollander looked back at him in surprise.

“It’s you,” the other man let out, obviously startled.

“So you are not stalking me after all.”

Hollander laughed, though he didn’t deny it.

“Can’t sleep either?”

Ilya exhaled, wrapping his arms around himself in the frigid November night.

“Not after a game like that.”

Hollander looked at him and smiled. “One hell of a game.”

He went on. “I’m glad I was there for it. The video at the top was nice.”

“Something tells me you weren't surprised."

Hollander shrugged. “I thought they might want to know I’d be there. Felt like an opportunity the Raiders wouldn't want to pass up. Rozanov and Hollander in the same arena again.”

“How thoughtful of you,” Ilya said dryly.

“You’re doing a good job,” the other man pivoted. “Not that I’m shocked.”

He continued. “I can tell the team loves you and their hearts aren’t easily won. It makes me wish I'd listened to myself sooner.”

Ilya looked at Hollander with surprise. Now that was an admission. This hadn’t been some last minute party trick, but something the man had actually mulled over.

“How long?”

Hollander looked him in confusion.

“How long did you think about offering me the position?” Ilya clarified.

The other man looked at him thoughtfully. Ilya did his best not to squirm under the man's gaze.

“Truthfully?" Hollander finally asked. "Years.”

Ilya tried to cover his shock, but the man beside him plowed on. “Probably since I became GM. Sometimes I wonder if I did it just to force you into coaching a team. I always thought you’d be so good at it, if you’d let yourself.”

Ilya was reeling. Once again, just as he had at that rink in Saratoga, Hollander dropped admissions on him as casually as if her shaking rain off an umbrella.

Their eyes met. “Why?”

Hollander looked puzzled, as if he himself didn't know that answer.

“I want to win, of course. And you were always the best.”

“I used to find it infuriating," he added. "Now I mostly appreciate it.”

Ilya exhaled, rubbing his hands against one another for warmth. He stepped towards the balcony so that he was looking away from Hollander. They had been circling each other for months. Saying a lot, but nothing that mattered. Nothing that cut to the center of their dynamic, exposing it for what it was.

“I’ll be your coach," he said, taking in the skyline. "But I can’t be your friend.”

There, he had said it.He felt a weight lift of his chest until he looked back at the other man.

Hollander looked pained. “Would that be so wrong?” 

“I don’t think I can stand it," Ilya admitted. 

“Even after all these years?” the man asked a little desperately.

“Especially. Especially after all these years. What you did, Shane, I will never, ever forgive. I can’t.”

He continued. “What would it mean—what would it say about me, if I let someone treat me that way?”

The man looked at him with confusion.

“Ottawa, Shane. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” Ilya could hear his voice trembling and feel an ache in the back of his throat.

“Ilya—”

“We had a deal. At that All Stars game in Florida.”

It made Ilya’s head spin to even think about how many years had passed since then.

“You said you couldn’t keep pretending to not like me anymore. You asked me what it would take for us to be together.”

“Ilya, I—”

“I told you, Shane. That we couldn’t be together, at least not publicly. Because of this fucking league, because of Russia.”

He went on. “I said that maybe, just maybe, we could have what we wanted. Us together. On the same team. That no one would have to know."

Ilya paused, gulping for air. "And you agreed. You were the one who brought up Ottawa. Who said it couldn’t be Boston or Montreal.”

The man's eyes looked glassy as he listened. He wrapped his arms around his jacket, taking in the words.

Ilya plowed on. “No, it had to be Ottawa. It had cap space, after all, and you were willing to take the hit. I would move their first. Then, a year later, maybe two, you would follow.”

Ilya’s voice trembled so much now that he wasn’t sure he could go on. Here he was, a man nearing fifty, his hair now more grey than brown, and he felt like a teenager in front of this man. No, he felt like a child.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

The man covered his face with his hands, and when he pulled them his eyes were wet. It was startling to see on that face, a face that was so familiar to Ilya but was more myth than man to most people. Somewhere along the way it was like he had forgotten Hollander was a human being. Underneath the medals and titles, he too could bleed.

“I tried, Ilya. Of course, I tried.”

“Well, it wasn't enough,” Ilya said, shaking his head. “Try harder. You won four Stanley Cups for fuck's sake."

"You don't know how hard I—" he said, stumbling through his words. 

“Until you didn't,” Ilya butted in. “When you go radio silent, and I dare to ask my coaches, my management, 'what if we tried to get Shane Hollander?'”

Ilya thought he might pass out, but this next part, this next part he needed to say.

“And do you know what they tell me? They don’t say I’m crazy. No, they say. 'Trust us, we tried, but Hollander has a no trade clause with one franchise, and, can you believe it, its his hometown fucking team.'”

Then the tears came, and there was nothing Ilya could do to stop them.

“Do you have any idea what it was like to hear that?” he begged. "To hear that from my fucking management."

Hollander looked frozen, and then he tried to pull Ilya into his arms.

“Ilya, you don’t understand, I—”

Ilya spun away from him. “You’re right, I don’t. Nothing you could do would make me forgive.”

He went on. “I’m not sure why I was surprised. Why leave behind your Stanley Cup for some shitty team, for Ilya fucking Rozanov.” He wiped his face with a hand. “So no, I will not be your friend. I will never, ever be your friend.”

Hollander was speechless. His brain looked like it was moving a mile a minute but like nothing verbal could come out.

“I will help you win your precious Cup, but that will be it, and we will finally be rid of each other once and for all.”

Ilya turned away, stumbling towards the elevators as fast as his legs would carry him. As the elevator deposited him on his floor, he raced towards his room at the end of the hall.

Even at so late an hour, he heard voices around the corner. He froze, not wanting anyone, Metros or otherwise, to see him in a state like this. Just as he ducked into a service room with an icemaker, he could feel two figures approach.

He recognized Bartek’s thick accent almost immediately. If Ilya wasn’t so emotionally flayed, he might have even found it funny. The boy was clearly taking some post-game conquest back with him. Then he heard the sound of one body shoving another against the wall. It was unmistakably the sound of kissing, thick and heavy and passionate. Then a groan, Bartek's groan, and a low voice speaking in clear English.

But that wasn't Bartek, Ilya thought. Then it clicked. Bartek was with a man. More kissing and groaning. And now that Ilya knew what to listen for, he was certain that Bartek had a man pressed up against the wall and was ravishing him.

The voice of the other man was soft, but sounded impossibly familiar. It sounded oddly like—

“Harper,” Bartek grunted and Ilya almost gasped out loud. Unfortunately, the icemaker did it for him, dropping a bundle of fresh ice and startling the two men from their embrace.

“Is someone there?” Harper—Ilya was still not over that revelation—muttered.

“No, no,” Bartek dismissed. “It’s just the—” A familiar head appeared abruptly at the door. “—Coach Rozanov? The fuck?”

Ilya figured he had done nothing wrong, so why did he feel like he was the one who being caught. He leaned against the icemaker and crossed his arms.

“Bartek,” he acknowledged. The other man’s face appeared soon after. “Harper.”

They both looked frantic. “How long have you—” Harper began, only for Bartek to interrupt, “you didn’t hear—”

Ilya cut them off. “I am not interested in spreading gossip, and you are not special. It would not be the first time this has happened.”

“Really?” Harper asked furtively, his face looking particularly pale and drawn. Even a decade after Ilya and Hollander's retirements there had never been an out active MLH player. Hollander had come the closest, but it had been on the eve of his retirement.

“Nope," Ilya replied. "Would not be the first.”

“So, let me get this straight, " Bartek said slowly. "You don’t have a problem with this?” 

Ilya shrugged. “No, but it’s late and we have a busy schedule, so I’d love for you to go back to your hotel room and maybe actually sleep.”

Harper breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

“And you,” Ilya said, pointing at the man. “Sleeping with your alternate captain, it is not a criminal offense, yes? But being a captain comes with some responsibilities.”

Harper looked distraught but took that in silently. Ilya beckoned between the two men. “Whatever this is, it better be serious enough to warrant whatever it is you are doing.”

His two players looked at each other and a whole silent conversation seemed to pass between them in the blink of an eye. Ilya was exhausted. He had just had possibly the most difficult conversation in his entire life. He was not interested in forcing two of his players to define their relationship in front of him.

“Ok, boys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night,” they said in hurried unison as Ilya headed towards his hotel room and a bed that was most definitely calling his name.

Back in bed, Ilya let out a laugh that quickly turned into a sob. He curled up on his side and spooned the large hotel pillow. He hadn’t longed for his mother to take care of him, to stroke his hair, in years. Decades, really. But here and now, it was all he wanted. He wanted her to kiss his temple and tell him it would be ok. That he was special, and beautiful, and lovable.

Instead, all he could see was Hollander's watery eyes. His confusion, then his panic as Ilya had cut to the heart of this horror. The look of guilt and admission in Hollander's expression, when Ilya had brought up the no trade clause and his realization that the man beside him had never intended to follow him. No, instead the man had remained on the Metros and won another Cup while Ilya languished away in Ottawa, heartbroken and with his drive to win extinguished seemingly forever.

He squeezed the pillow tighter. And then there were Bartek and Harper. He hadn’t seen that coming at all, and he was usually proud of his ability to suss out these sorts of things in others. Maybe he had gotten soft and lazy, or maybe he could never have imagined that some version of his and Hollander's story was playing out under his nose.

He took a deep shaking breath as he thought about the sounds he heard, furtive sounds that so reminded him of the most significant relationship in his life, and the man with whom he had spent more time in hotel rooms than his own bed. In this hotel room, here and now, he squeezed the pillow tighter and silently cried.

Chapter 7: The Western Front

Chapter Notes

I Feel Free - Dilly Dally

The Metros trip to the West Coast could not have come soon enough. To Ilya, it felt like a gift from on high. Two blissful weeks with thousands of miles between him and that man.

The games were by no means easy. As he and Ahmanson reviewed the schedule once more ahead of their flight from Montreal, Ilya knew Colorado would be a problem, and Vegas too. Los Angeles, depending on the day. But as Ilya and the Metros moved from city to city, hotel to hotel, he was pleasantly surprised by what he saw.  Just his luck that when he was at his lowest he could always count on performing at his highest. A part of him wished that his suffering showed, that there was some symptom and that symptom was failure. Only then might someone suss out the suffering and diagnose it properly. 

Instead the Metros won, and won. There had been a surprising nail biter against Vegas, one of the top ranked teams in the league. Los Angeles and Anaheim had been shockingly easy work. Sure, they lost to Colorado, but everyone lost to Colorado. 

Over the last few months, regardless of outcome, Ilya usually received a text from Hollander after each game. But this time not even their Vegas victory had seemed to warrant outreach. Ilya found himself annoyingly grumpy about that, as if he were some attention-seeking child who would take whatever scraps he could get.

How could he lay out the list of Hollander's crimes, all of the various charges, and still seek that man’s attention? It made no sense. It made him want to check himself into a psych ward permanently. Thankfully, the hockey had been first class and given him plenty of distractions. This trip had shown him the degree to which the Metros lines were developing a real chemistry, and some of his individual players too.

Ilya did his best to not make it obvious, but he had an eye fixed on Harper and Bartek at all times. Now that he knew what to look for, it amazed him that others didn’t seem to notice their relationship hiding in plain sight. There was Harper stretching his hips during warm ups and Bartek skating behind him to plant a kiss on his helmet before zooming away. Or Harper’s gaze tracking Bartek as the man pulled his soaked undershirt off in the locker room, and Bartek winking and asking if he liked what he saw.

Not a single Metro batted an eye. And so these two men appeared, to Ilya, to have what was a fully functioning romance, of which only the two of them and their coach were aware. After their win against Vegas off a Harper-to-Bartek assist on the power play, Ilya watched the winger bowl into his captain and plant a kiss on his cheek, a mere inch away from his mouth, if that. Harper just nodded and blushed, and the world turned.

It made Ilya’s heart ache to watch these glimpses, but he couldn’t look away. He was obsessed. He felt like a private eye tracking their every move. Sometimes they would catch him watching and Ilya would suddenly feel a wave of guilt. It made him wonder if anyone had ever scrutinized his behavior with his rival during that first decade of his career. Had someone ever wondered why he couldn’t stop poking Hollander like a Kindergarten looking for attention, why Hollander was never more flustered than when Ilya was teasing him?

As they arrived at their first hotel, Ilya commandeered the clipboard with an excuse about shuffling room assignments to encourage team bonding, since this was usually Harper's task. When Ilya handed the list back, Harper looked at him with confusion, almost as if he were about to protest.

There on the clipboard, right next to Harper’s name, was Bartek’s. Ilya leveled a long look at his captain, and then he walked away without a word. If he’d never been able to have the fantasy, maybe he could at least give it to someone else.

Bartek looked over Harper’s shoulder at the names and grinned. “Guess it’s you and me,” he said, and Harper looked at him for a long, loaded second.

For Ilya, trips meant a lot of time in hotel rooms. In this case, a lot of time with his thoughts. After their confrontation on the rooftop, Ilya hadn’t been surprised by Hollander’s silence. There hadn’t been much to talk about after the blow out, and the evidence felt damning. Then little things had started to happen. When they had arrived in Vegas, there had been a bottle of expensive vodka in his hotel room. A box of chocolates in Denver. A full room service steak dinner in Anaheim.  In Los Angeles, a bouquet of lilies.

That last one pissed him off. If Hollander wanted to wine and dine him, fine. Ilya did have to eat after all. But the flowers were uncalled for, cruel even. He hadn’t given Hollander the satisfaction of texting him. He took what he wanted of the man's generosity and did so without any gratitude.

About halfway through the trip, Svetlana called. They didn’t talk much, not when she had two kids she was busy transforming into little hockey stars. But Ilya was always grateful when she did think to call. Balancing his phone on a sofa pillow, he filled her in on the last few months. They had texted here and there, but there was nothing like an hour with this woman.

Svetlana would always be one of his dearest friends. Adulthood meant that that friendship had transformed into something at once less and more intimate. Less, because how could they possibly know the minutiae of each other’s lives in the way they once had. And more, because when they did catch up Ilya was struck by the sheer amount of context they had for one another. It was intimacy you couldn’t fake or rush, a reservoir that filled up slowly but surely over years of watching each other grow and change. He inevitably came away from these conversations feeling like there was no one who knew him better then her, except for maybe the very person he wished had never known him at all.

Svetlana had been particularly focused on examining his and Hollander's rooftop fight in Boston. She twisted a gray curl around her finger in thought. “And he said nothing?”

Ilya nodded, taking a sip of his minibar beer. “There wasn't much to say.”

“It’s just so odd,” Svetlana muttered. “If he didn’t want to be in Ottawa, fine. He could have said something.”

She went on. "It was practically his idea for Christ’s sake.”

Ilya took another pull of his beer and nodded in thought. Svetlana had known about that piece of his history since around the time his dynamic with Hollander had properly ended. It had been the worst six months of Ilya’s life except for the year of the bathroom and his mother on the floor.

He spent most of those six months in a drug-induced stupor courtesy of his team’s psychiatrist. There wasn’t a drug he hadn’t tried. Benzos to fall asleep, stabilizers to get through the day, antipsychotics in the first few months when the hurt had been at its worst, and a shelf of antidepressants that made his bathroom cabinet solid orange. Looking back, he wasn’t sure he would have survived without Svetlana by his side. She had moved to Ottawa and practically nursed him back to health, like he was a soldier with a life-threatening injury.

The first month had ended in an embarrassing failed marriage proposal from him, and her pulling him into a hug and spooning him until he fell asleep. She hadn’t even needed to say no since it was so obvious what Ilya needed and that that wasn’t it. Friendships like the one he and Sveta had were rare, so rare that if Ilya had gotten one thing out of that heartbreak it was an unshakeable appreciation for what they had.

Even throughout all of her comforting, Svetlana had never really attacked Hollander. She fiercely took Ilya’s side, of course, but never at the expense of the man who had hurt him. During one particularly painful night, Ilya had pushed her on it and she had responded that she was interested in hating the systems that let neither of them get what they wanted more than she was interested in hating the man. 

Ilya had taken issue with that. It was a grand thing to be able to analyze the problems with the MLH, with professional sports, with America, or Canada, or Russia, that led to their decade-long dynamic being forever kept in the shadows. But Ilya felt it was a cop out to simply pin it on systems larger than he and Hollander. Russia had been an impossible place to be a self-actualized not-so-straight child, and yet Ilya had been. No one had asked him to play a sport that required him to excise certain parts of himself, and yet he had. These were choices, choices made by people, made by him.

“This whole thing is unfair,” Ilya recalled her saying back then. “You both should be able to have what you want.”

In Ilya’s latest hotel room, he filled her in on his and Hollander's interactions over the last few months. She took it in silently, letting Ilya ramble in the way only an old friend could.

“It’s odd, isn’t it,” she finally mused. “Why you as coach? No offense.”

She went on. “If he wanted to be friends, to date you even, he could have just…” she trailed off. “Called you? Like a normal person.”

Ilya was two beers deep by the time she said that and laughed. It felt good and made him realize he hadn’t laughed in weeks. “Think about who you are talking about,” Ilya said, taking another pull from his beer.

Svetlana just sighed. “You have two options here. Either you quit and never talk to that man again, or you get him out of your system.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow and remained silent. 

“He looms so large in your life because you never got any closure. It was the worst ghost of the century,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Which he was psychotic for, ok? I’m not saying you should forgive him, like, ever.”

Ilya leveled a look at her. “So what are you saying then?”

Off camera, Ilya could hear the sounds of two teenagers yelling. Svetlana looked over her shoulder at something in the distance, then she leaned in.

“I think you need to fuck him.”

Ilya’s mouth almost hit the floor. Then, “Sveta…”

“What?” the woman said. “I know, Ilyusha,”—the pet name made Ilya’s insides warm—,“but you have built this thing up in your head.”

She went on. “Shane Hollander this, Shane Hollander that. You had the equivalent of a decade long relationship with hockey Jesus.” She wrinkled her nose again. “And it doesn’t help that he’s unfortunately as hot as he is repressed.”

Ilya frowned and crossed his arms. She wasn’t wrong.

“There is no way it’s as good as you remember it being. And frankly, he’s so clearly in the wrong that it’d be hate sex more than anything.”

She dug in. “It actually probably makes it easier because it’s so impossible to defend him. No dick could make you forget that.”

“Or ass,” she added, with a smirk.

Ilya put his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ, Sveta. We aren’t teenagers.”

He continued. “Even if that was good advice, which it is not, he is my boss.”

“That’s what you have to say? He’s your boss?” Svetlana looked at him with exasperation.  “Ilyushka, you fucked your rival for a decade. A decade. And you have an issue with Shane Hollander being ‘your boss’?”

She laughed. “I need a drink.”

“I wish I could give you mine,” Ilya said, holding his third minibar beer to the phone screen.

“I have to drive the kids to practice first thing tomorrow anyway,” she said, waving a hand.

“I look forward to the day I coach them.”

“You’d be so lucky,” Svetlana said with a wink. “I need to go, but text me. I think I’m onto something.” Ilya hung up and leaned back into the sofa. This woman was crazy, but boy did he love her.

The trip to the West Coast had ultimately been exactly what Ilya needed. He was laser-focused on hockey and what little time he wasn’t thinking about the sport was spent roaming around one city or another. The Vegas strip with its garish lights and loud sounds. A miniature Eiffel tower, or Venice canal. Europe in plastic and plaster miniature. It was the sort of thing Russians would love, he found himself thinking. It was so tacky it was almost charming. Los Angeles was nice. Skies so clear that an errant cloud or two looked utterly out of place. Beaches so lovely and oceans so wide that Ilya felt like he was teetering at the edge of the world. He couldn’t help but think of what remote island he might want to escape to, and could Hollander find him there.

Hollander would find him anywhere, he reasoned. Sometimes it felt like that man was a walking wire tap. By Anaheim, as Ilya was in his hotel staring at the distant outline of that beloved amusement park his players had escaped to, he realized that maybe, just maybe, Svetlana was right. He was enraged at Hollander. But being so angry offered a protection of sorts. Over two decades of pouring over his memories with this man, there was no way any experience could actually live up to what he had built in his head, especially with them approaching fifty. It was as much a fantasy as that iconic castle in the distance.

If Hollander wanted him he could have him for a night. He’d come down from his orgasm and look at Hollander and realize he wasn’t so special after all. He was just a repressed gay man who cared about nothing but hockey. A clinical narcissist with nothing to offer Ilya but a good ass and mouth.

By the time the team had landed in Montreal, Ilya felt like he was on a mission. He was going to fuck Shane Hollander.

Hollander clearly had no clue about this plan, since their first interaction had been at Metros HQ and consisted of Hollander barely making eye contact with him. The man was clearly deeply uncomfortable after their confrontation and approached talking to Ilya like he was a wild animal in need of taming. Which to be fair, he probably was, since Ilya was certainly as angry as one.

During their first in person meeting since the trip, Hollander did level him with a series of compliments about the team’s performance. Even DeLisle and McNamara were able to admit that Ilya was building something special.

After the meeting, McNamara had pulled Ilya aside and said he was right about Marin. “That kid is a once in a generation talent,” McNamara had said with a grimace. Even if it was the truth, it was never fun to give Ilya the satisfaction of being right.

Ilya just shrugged. “It is good Hollander listened. Maybe you will start listening too.”

DeLisle overheard and laughed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Rozanov, we still think you’re crazy. Whatever spell you have our GM under won’t work on us.”

Ilya frowned at that. “There is no spell.”

“Well, obviously not," McNamara laughed. "I’ve just never seen that man listen to anyone the way he listens to you. Respecting the competition, I guess.”

“Something like that,” DeLisle agreed. “We get it, we aren’t going to understand whatever it is you two have. Your special little club of two.”

“There is no club,” Ilya said. “Your coach was shit and you needed a good one.”

“Our coach was fine,” DeLisle corrected. “He could have won the Jack Adams and Hollander would have still fired him and given you the job.”

McNamara laughed, shaking his head. “If only I could beat Hollander in a face off. Maybe then he might actually listen to something I have to say.”

That had been Ilya’s cue to leave and he walked the miles from the office to his Plateau apartment simply to lower his blood pressure. When he had finally gotten home that night he had been shocked to find something spread out on his kitchen table. The jersey was unmistakeable. Unmistakably his. His, and from that fateful All Stars game.

He ran his thumb along the length of his name. Then he texted Hollander.

“Where did you find this?”

He hadn’t specified what he was talking about. The man responded almost immediately, which was confirmation enough that Hollander had been behind this.

“I bought it.”

The years ago was implied and also an understatement, since Ilya knew when he had bought it. He had donated that particular jersey to charity over a decade ago. This man was fucked in the head, Ilya reasoned. It was one thing to break someone’s heart and another to do whatever this was, to collect their artifacts and pieces like Hollander was entrapping his soul for eternity.

Maybe it was time to get this over with. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” Hollander immediately texted back.

“Do you want to come over?” he typed.

Before he could change his mind, Ilya hit send.

There was a minute of pause. Then another. Finally, “to your apartment?”

“Yes.”

If Ilya was going to do this, he was going to be in control. He was going to keep Hollander in the dark, keep him guessing.

“You want to talk?”

“No.”

His phone was silent for ten minutes before he received another text.

“I’m on my way.”

Oh, Ilya hated this man. An actual conversation was some Herculean task for him. But this, this was something Hollander seemed to have no problem engaging in. Hollander was remarkably unchanged from his days as a fumbling teenager, Ilya found himself thinking. How embarrassing, really.

Ilya sat on the sofa and watched the sun set, letting the minutes tick by in silence. It was like waiting for his execution, or salvation. Whatever this was it would be wholly one or the other, even if Ilya wasn’t sure which. With the sun finally set, he sat in the dark not moving a muscle. Then a knock at the door.

He took a deep breath and stood up, tipping it open. Light flooded in from the hallway, and there was Hollander looking at him warily. The man didn’t comment on the complete darkness with which he had found Ilya. He just stared. Then he stepped into the room and shut the door behind them.

In the dark, Ilya could sense they were a mere foot away from each other, and, for a moment, Ilya wondered if instead of fucking him he might actually kill him instead. Unfortunately Hollander was far too famous for that. So fucking it was.

He pushed the man to his knees. Shane dropped like a stone, his wide eyes the only thing visible in the dark. He didn't say a word. He just blinked at Ilya from his position on the ground. Even with all his hatred, Ilya could admit it was a sight to behold. 

Then the man did the unthinkable. He reached, not for Ilya’s belt buckle or the fly of his jeans, but for his ankles. And he buried his face at Ilya’s feet.

As the minutes passed, his face remained pressed firmly and comfortably there, like he was right where he belonged. Stony and silent, Ilya took in the man prostrated in front of him.

After what felt like ten minutes or more, he finally leaned down and pulled his head up by his hair. It wasn’t harsh, but it wasn’t gentle either. The man’s eyes met his again and, even in the darkness, Ilya could see they were wet.

That did something to him. The audacity with which Shane thought he could cry. Ilya stooped down and placed a finger on the other man’s cheek, running it down his damp face. Shane just looked, and looked. It felt like they were in a dream. Like they were the only two people left on earth.

Then something poured out of him.

“Get out."

And the other man scrambled to his feet, nodding. He was gone in seconds, before Ilya could even process what he had said, the door slamming behind him.

Ilya shuddered as his back hit the wall. There was no way he was ever sleeping with this man, demons to exorcise be damned. It had been a horrible experiment, what Svetlana had suggested. One that was so clearly out of the realm of possibility once Ilya found himself staring it down. 

If it wasn’t going to be Hollander, he needed to fuck someone. He thought of the soft-eyed Concordia professor and texted him. An hour later he was in Westmount and fucking this man to within an inch of his life. It was rough and sloppy, and not very polite. Not that this man seemed to mind. He was taking Ilya in whatever position was possible.

Ilya just pounded and pounded away. Maybe he could find freedom here. The man flung an arm behind him to stop Ilya’s thrusting and pushed himself off his cock. Twisting around, he then placed a hand on his chest and pushed Ilya back onto the bed. Taking Ilya in his hand, he guided him towards his ass and sunk onto him. It felt so good that for one brief moment he thought about nothing but the warm heat of this man’s ass around him. He found himself coming before he could even realize what was happening, emptying himself with a gasp.

After the man rolled off him, Ilya apologized with a hand to his sweaty face.

“You fuck like an animal,” the man laughed. “What are you apologizing for?”

Ilya sighed and pulled him into his arms, ignoring the condom that was now drooping with his load.

Ilya found himself kissing the side of the man’s face, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“That is what you want?”

Ilya nodded, his face still planted in the man.

“Clean up and come back here,” the professor ordered. And so Ilya did, throwing away the condom in the adjoining bathroom.

When he was back in bed, the other man wrapped his arms around him in some approximation of spooning. A few minutes passed in comfortable silence. Then, “have you ever been in love?” 

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I’m not,” the other man grinned. “Just curious. Have you?”

Ilya took a breath. “Of course.”

“I mean with a man.”

“It was only ever with a man.”

“Oh,” the professor stuttered. “I didn’t realize—I assumed this was a discrete thing for you.”

“I've only ever loved one person,” Ilya finally said, looking at the ceiling.

“I see."

Then, “what happened?”

Looking back, it was the distance of this situation, and the confusing tangle of the last few months, that finally made it possible for Ilya to tell a version of the truth.

“He was a hockey player. It was complicated.”

Thankfully, the other man didn’t ask why. He just nodded and pressed a long kiss to Ilya’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“Sorry?”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Ilya. It must’ve been very hard.”

And something about that, about another person speaking so plainly about that history and heartbreak, blew the door open wide. Ilya let out a sob. And then he really cried, cried long and loud in a way he hadn’t in years. Maybe in decades, certainly not in front of another man. And this man, this handsome and kind man, just held him in his arms and kissed his shoulder, whispering that it would be ok.

He didn’t remember when he fell asleep, but when he woke up he was wrapped around another body and early morning light was streaming through the blinds. The body in his arms muttered something in French and rolled over onto his side, taking Ilya with him. Ilya took in the man. The planes of his back, the greying head of thick hair. He was handsome. If Ilya was less broken, he would have already fallen in love with him, maybe. 

Instead he just pressed a kiss to his head, and settled in for another precious hour of sleep.

Chapter 8: The Summit

Chapter Notes

Sign of the Times - Harry Styles

Ilya woke up one winter morning and somehow it was Christmas. Fresh snow frosted the Plateau like a wedding cake. The streets were quiet except for the occasional plow that groaned by on its practiced route. With a precious few days of break in the schedule and no companions to be found, Ilya grabbed his boots, Anya, and a leash, and trudged up Saint-Laurent.

It was aimless walking, past Mile End and its clothing stores that all seemed to sell expensive, bespoke versions of the same thing. Then under the overpass towards Mile Ex with its bounty of industrial warehouses turned office spaces. Then to Little Italy, which felt like a festive ghost town. Ilya and Anya somehow made it all of the way to Villeray and his favorite stretch of Saint-Hubert before they decided to turn back.

While Ilya had a complicated relationship to Hollander, he miraculously didn’t seem to have one with Montreal. He loved this city more than he cared to admit. It helped that he had somehow taken to French better as a middle-aged man than he had to English as a teenager. Loving Montreal had been made easier by actually making a friend or two here.

First was Ben and his gaggle of Quebecois friends. None of them cared about hockey, though they loved the Metros as any self-respecting Montrealer would, nor did they seem to care that Ilya was a decade older. Instead, Ilya found them ideal companions for a weekend bar night, especially ones in the more gay-friendly parts of town.

And there had been Allain, the professor. Allain’s friends were a bit more intimidating. They were mostly professors at local universities, writer and artist types, and were an erudite bunch. But for some reason they all found Ilya impossibly fascinating, and dinners with them would inevitably become a game of twenty questions about Ilya’s career as a professional athlete.

At one such dinner, a colleague of Allain’s had pulled up a video from seasons past of Ilya beating the daylights out of another player on the ice. The table gasped and booed as Ilya went in for the kill. Ilya looked at Allain with an only somewhat apologetic smile. He hadn’t hit a man like that in at least a decade and wondered if he still could.

Allain just leaned towards Ilya and kissed him on the cheek. They were doing that now. Not boyfriends, since that made Ilya feel like he was a teenager, but they were something. They were spending the night at each other’s places, though mostly Allain’s, since Ilya’s was more hotel room than home.

As the video of the fight ended, the group fiended for another one in the cue.

“That one,” Allain said in French. “That’ll be good.” The video, naturally, was “Greatest Rozanov Hollander Moments.”

“You two were so fun to watch,” Allain remarked. “I remember when you both got drafted.”

Ilya tried to ignore the twinge in his stomach. “I thought you didn’t care about hockey?”

“We don’t,” Allain said, waving his hand. “But we grew up in Quebec. Obviously we love Shane Hollander.”

“He was that big a deal?”

“Oh, he was everything.”

"He was God,” one of Allain’s writer friends interjected.

“He was at least half of our sexual awakenings,” another added.

At least he had something in common with this group, Ilya couldn’t help thinking with a grimace.

“What’s he like?” one of Allain’s colleagues asked as clip after clip of his and Hollander’s most iconic face offs played softly in the background.

“Normal,” Ilya shrugged. “Sort of boring, honestly.”

“Makes sense,” Allain added. “He’s an old man now, anyway.”

“Hey, watch it,” Ilya scowled without thinking.

Allain raised his hands in a mea culpa. “I have nothing against older men,” he said with a wink.

His friends ignored their flirting. “I meant when Hollander was young,” another added. “What was he like? Surely you knew him.”

Ilya thought about that. Had he really known Hollander then? In a way, better than anyone. In a way, not at all. “You mean what did the league think of him?” he clarified.

The group nodded eagerly. Ilya paused for a moment.

“He was God,” he drawled. “And at least half of our sexual awakenings.” It took the table of self-serious academics a second to catch on and then they began cracking up. Allain leaned against Ilya’s shoulder and crowed.

“It’s annoying that you’re funny,” he said, lifting his head back up. “You couldn’t just be hot and athletic now, could you?” Ilya grinned like a Cheshire cat and took a sip of his wine.

Friends like Ben and Allain had been a blessing. Ilya had become close to his coaching staff too. Particularly Ahmanson and Zaborin, since Moreau had a boisterous brood of kids and a wife waiting for him at home. Ahmanson was gay, obviously. You didn’t get to the level of women’s hockey that she had without a high percentage chance of that. She had a partner who still played professionally in Toronto, and therefore was always grateful for a reason to hang out with Ilya after hours. Ilya wasn’t sure exactly what Zaborin’s deal was since his Russian assistant coach barely spoke, in English or Russian for that matter, though somehow he made decent company nonetheless.

Ilya’s world had acquired contour over the last few months. It was no longer some smooth, featureless thing.  He had gotten to know his team better too. Of course, he continued to have a soft spot for leaderly Harper and his idiot of a winger boyfriend.

Marin had utterly transformed from draft day. Under Leroux’s tutelage, it was like he had gone through puberty a few times over. He was still slight and boyish, but he had a confidence to how he carried himself that made him almost unrecognizable on the ice. Ilya’s two rookies, Marin and Kucerka, had become fast friends, and he was proud that they appeared comfortable leaning so heavily on one another. Dimitrov, Lassiter, Pavlovski, and the two of them had formed a little teenage gang and would often be the last ones to a team meeting due to some poor decision made the night before.

When it came to Ilya, the Metros lived in a perpetual state of fear and awe. The only person who seemed to conjure an even more pronounced reaction from them was their GM.

Ilya hadn’t seen his team interact with Hollander that much until the man threw his annual holiday party at his sprawling Outremont mansion. There, player after player walked into the house with their eyes as big as saucers. More than once Ilya caught one of the younger ones sneaking around to snoop through Hollander's private quarters. They were probably doing shots off his Olympic golds Ilya thought, rolling his eyes.

That particular party had been friends and family, and so Ilya had brought Allain. They were a month in to whatever this thing was. It was incredibly premature, but he knew he didn’t have it in him to go alone and, as head coach, he couldn’t refuse to show up. No one had made anything of it, since a few players had brought siblings and close friends and everyone assumed Ilya, perennial bachelor that he was, had little to no family to his name.

No one paid attention, except for Hollander. Ilya could feel him tracking him as he and Allain moved around the party. It felt a bit like being hunted by some lean jungle cat. Nothing showed on Hollander’s face, and yet, even with Ilya’s back turned, he could swear the other man’s eyes were on him. Finally, Hollander approached and politely introduced himself.

Allain tried to keep his cool, but did so poorly. The two made small talk in French, and Hollander asked polite question after polite question about his teaching and field of study and the other man stumbled through his answers. Allain did finally admit that he was a fan of Hollander’s and the man frowned for a second before graciously accepting the compliment.

Ilya felt frozen through the entire exchange. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from Hollander, but whatever it was it was more reaction than this. Again, he felt that current of annoyance and his own anger at craving a reaction in the first place. When he couldn’t take his frustration one moment more, Ilya grabbed Allain by the arm and abruptly suggested they mingle.

Allain looked at Ilya with slight annoyance. Hollander just looked at them placidly and nodded. As the two of them wandered downstairs, they stumbled upon about half of the Metros holed up in Hollander’s trophy room with beers in hand.

“Have you seen this, coach?” Lassiter asked, beckoning him in.

Ilya nodded. When he and Allain entered, it was like they had happened upon a bunch of high schoolers on a field trip to the Louvre. If the Mona Lisa were Stanley Cup rings. They all wandered around the space with their hands clasped behind their backs, trying to strike some balance of appropriate reverence and giddy excitement as they took in the artifacts.

The group marveled over a wall of plaques, commemorating the Conn Smythes, the Harts, the Art Rosses, even a Selke and Lady Byng or two. The plate commemorating Hollander’s Calder mocked Ilya from its perch.

“Look,” Dimitrov barked out of nowhere, pointing a finger towards the opposite corner of the room.

Ilya realized what he was pointing to a second too late. That dreaded picture. The one of him and Hollander, their grins a mile wide.

“I thought you couldn't stand each other back then. You never told us you were friends,” Dimitrov continued, inspecting the picture with awe.

“We weren’t,” Ilya corrected. “That was after the draft. Right at the beginning of the rivalry.”

“No way,” Lassiter trilled. “I can’t believe Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were secretly friends.” He nearly sloshed his beer onto the carpeted floor as he leaned in to take in the evidence. “That’s crazy, man,” he added. “Look at you two.”

Allain approached and took his turn at the picture, looking at it like it were a fragment he had been tasked with translating. Inevitably, the Metros grew bored and wandered towards whatever treasure was next in the trove, but Allain remained.

That night, Ilya crashed at the man’s Westmount home. They made out in bed for a little before Ilya started to fully feel the effects of the wine and found himself drifting towards sleep against his best wishes.

“It was cool meeting Shane,” Allain said, yawning as he wrapped an arm around him. Ilya remained silent and kept his eyes firmly closed.

“He’s pretty polite as ex-boyfriends go.”

Ilya’s eyes snapped open. “Excuse me?”

Allain rolled over onto his side so that they were facing each other and leveled a look at Ilya. “Shane, he was the one, the one you mentioned, right?”

Ilya suddenly felt like he couldn’t breath. But Allain pressed on. “He’s your age, he’s gay, and your dynamic, well, it was hard to make sense of it until I saw the photo.”

Ilya sat up. “Allain…” he trailed off. Then, “I don’t think I can have this conversation.”

“I don’t mind, Ilya. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t think I can have this conversation,” Ilya repeated slowly.

“With me?

“With anyone,” the other man replied matter-of-factly, adding, “especially you.”

He stumbled out of bed. “I should leave.”

“Ilya,” Allain began.

But Ilya was already pulling on his jeans and sweater like he was fleeing a one night stand. Allain just watched him leave silently, and Ilya was frightened by the fact that he hadn’t for one moment cared if the man chased after him or not. That had been days ago. By the time Ilya had made it back from his Christmas Day walk, it was closing in on the lunch hour.

He left his phone on the table for some peace and quiet, and upon his return saw a text begging for his attention.

A text from Hollander. “What are you doing today?”

Ilya decided that he was going to ignore it. He didn’t need a pity invite to Hollander’s Christmas dinner. Then, another text. “I’m coming back from Ottawa. I’ll be home soon.”

Ottawa, right.  The place he had been raised. The place his parents lived. Something about Hollander name-checking that city made Ilya briefly want to respond.  But of course he didn’t. Ilya was struck with the feeling that the Outremont mansion might be the lion’s den and he hapless prey wandering in.

An hour later, “I’d like to see you.”

Ilya took that one in, before setting his phone face down on the kitchen table and heading to grab a beer. He settled in on the sofa and turned the television on, watching the news mindlessly while sipping from his drink. He flipped the channel to some ancient sitcom with an annoyingly loud laugh track. Then to a game show.

Finally, a hockey documentary. Ilya almost spit his beer out at the title sequence. It was one segment of a three part documentary that had been made about him and Hollander. This one had some ridiculous name like Hollander vs. Rozanov: A Heated Rivalry. Ilya cringed at how goofy that sounded.

Ilya would have been more annoyed by Hollander appearing on his living room screen uninvited if it weren’t for how harmless and young they both looked. It was hard to imagine anyone had taken a look at them and dubbed them the future of the league. Ilya knew he should change the channel for his own sanity. About twenty minutes in, even he could admit the documentary was pretty good. There had been a lot of talk about their mutual respect for one another, something that had appeared to build slowly but surely over the years, at least to the outside world.

Ilya knew the truth, of course, that that mutual respect was actually something deeper and more profound, and simpler too. There were was an easy one syllable word for what that was.

He heard his phone ping again from its exile on the kitchen table. Ilya sighed and moved like a man walking the plank. Turning his phone over, he stared at the text for a few seconds, letting his brain process it.

“Can we talk?”

Ilya wanted to drop the phone off his balcony and into the streets below, or throw it against the wall, but that was a thing people did in movies, and so he just stared at it blankly and did nothing. Finally he picked it up, cradling the phone in his hand.

He went to his closet and grabbed a sweater and winter jacket, then his boots from the hallway. Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of Hollander’s home.

He still had an exit, should he want it. He hadn’t told Hollander he was coming and so could leave then and there, no harm done. But a part of him felt that he had been summiting a mountain these last few months. Climbing away from Hollander, or towards him, that part unclear, but climbing nonetheless.

Arriving in Montreal had been base camp, acclimating to the lack of oxygen. This, this was the final push to the top or the fall to his death. He wanted to see the summit, of course. Any person would, even if it might kill them. If not for the pure curiosity of it, for the feel of the wind on one’s face and some final complete picture of the wide world around them.

Ilya rang the doorbell like someone was ringing it for him. A minute later, he saw a figure approaching through the frosted glass. Then the door opened and there was Shane. He looked concerned, beckoning Ilya in from the cold wordlessly. 

When the door was shut behind him, Ilya noticed the towering Christmas tree in the center of the living room and piles of gifts on Hollander’s kitchen counter. Bottle after bottle of expensive wine. Hundred dollar boxes of chocolate stacked on top of one another like bricks. A ten pound bag of pistachios, for some reason.

Shane beckoned to the sofa. “Can I get you something?”

Ilya shook his head dumbly and took a seat.

Shane sat beside him, ringing his hands. “So.”

“So,” Ilya volleyed back. This was going great. Maybe they could just keep repeating that syllable to one another for the rest of eternity.

“Ilya…” Shane began.

“This is how this is going to go,” Ilya interrupted. “You will speak, and I will listen.”

“I’m going to do my best,” Shane started up again. “You know I’m not—you know I’ve never been good at explaining things.”

Ilya snorted but said nothing. Hollander would have made a terrible coach.

“We need to talk about Ottawa,” he continued. Ilya felt his chest tighten of its own volition as if he were already on the verge of tears. He tried to breath through his nose.

Shane paused. “The summer before your second season, I asked to be traded there.”

Ilya felt his body go stone still. Every pore, every piece of him was hanging onto Hollander’s words.

“Obviously my agent put out feelers to see if Ottawa was intrigued. They didn’t know the request was coming from me, but they engaged, as any team would.”

He went on. “I guess they figured my agent was looking for a desperate party or two who might pull an even bigger contract out of the Metros, but Ottawa still played ball. And the numbers were pretty good.”

Shane took a breath. “What I didn’t expect was the call from Crowell.”

Ilya flinched. He had hadn’t thought about that man in years, but what he remembered of the Commissioner had not been pleasant.

“Crowell was very angry at you, Ilya.”

Shane rubbed his forehead with a hand. “One of our most valuable players willingly handing himself to the smallest market in the league,” he began, parroting Crowell’s words. “Apparently the decrease in jersey sales in Boston alone cost millions. ”

“He said what you did was irresponsible,” Shane recollected, frowning. “And that he couldn’t for the life of him fathom why I’d want to do such a ridiculous thing too.”

Shane grimaced at this next part. “I told him I wanted to be with my family and that Ottawa had always secretly been my dream. Then he told me stop lying.”

Something about the delicacy with which Shane relayed these words made Ilya want to grab hold of him.

“He said he knew what we’d done, Ilya,” the other man said, his eyes looking helpless and frantic even as he relayed those words decades later.

He continued. “That, every year, players thought they could out smart the system that made them millionaires.”

Shane exhaled. “He said that we belonged to him. That we weren’t the first players asking for trades to play with their, uh—” Shane stumbled, as he reached for the word.

“—to play with their partners,” he finally said, landing firmly on those last two syllables. “Apparently a few had quietly tried over the years, but none as spectacularly as us. Not players like us.”

Shane paused here, letting everything he had just said hang in the air. For once, Ilya was grateful there was no expectation for him to speak. He just sat with those words and the feelings they pulled out of him, horror and betrayal at a league he had given so much to, unbridled anger at a person who could speak to either him or the man across from him with the language of obligation and ownership. They owed the world nothing. They had earned their happiness many times over. How many Cups would they need to win to finally get what they wanted? 

“You knew how I was,” Shane said, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I’d barely admitted to myself that I was gay, let alone to you. Let alone to someone like him."

He went on. “I did my best. I bargained. I said what about New York, what about Toronto. Park us with the biggest market in the league, we don’t care where. We will sell out tickets and merchandise for you, just please, please let us be together. Finally, please. Just let us be together.”

“Of course he said no,” Shane said quietly after a moment. “Because it had never been about that, really. He was never going to let us have what we wanted.”

Ilya nodded slowly, taking that truth in. How could he have been so foolish to think they could out scheme systems they had never been designed for anyone's personal freedom, let alone theirs?

“I told Crowell I'd accept pennies on the dollar," Shane added. "He said there was no world where either of our careers would survive me being traded to Ottawa.”

He continued. “If I went, he'd expose us.”

Shane’s voice grew desperate. “Every game we’d ever played against each other, every single game, every victory on either side. Our play off series. Our Cups. All of it would be subject to review. All of it would be put under scrutiny to see if we did, or did not, collude against the league, against him.”

“There’s no way to measure that, really,” Shane said. “Crowell knew that. But he said the public wouldn’t care. That to them the answer would be yes. It would always be yes.”

Ilya looked at Shane. Just looked at him, blankly, dumbly, mindlessly. Whatever he had imagined this conversation would be, it had not been this.

“I know I made mistakes, Ilya,” Shane began. “Horrible ones. I should've told you then and there.”

He went on. “But I didn’t. I made the decision for you, because I knew what your answer would be.”

“You've no clue what I would've done or said, Hollander.” Shane pulled back at his name coming out of Ilya’s mouth so harshly.

“Let me speak the truth,” Ilya began. “You weren’t ready to make that sacrifice. You had another Cup in you.”

He went on. “But I was ready. I’d already given up a Cup to move to Ottawa. To be with you.”

“I’d have given up everything,” Ilya doubled down. “I’d have quit. And you, you took that choice away from me.”

“Because you were great, Ilya,” Shane explained a little desperately. “Because you were a once-in-a-generation player. You were too good to give it up over something like that.”

Over me.

“That was my choice to make."

Shane remained silent. He knew there was no logical answer to that, because he had acted without reason, acting from an animal sort of panic.

“I’d have chosen you, Shane. In every version, I’d have chosen you.”

The seconds dragged on in silence after that. “Every version except for this one, apparently,” Shane finally muttered, beckoning between the two of them now.

“After what you’ve done, you’ve left me with no choice,” Ilya angrily retorted. 

He went on. “You promised, Shane."

The other man frowned. "Ilya, no I didn't. In Tampa, you said that you wanted to find a way. I said this would be the only way.”

Shane dug in. “Next thing I hear you’ve been traded to Ottawa. No warning, no bringing me into that conversation.”

He frowned. “Ilya, can’t you understand how that felt from my perspective. We’d been together for a decade. Never once did you call me your boyfriend or stay the night. You never once told me that you felt anything for me.”

Shane began to pick up steam. “Being with you, it was like breaking code. Ever time I thought there was something there I'd feel crazy.”

He continued. “You mocked me for wanting to talk about this thing we had. And then you expected me to blindly take a chance on some half-mumbled plan we’d come up with after a hotel room hook up.”

“You were as much a part of that plan as I was,” Ilya interrupted. “You knew it was real. Don’t pretend you didn’t. ”

“Now, maybe. How could I’ve trusted it was real then? I was a child for most of it, you were practically my first…everything. You were my rival, my teacher.”

“Everything I knew about loving someone was from you,” Shane gasped. “And your lessons were cryptic and cruel. You were cruel to me.”

He continued. “For years, you flaunted woman after woman. You made me think that at a moment’s notice you could find safety in someone else. If we had had a place to be alone, just the two of us. Or a player to show us what it looked like to be brave, maybe, just maybe, things would’ve been different. But we never had those conversations. Instead, you just assumed I’d sacrifice for you and for us. And the irony was, I was ready to do it. I was ready to move to a shit team just to be with you.”

Shane gulped for air, tears starting to run down his cheeks. “But you’re right, I wasn’t ready for either of us to give up what we had built for something I thought I might’ve made up in my head. And I’m sorry, Ilya. I’m sorry I didn’t let you participate in that decision. And I’m sorry I didn’t know how to tell you what I’d done, the choices I made for the both of us.”

Shane paused, panting as if he had run a mile. “I’ve lived with the consequences for twenty years. Not a day as gone by when I haven’t thought about it.”

He stopped there. It was a flood of words and feelings, more by far than Shane had shared in Ilya’s six months there, and probably ever in the course of their decades knowing one another.

Ilya knew the floor was now his, but he had nothing to say. Shane had given him so much information to parse, that he wanted to be left alone with it and a magnifying glass, pouring over line after line. Shane just looked at him. The man appeared helpless and distraught, like when one of the kids Ilya coached hurt themselves in a game and were overwhelmed by the pain, too young to know how to manage it.

Without thinking, Ilya reached for Shane and found his hands. They felt warm in his own and Ilya swore he could feel the man’s pulse. For some reason he suddenly thought of Allain, of how the man had spoken to him at his lowest.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Shane.”

Shane lifted his gaze from their ball of intertwined fingers and towards Ilya’s face with confusion.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” Ilya corrected. “It must’ve been hard.”

Shane looked at him in shock, awe even.

“You don’t have to—”

Ilya squeezed his hands in his again. “I know.”

Shane just held back his tears and nodded silently.

“Sometimes it felt like the world pitted us against each other from the moment we were born,” Ilya finally said.

He went on. “It was a miracle we ever loved each other, and I’m sorry it couldn’t last. And for the part we both played in it not lasting.”

“But I’m happy we had it, in whatever form," he admitted. 

Shane let out a gasp, large tears rolling down his face. It took Ilya a moment to realize his cheeks were wet too. Ilya squeezed the man’s hands one last time and began to stand.

“I’m so sorry Ilya,” Shane said abruptly, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry for what I did. I'd take it back. Every day I wish I could.”

Ilya looked down at Shane, once again crouched below him like he was worshiping at some ancient and mighty alter.

“I know.”

And he left without looking back. Outside, it was dark but the world was illuminated, row after row of Christmas lights as far as the eye could see. Ilya walked down the road to call a cab, taking in the glow. Inside the houses, he glimpsed families at televisions and dinner tables. Love was a series of choices that led one towards or away from it. He looked behind his shoulder at Hollander’s towering mansion and walked away.

Chapter 9: Pickup Games

Chapter Notes

My Blue Bucket of Gold - Sufjan Stevens

Toronto versus Montreal was enough of an event as it was, but playing a full game of regulation hockey exposed to the elements in front of sixty thousand screaming fans was something else all together.

Ilya had competed in a few Winter Classics throughout his career, but never one like this. Just his luck that his first year helming the Metros and they would have a game as high profile as this one. Thankfully, the game itself didn’t count towards their standing, but that hardly diminished the pressure. It felt like half of Canada would be watching, scrutinizing Ilya’s surprising return to the MLH.

Management made a trip of it and had flown the team out a few days early, posting them up in a fancy hotel close to a state-of-the-art practice facility. Hollander had come too, of course. More than a month had passed since their Christmas conversation, and, while Ilya felt practically anesthetized by heartbreak, he was shocked by how much better things were between them since then.

They continued to talk about hockey and only hockey, but they now regularly texted and seemed to have no problem occupying the same air for a few hours at a time. Ilya had been shocked by what Hollander had shared. So shocked that he had spent the last few weeks numbly going through the motions of life, processing all that had been revealed to him.

He hadn’t ever wondered if there were more to the story of Hollander’s disappearance from his life. It had been much easier to paint the other man as the villain than to actually investigate the final years of their relationship and what might have gone wrong. The man had done horrible things, things that frankly reminded Ilya why that whole Ottawa scheme had been so harebrained and ridiculous.

But Hollander had made some good points too, Ilya could admit. There had been a lot unsaid, assumptions Ilya had made out of a hope that assuming them would make them so, that this man could read his mind and give him exactly what he wanted without him having to expose his soft underbelly.

Of course, they hadn’t really talked about the year that Ilya had been in Ottawa and still seen Hollander. The year where they had a version of their relationship, though one that was slowly dying on the vine. He had blacked out his memories from that time, but remembered the feeling that he had somehow seen more of Hollander when they were playing for Boston and Montreal than in this seemingly more free configuration. And, that when Ilya did see Shane, there was something unmoored and distant about him.

Hollander had been so wrapped up in himself. The man had won three Stanley Cups before the age of thirty and had his eye on a fourth, a number that would make him unequivocally the most decorated player of the century, if not of all time. There was so much about Hollander that Ilya had found frustrating then, found frustrating now. But asking him to not prioritize winning above all else was asking him to be a fundamentally different person, Ilya reasoned.

With many years of distance, he could see the picture of this man much more clearly. The parts that could be shifted in one direction or another, and the stuff that was more fundamental. The latter, that was less a question of change, and more one of acclimation and acceptance. This is what people meant by incompatible. It wasn’t about love, really, but about how the parts fit together, and could one bend to accommodate the other without breaking.

Hollander had been high-energy ahead of the Winter Classic. Though Ilya hadn’t seen much of him, except for a few meetings the man had taken from the hotel. It was the usual suspects, MLH representatives, agents, scouts, and the like. Hollander had even invited him to a meeting or two, but Ilya politely declined. He was not interested in the politicking. His whole world was these twenty men who were under his care. 

Ilya held two practices at a local rink ahead of the game and was pleased by the result. The Metros were now consistently hovering around one of the wild card slots for their division, and the difference was noticeable. The last few months had hardly been a dominant run, but it was certainly better than their performances in years past. Montreal was thrilled. And, most importantly, so was Hollander.

He rarely complimented Ilya, but he continued to text him after games. The missives were short and sweet, but Ilya knew how to read between the lines, especially where that man was concerned.

Ahead of the Classic, he tried to alleviate the pressure as much as possible on behalf of his team. He kept talking about it like it was a last minute game of pond hockey, as if his men were simply playing a game of pickup, and hardly doing so in front of a stadium of tens of thousands.

The morning before, Ilya could tell his team was nervous. Even Harper, who usually hid his feelings behind a placid mask, looked concerned. Ilya swung by the locker room and took it in the sea of nerves.

“Boys,” he greeted.

The team nodded queasily, except for Bartek, who looked unconcerned per usual and continued to loudly tape his stick.

“Why so quiet?” Ilya asked, crossing his arms.

No player was willing to admit what the others were thinking, that this goofy exhibition game had somehow taken on a heftier weight when under the scrutiny of so many rabid Canadians. That now that they might actually be good, they might be expected to win. He squatted so that he was closer to the eye level of his semi-circle of players in their stalls.

“Toronto is good, yes,” Ilya began. “But they are arrogant and lazy and old.”

He continued. “Bellington and I competed against each other. It is elder abuse letting him play.”

The locker room laughed at that. “I don’t know, Coach,” Lassiter began. “Maybe you should suit up for this one.”

“Very funny” Ilya said with a grin, gladly leaning in to any bit that might loosen these men up. “Then you would have to keep up.” And the team laughed once more.

“Sounds like someone’s scared that he doesn’t have the goods anymore,” Bartek chirped. It was low hanging fruit, not that anyone dare go there with Ilya Rozanov except for this cocky winger. Harper looked at Bartek and winced.

“Watch it,” Ilya said, pinning his player with a stare. “I have more league awards than years you’ve been on this earth.” The man just grinned as he finished taping his stick. He couldn’t help himself.

“Maybe if we got Hollander on the ice we might have a fighting chance,” Lassiter mused.

Ilya took that in. He knew that he and Hollander loomed large, over the league but certainly over this team. Maybe it was time to loosen the tension, to let out some air.

“I see. You are obsessed with me and Hollander,” Ilya said sly. “I will make you a deal.”

The team eagerly leaned forward.

“If you win this silly game,” Ilya began, “then Hollander and I will get on the ice.”

The team was silent for a few seconds. Then the dam broke.

“No fucking way,” Dimitrov yelled, shooting up from his stall. Bartek and Lassiter just whooped and whooped, reduced to a non-verbal state as they so often were. Harper shook his head as if he were dazed. Pavlovski, Mikkelsen, Lindsay, every man on this team suddenly had a fire in their eyes.

“We have to win,” Marin muttered, and heads turned to him. Marin wasn’t exactly one to speak up in the locker room, especially ahead of game day.

Leroux looked at his companion. “You heard the kid. We’re winning this.”

Ilya nodded. “It’s a deal.”

Montreal destroyed Toronto.

It wasn’t even close. The forwards were in near perfect form, and Marin played his best game of the season.

When they returned as victors, Ilya texted Hollander. “You free Monday afternoon?”

He got an immediate response. “Not really, but I can be.”

“I need your help.”

Hollander immediately called his cell. “Ilya, what did you do?”

“I told the guys that if they won the Classic we would get on the ice at practice.”

“We?”

“You and me.”

There was a beat of silence.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate, Ilya.”

“Come on, Hollander. Plenty of GMs do that. Get that stick out of your ass and come to Brossard.”

Another beat of silence.

“What’s in it for me?”

“I don’t know, Hollander. Maybe do it out of the kindness of your heart. Maybe do it for our boys, who just played the best hockey of their lives.”

“It was an exhibition match,” Hollander replied factually, as if it had really had been just a game of pick up and not a victory in front of tens of thousands of people. As if he hadn’t flown out for it. 

Ilya wanted to bang his head against a wall. “It is a miracle you captained a team.”

“Don’t be a dick,” the other man responded grumpily.

Then, “fine, here’s what I want.”

Ilya leaned forward, as if the man were sitting across from him and not a disembodied voice on the phone.

“I am listening.”

“No more Hollander.”

“What?” Ilya asked in confusion.

“No more Hollander,” the man repeated slowly. “You call me Shane.”

Ilya frowned. He hadn’t even realized that no one called Hollander by his first name. Not his colleagues, certainly not the Metros.

“That’s what you want?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “It’s Shane, Ilya. Then I’ll skate for you.”

“Fine,” Ilya said. He’d call Hollander whatever he wanted if it meant fulfilling his end of the bargain on behalf of their beloved team.

By Monday, the facility hummed with anticipation like it were a playoff game. Ilya could tell the team was distracted during practice, and he couldn’t even find it in him to scold them. He knew it the minute Hollander—Shane—approached the ice because his players stopped mid-scrimmage and pointed towards the benches.

There was the man in a full Metros practice kit. Ilya thought he might pass out. Obviously, he looked different than the Shane Hollander that had worn of version of the blue, white, and read for close to two decades. The silver hair suited Hollander, suited Shane, Ilya admitted to himself. The man looked stately and utterly comfortably, like he was wearing a well-tailored suit and not tens of pounds of hockey gear.

“You need a center?” Hollander asked, hopping the boards more nimbly than a man approaching fifty had any right to.

“Hardly,” Ilya said with a sharp laugh. “Harper’s been holding down the line. Maybe if you skate well you’ll have a chance.”

Harper looked panicked at what Ilya had insinuated, that Shane Hollander might somehow need to fight for his spot. The only man who couldn’t take a joke more than Hollander was maybe his top line center.

“Hollander, I told them to go easy on us.”

The man looked at him pointedly.

Right. Shane.

And then Shane smiled. “I’m not worried.”

As Ilya got kitted up, he let Shane split their team down the middle, assigning them their allegiances. When Ilya returned, all eyes were on him. He felt comfortable enough in this get up, though it was a little odd for him of all people to be wearing a Metros jersey.

“How do I look?” he asked as he stepped onto the ice.

He looked towards the group and Hollander’s, Shane’s, eyes were fixed on him. The man almost looked startled at being caught.

“Weird, right?” Ilya asked, breaking the tension with a shrug. The other man just nodded and continued his stretching.

When it came to hockey, Ilya was always surprised by how much came back to him and how quickly. The reality was, he worked out every day and he spent a majority of his days on the ice. Not to mention, there had never been a language he had picked up quicker than this one, and to greater results.

Of course, Shane looked like a day hadn’t passed since he had played. His gate was smooth and precise, and Ilya found himself looking on with envy. As he and Shane lazily looped around the ice, deftly handling a puck, he could feel the eyes of his players on them.

“What? You are scared now?” Ilya barked. “This is what you wanted.”

That seemed to wake them up, and they took their positions. The next ten minutes of play were brutal, the pace unforgiving. Had games really moved this quickly? Ilya found himself thinking more than once. How had he survived a season of this, let alone twenty?

Shane seemed to barely break a sweat. Two minutes in he scored on a breakaway, sinking the puck dramatically into the net.

“You’re kidding,” Ilya said, shaking his head as Shane’s team swarmed him in celebration.

“You’re going to let this old man beat you?” Ilya asked with exasperation.

“Maybe if our old man helped, we’d have a fighting chance,” someone on his team shot back, shutting him up.

Ilya frowned. Ok, this was no longer fun. Now, there was no way this game was ending without them defeating Hollander. No possible way.

A minute later, he was able to score on a well-placed assist from Harper. Shane didn’t seem fazed and congratulated Ilya on the goal with a gloved pat on the back.

And so they traded points for twenty minutes. By the end, they were at a tie and entirely out of gas.

“Next goal takes it all,” Bartek bellowed, as he skated into position behind Shane for the next face off.

Shane just shrugged and settled into his crouch. As Ilya did the same, he could feel the burn in his poor battered knees. Why had he thought this was a good idea?

Their faces were so close, their panting so loud, that Ilya couldn’t even think of some final well-placed chirp. He mostly just breathed in the other man’s air.

Shane’s brow was finally sweat-soaked, his silver hair plastered onto his forehead. His eyes were intense and focused as they flitted towards Ilya before zoning in on the puck. Suddenly Ilya remembered exactly what it was like to be on the other side of that stare, and the thousands of times he had been.

In face offs, sure. But in other ways too.

In the dead of night after their games, a winner and a loser a piece, and one of them taking it out on the other. Shane moving his hips wildly as he rode Ilya, placing his hands on his chest as he set the pace. His gaze intense as any game day stare. Or, Ilya pushing him onto his hands and knees. Ilya pressing his body on top of him and smothering him with his weight, feeling the cords of muscle pressing back against him. Shane’s gasp as he stared up at Ilya and—

Shane had the puck. Ilya tried to scramble after him but it was too late, until Marin miraculously poke checked it out of the other man’s grasp. The defenseman hurled it towards him and Ilya got a handle on it, racing towards the open net and skirting a shocked Raskind.

As he flung the puck in, only then did he realize he was hard.

Shane looked shocked at the goal. Then a wide grin covered his handsome features. “You’re in good hands,” he said to the team. “Listen to Rozanov and we’ll do just fine.”

The men hooted and showered Ilya with praise. He took it all in with a pleased grin, even as he was grateful for the thick pads that covered his ridiculous hard on. He had beaten Hollander, beaten Shane. He could live to see another day.

A week later, he scheduled time to see Harper and Bartek together. He had been meaning to do it since he had run into them months prior.

If he had learned anything from his series of difficult conversations with Shane, it was that leaving things unsaid was lazy at best and destructive at worst. He wouldn’t make that mistake here. He hadn’t made a big deal of it, of course, texting them the address to his apartment with the offer of drinks. As the two entered, they looked around.

“You live here?” Bartek asked abruptly and somewhat dumbly, patting Anya’s head as she ran towards him.

“Have to live somewhere,” Ilya retorted. “Can I get you something?”

Beers in hand, they settled on the sofa. Anya curled up beside him, her warm body a comfort.

“I wanted to check in,” Ilya said after a few seconds had passed. “It is not easy being in your situation."

“And what situation is that exactly?” Bartek asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Lukas, stop,” Harper said wearily, and a little like he was ordering a dog to stand down.

Bartek just looked at the other man and frowned.

“You’re together, obviously,” Ilya continued, ignoring him.

“That’s fine,” he went on. “I am happy when my players are happy. But it does not mean it is easy.”

“No,” Harper nodded a little sadly. “It’s not.”

“Maybe it could be?” Ilya suggested.

Harper looked as him with confusion.

“Have you thought about telling the team?”

Harper shook his head no as Bartek nodded in agreement. Ilya took that in. Maybe these two weren’t as much on the same page as he had thought.

“Well, if you want to tell them, I would be supportive,” Ilya said. “And I think they would be too.”

Bartek frowned. “What makes you think you can give us advice?” He dug in. “You have no clue what this is like.”

“Lukas, he’s just trying to help,” Harper said with exasperation.

Ilya could understand Bartek’s frustration. Frankly if anyone had dared to give him and Shane advice during their years secretly together, he might have responded the same way. Their cross to bear had felt singular, so singular that it furthered their victimhood, and in turn their desire to remain silent. No one else could possibly know what it was like to suffer through this, let alone give them advice on it or actually help them.

He thought about these two men in front of him, how good they were at hockey and how clearly obsessed they were with each other. Then he made a split second decision.

“Actually I do.”

Harper cocked his head. “You do, what?”

“What you are dealing with,” Ilya said, waving a hand. “I know what it is like.”

“What’re you talking about?” Bartek leveled at him.

Ilya took a breath. It was obviously a point of no return. Would Shane kill him if he found out that he had done this? He found himself not caring.

“I was in a relationship with another player,” Ilya explained slowly.

“You’re gay?” Harper asked in shock as Bartek’s mouth just hung open.

“Bisexual,” Ilya corrected, as if that distinction really mattered in this moment.

“How long were you together?” Bartek asked, laser-focused on the older man in front of him.

“About a decade,” Ilya replied calmly. “It started when we were rookies, though we did not call it a relationship for many years.”

Harper looked at Bartek and the two seemed to agree on something. “We met at Worlds,” Bartek explained. “Before either of us were drafted, obviously.”

He went on. “I was pretty obsessed with him.”

Harper just blushed and ran a hand over his face. “It’s not like we did anything about it,” Harper explained. “I was drafted to the Metros. I knew I was gay. I had known for a long time.”

He continued. “I never thought of a world where he and I would end up on the same team. Once that happened, it was, uh,” he paused, nervously, “it was hard to stay away from each other.”

Ilya nodded in understanding. “I would have done anything to play on the same team as him.”

“Did you try?” Bartek asked.

“We did, but it was complicated,” Ilya explained. He debated how much more specific he could be. This wasn’t really his alone to share, but then he thought of the horrible series of choices Shane had made without his consultation. Maybe he could make this one.

“We were rivals.”

Both Harper and Bartek’s eyebrows shot to their hairlines.

“Did you even have another rival besides Hollander?” Bartek asked out loud.

Ilya let that question hang out in the open unanswered. The room was silent for a beat. It was Harper who spoke next, a look of awed realization on his face.

“That’s why you came to Montreal.”

Bartek looked between his boyfriend and coach, confusion on his face.

“What’re you talking about?” he said to Harper, leaning towards him.

Harper just beckoned at their coach. 

“Didn’t you wonder why he came here?” he began, turning towards Bartek. “It practically happened overnight.”

“I didn’t come here to be with him,” Ilya explained. “I came here to help you win. He asked me to help, and I said yes.”

Bartek looked between Ilya and Harper like they were speaking a foreign language.

“Can someone please explain what’s going on?”

“The player he was with,” Harper said slowly, carefully like he was waiting for Ilya to stop him. “It was Shane Hollander, wasn’t it?”

Ilya just nodded and Bartek gaped. A heavy silence lingered until the winger broke it.

“So, you and he, you were together for—“

“For many, many years,” Ilya explained.

“Holy fuck,” the young winger responded. “Holy fucking shit.”

Harper just frowned at his boyfriend and teammate but remained silent.

“Who knows?” Bartek asked.

“Very few people. No one in the league,” Ilya said. “Except for you two now.”

“We aren’t exactly in a position to be exposing your secrets,” Harper said quietly, even as his expression looked more than a little bit honored.

“What happened?” Bartek asked, ignoring Ilya’s kind sentiment as he spoke in some dazed state.

Ilya looked at him. “We made a lot of mistakes. It was very hard to be together.”

He continued. “It was easier to assume that there was not a way than to be brave enough to make one.”

Harper and Bartek both nodded.

“This is not easy. I know it is not easy,” Ilya continued. “But you are not alone. You have me, and you have him too, I promise.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bartek laughed. “I’m not about to talk about this with Shane fucking Hollander.”

“Why not?” Ilya asked before he could stop himself.

“That man barely knows my first name, let alone wants to hear about my problems.”

Ilya frowned. “He knows your first name, trust me. He knows more about you than you can imagine.”

He continued. “Why do you think he asked me to coach this team?”

Harper looked confused.

“I was the only one he trusted to do it. He loves this team more than anything,” Ilya explained. “More than any person.” Both men didn’t seem to pick up on the implication of what Ilya had just said.

“So, you’re what, you’re friends?”

Ilya smiled sadly and said nothing. These two men were young enough that they might still think all love stories got the ending they deserved. Shane had been his great love, of this he was now utterly sure. But, with all of the history they had, this was the best they were going to get. Both an armistice and a tentative alliance of sorts. Parenting this team to victory. Side by side in at least some of the ways they had wanted.

“So now you know,” Ilya said matter-of-factly. “We should have told people. I want you to know that.”

“I’m glad you told us, coach,” Harper responded.

He looked at the man in front of him and he could tell Harper was seeing a vision of the future, of what choices he might make, which roads he might travel, and where he might find himself at the end of it all.

“Thank you for telling us, Ilya,” he added, and Ilya’s name on his tongue rang as clear as a bell.

“Of course,” he said, squeezing their shoulders. “You should go.

Bartek hungrily grabbed Harper’s hand as they stood up and Ilya watched them leave. He felt so many emotions run through his body. The few that he could catch were joy at what he had given those men just now; heartbreak at having to share the ending of this story to others and relive that pain; frustration at systems larger than he and any one person; embarrassment at his and Shane’s choices; hope that these men could make different choices, leading to different outcomes.

He thought of Shane, alone in his Outremont mansion. He thought of Harper and Bartek, furtively looking at him from their spots on the sofa. No one’s story was just their own. Everyone was living a version of someone else’s. Maybe he could finally learn to tell his and Shane’s.

Chapter 10: Trade Deadlines

Chapter Notes

Change - Big Thief

With the trade deadline officially behind them, every conversation suddenly turned to the playoffs. Ilya was proud there was even a conversation to be had, though it was far from certain the Metros would advance. However, it had not taken long for him to realize how uncertain their post-season future was, especially when Shane called him into the office abruptly on a Sunday.

The text had asked if he could meet at Metros HQ in an hour. Sunday was more often than not a work day to an MLH coach and so he didn't think much of the request as he headed downtown. He was in his and Shane's preferred conference room for only a few moments before the other man arrived 

“Just you?” Ilya asked in surprise. He had assumed this would be a family affair with DeLisle and McNamara at his heels.

“We have a problem," Shane said grimly. “I'm putting Wynwood on LTIR.”

“Wynwood?” Wynwood was their young back up goaltender, who had played most games this season, especially with the Metros veteran goaltender well past his prime and closing in on retirement at the end of the year.

“He was in a motorcycle accident last night,” Shane said solemnly. “He’s alive, thank god. But his leg is shattered in five places.”

Ilya was in shock. Wynwood's goaltending hadn’t been anything to write home about, but he was consistent and unflappable. To even have a shot at the playoffs they needed Wynwood. 

“Who knows about this?”

“Wynwood's family, me, and now you,” Shane said. “That’s why I wanted to talk.”

He went on. "If this had happened two weeks ago, there were trades on the table to get us through the season."

The season, and the potential post-season. Ilya caught the subtext. A team could survive on shoddy goaltending until April, but there was no way they were getting through playoffs without something more robust. 

“We have two options here, as I see it,” Shane continued. “We keep Fulton,” who was their veteran, who had first been pulled this fall after he had let eight goals in in two periods.

“Or we pull someone up.”

Ilya took that in. There was really only one candidate, if they were looking at their farm team.

“Astala.”

“Astala,” Shane agreed.

Their Finnish fourth round pick. Astala, who was twenty and had played a solid half season in the AHL.

“Only you can make that choice, Ilya,” he went on. "Whatever it is, you have my support.”

Ilya sighed. It didn’t feel like a choice. When staring down a decision like this, Ilya would always choose the higher risk, higher reward. “Can your office get me his cell?” 

A day later, Astala was in the net for their home game against Carolina.The tall lanky Finnish man looked terrified. Every move was jerky, and when he handled the puck it genuinely seemed like he had never touched one in his life. Ilya hadn’t expected anything close to perfection, but this was a problem. He wanted to be patient and give the boy a chance to acclimate, but they simply didn’t have the time.

That game had been a tough one. Ilya could tell the team was frustrated at the situation, which unfortunately looked more like being frustrated at their anxious rookie in the net. Ilya had pulled Harper and his alternate captains aside and told them to behave. He didn’t care if Astala was playing like a baby giraffe on skates, he needed the leaders of this team to trust this boy could step up when they needed it most.

Ilya had never really understood goaltending. It was a mysterious art form that felt more magic than muscle. But he had played enough professional hockey to know that they were doing Astala no favors if he could sense their doubt. 

Harper and his alternates nodded grimly at his words. They had worked so hard to get to this place, and now were staring down a wildcard and a potential shot at the playoffs for the first time since Shane Hollander himself had played on this team. It was hard to not find the timing of this whole thing cosmically unfair, but that was hockey.

Ilya felt every painful minute of that first game with Astala, and the day after he felt it even more as he sat with the loss. It was preventable. It was a loss that wouldn’t have happened with Wynwood in the net.

He and Shane had started meeting for drinks most nights. They were a similar level of stressed as the post-season approached, a stress level the average person could simply not function under but for whatever reason the two of them seemed to welcome like a long lost friend.

Sipping his pint, Ilya beckoned Shane over to an empty spot at their preferred bar near the office. “How’s Astala?” That had been the first question out of Shane's mouth every time he had seen Ilya as March inched along.

“Not great,” Ilya answered truthfully. “He played better yesterday though.”

Shane nodded in agreement. Astala had, letting in only a single goal in their game against Philadelphia. That team was decent and aggressive, offering a proper stress test for the Metros.

“Day by day,” Ilya said, taking another sip.

“And Harper?”

Shane was funny about Harper. It felt almost ignorant to state the obvious, that obviously there were similarities between him and his star center. Of course, Shane wasn’t aware of how deep the similarities ran.

“Good,” Ilya said, shrugging. The truth was, Harper was playing fine. He had lost some steam since the Classic for reasons that were a mystery to Ilya, though he noticed Bartek hadn’t been much better.

“We pay him too much to be just good,” Shane said matter-of-factly.

“Jesus Christ, Hollander,” Ilya muttered. “If you keep sounding like that they may just make you Commissioner."

Crowell hadn't been Commissioner in years. Ilya actually hadn't been sure if he was alive until Shane's revelations had led to some online searching and the discovery that the man had long since retired and was living out his days in whatever circle of Hell he called a nursing home. Still, it was a cruel joke for Ilya to make, especially with all they had shared with one another over the last few months.

Shane frowned at Ilya's words.

“Harper is an excellent player, just like you were,” Ilya continued, ignoring him. “He is allowed to have his off days. I am not worried, and you shouldn't be either.”

Shane continued to frown in thought. Ilya sighed. And people thought he was the uncompromising asshole.

Days later, the Metros were playing Boston at home. This was a daunting match up, even with their miraculous win earlier in the season. Astala played his best game yet, but it wasn’t enough to secure the win they so desperately needed. With that loss, they had now dropped to fifth, handing over their potential wild card should they not be able to scramble back up the standings.

Shane had asked to get a drink after that loss, but Ilya had made up some excuse and gone to Allain’s instead. A month or so ago, he had apologized for how he had acted after the holiday party. Allain had taken it in stride.

“You have a lot to figure out, Ilya,” he said. “You're not exactly boyfriend material right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

Friendship, to Allain, thankfully still meant occasionally sleeping with each other. Ilya appreciated that this thing with Shane was now somewhat out in the open, that he didn’t have to dance around the source of his problems with Allain, even if he had hardly figured out the remedy.

When he got there, Ilya made quick work of Allain's pants. He was on his knees in an instant, the man’s cock in his mouth. Allain's head rolled back as he ran his hand through Ilya's curls and tightened his grip. Ilya stayed like that for minutes, letting this man choke him and take his pleasure.

It felt good to give someone something. Ilya had always been dominant in a natural and casual way. That didn’t necessarily mean topping, though with Shane it had always looked like that. More than anything, it was an obsession with making other people feel good. With taking care of others to the best of his abilities, which in this case, looked like taking Allain until the other man was speaking in tongues.

When he did finally come, Ilya swallowed every drop and pulled back, licking his lips.

“Fuck,” Allain mumbled. “I need to sit down.” Then, “can I get you something?”

“Do you have vodka?”

Allain nodded. “I think I have something you’ll like,” he said as he wandered towards the kitchen.

Ilya got up from his place on the hallway floor. They hadn’t even made it past the foyer, he realized with a laugh. He felt like a teenager. Turning into the living room, he took his usual spot in the corner of the sofa.

The other man was back a moment later, handing him a glass and a bottle. Ilya inspected the label before nodding with approval and pouring.

“How are things going with the new goalie?” Allain asked, running a hand through his dark brown hair.

It was a funny question since the Metros had lost spectacularly to Boston that very night. Ilya felt a wave of fondness for this man beside him, who cared so little about the thing that animated his life, even as he still found it in himself to care about Ilya.

“Astala,” Ilya groaned. “I’m going to go crazy if we talk about this man.”

Allain laughed. “Fine, we won’t talk about hockey. Whatever will we do?”

Ilya just looked at him and smiled.

Then, “how’s Shane?”

Allain did this sometimes, tried to bring up Shane to see what he might get out of Ilya.

Ilya shrugged. “Fine.”

He had told Allain about their Christmas conversation. Not the details, but the general scope and shape of it. And he had kept the man updated as his and Shane’s dynamic had improved month after month.

Allain looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“There’s nothing to report, Allain,” Ilya said. “I don’t know what you think I’m going to say.”

Allain took a sip of his wine. “I’m just here if there was. Something to report, that is. But you know that.”

Ilya nodded. He did know that. He had woken up one day recently only to realize he had friends. Real flesh and blood friends. Ben and his crew, Allain and his bizarre dinner party set, and Ahmanson and Zaborin, and, of course, Svetlana, who he had been talking to regularly since moving to Montreal.

It was like Allain could read his mind.

“Who does Shane hang out with?”

“I’m not really sure,” Ilya said with a shrug.

“You aren’t at all curious?” 

“Not really, no,” Ilya said, and it was the truth. He was so used to Shane being a monk-like figure in the league that he hadn’t thought much about what his isolated life might look like in middle-age.

There was that guy, Pike? What had happened to him? Beyond that, Ilya couldn’t remember who had taken up Shane’s time except for Rose Landry, who was well into a successful acting career.

“Does he have a partner?” 

“Allain, what’s it to you?” Ilya snapped, a little more harshly than he had meant.

“I’m just curious, and it’s a little weird you aren’t, if I’m being honest.”

Ilya frowned. “How so?”

“Well, for one, he’s your ex-boyfriend.”

“We were together almost two decades ago,” Ilya replied wearily.

Allain kept pressing onward. “Well, I did some research so you wouldn’t have to.”

If Ilya had been less grumpy about this interrogation he might have appreciated how sweet that was, in a way.

“What?” Allain retorted. “I’m on academic. It’s what we do.”

Ilya just took a sip of his drink. “And?”

“There's no online evidence of any relationship. Ever, really.”

Allain continued. “Obviously, there’s plenty about him coming out. The New York Times profile was well done.”

“Wonderful. Maybe I’ll take a look,” Ilya responded dryly.

“You should,” Allain said with complete sincerity. “It’s actually very beautiful, Ilya. He even mentions you.”

“What?”

He had no clue this profile existed, let alone that he was name-checked in it.

“Yes,” Allain said. “It came out about the time he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He mentioned that you attended the ceremony and that the support of players like you meant a lot.”

“Players like me?” Ilya said in shock. “Players like me?”

He continued. “I’m gay, for Christ’s sake.”

Allain raised an eyebrow.

“Or bisexual, whatever," Ilya corrected. "I like men. I fucked him for years.” Allain covered his mouth with his hand to stifle a laugh. “And here he is talking about me like I am some well-meaning ally."

“Ilya, I think you’re taking this the wrong way,” Allain corrected. “He didn’t say that. Just that he was happy you came. That it meant a lot.”

“It better have,” Ilya huffed. “Since I debated not going many, many times.”

He continued. “The only reason I went was because not going felt like it might restart that horrible fucking rivalry.”

Allain just shrugged. “I thought it was interesting that in every profile or interview I could find on the man since retirement he found a way to bring you up.”

He continued. “Your rivalry, the work you were doing for youth hockey.”

That last one was surprising since Ilya had no clue that Shane had been paying close attention to that.

Allain leveled a knowing look at Ilya. “The only man he ever brought up in any capacity was you, Ilya.”

Ilya poured himself another shot and downed it. “Thanks for sharing that, Allain,” he said sarcastically. “What a fun fact.”

“You’re hopeless,” the other man sighed. "Come here." And the man downed his wine before taking his glasses off and climbing on top of Ilya with a wicked grin.

As they approached the end of March, Astala had a shut out. Then, a week later, another. Shane called Ilya after the second one. Ilya had barely left the ice when he got the call.

“I know,” he said with a grin, clutching the phone tightly to his ear amid the roar of the arena. “Maybe we have a chance after all.”

“With you, we always have a chance,” Shane stated as if it were a simple fact.

With the tide appearing to turn in the nick of time, drinks with Shane grew even more frequent. Now, they occasionally met at Ilya’s apartment or Shane’s home. Shane seemed to prefer the apartment, for some reason, often suggesting that he’d be happy to come over as their work days came to an end.

That was how he found Shane this evening, curled up on the sofa with a Metros hoodie on. He looked about a decade younger in that get up, which did something uncomfortable to Ilya's insides. The man was watching a tight game between Buffalo and Pittsburgh that had important bearing on their division. He seem utterly focused, except for a hand that was massaging his temple absentmindedly.

Ilya handed him his customary can of ginger ale, a beverage that had now found its way into his fridge for some reason or other.

“How’s Allain?” Shane asked, his eyes remaining fixed on the screen.

Ilya did a double take. “Fine,” he said slowly. Then, “why?”

Shane shrugged. “I liked him.”

“Well, he’s single…” Ilya trailed off suggestively, for reasons that were beyond him.

The other man looked at him. “You aren’t together?”

“What?” Ilya said in surprise. “No, we never really were. Not since December.”

Shane quietly took that piece of information in. “I thought—” He stopped himself. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Ilya shrugged. “We are friends.”

He left out the part where they did occasionally have sex, though he was sorely tempted to know what reaction that might get out of Hollander. Maybe it was the drink in his hand, or the hot streak Astala had been on, but Ilya felt emboldened.

“What about you?”

“What about me,” Shane repeated back slowly.

“Are you seeing someone?”

Shane looked at Ilya like he was speaking in a foreign language. Then, “no, Ilya. I’m not.”

“Too bad.”

“Is it?”

Shane didn’t seem very worried. “I have a lot on my plate.”

Ilya nodded, since, after all, that was true. They both did.

“Who was the last person you dated?” Ilya asked without thinking.

He could feel this starting to move towards inquisition and away from polite conversation, but he couldn’t help himself. Allain’s line of thinking had unlocked some part of Ilya that hadn’t thought to ask these questions. Now they were all he could think of.

Shane looked at him stiffly. “I’m not much of a dater.”

“So you are a whore?” Ilya asked, laughing through his hands.

Shane frowned. “Stop teasing me.”

“I am not, Shane. I swear. It’s just—” he trailed off, trying to pick the right words. “You could obviously have anyone you wanted.” Then, “so what is the problem?”

“I’m picky, I guess,” Shane replied after a moment.

“Tell me what you like. Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t need your help,” Shane snapped back before Ilya had barely gotten the suggestion out.

He flinched. “Fine. It was just an offer.”

Shane paused and took a breath. “How many people have you dated?”

The implication was obvious to Ilya. Dated since him. Ilya wracked his brain. He had gone on plenty of dates, even had dynamics like the one with Allain, though granted with women.

“There was a woman in Ottawa I saw for a couple years.”

“When?” Shane asked stonily.

“Around my retirement. It was never very serious.”

Shane nodded.

“Men were harder,” Ilya said, continuing on. “Harder to know what to do with.”

He wasn’t sure why he was telling Shane this.

“And after your retirement?”

“Saratoga was small,” Ilya said. “And I was very focused on building the program. I guess you could say I had a lot on my plate.”

It was a familiar refrain. They looked at each other. Neither had done much with what life had given them, had they?

“Were you—” Shane began, stopping himself. He tried again. “In Saratoga, were you lonely?”

Ilya thought about that. If someone had asked him that outright he probably would have said no until around the time he had accepted Shane's job offer. Now, with all of that hindsight, the answer might be something entirely more complicated.

“In a way, maybe,” Ilya began. “More sad than lonely, I think. Though maybe that is a silly distinction.”

Shane nodded, like somehow he understood. “You accomplished a lot there.”

Ilya smiled. “I think so. I was happy for a lot of it. I loved coaching kids.”

“Tell me about that,” Shane said, putting his drink down on a side table and reclining fully on the sofa.

“It was amazing,” Ilya said. “They were so cute and infuriating. They would have loved you.”

“Why?” Shane said with a laugh, pulling a blanket over himself as if he were perfectly at home.

“Because everyone does,” Ilya said matter-of-factly.

“Everyone?”

Shane peered carefully at Ilya, almost like he couldn’t meet his eyes.

Ilya frowned. “Yes, everyone loves you, Hollander."

Shane shuffled up to sitting and his eyes properly found Ilya’s. “Not everyone loves me," Shane said slowly.

Ilya frowned again. What was this guy’s deal? Of course, everyone did. He was the least controversial professional athlete on earth. He was a national hero.

“Shane, I don’t know what—”

“You don’t love me, for one."

Ilya froze.

The man continued. “I was pretty sure you hated me those first few months.”

“I did."

“Thanks,” Shane replied wearily.

“No, I did love you,” Ilya corrected, as if that wasn’t somehow clear. 

Shane looked at Ilya. They were sharing a sofa, and had been doing a version of this for months. If someone had asked Ilya a year ago if the future might bring such a thing he would have laughed or punched that person in the face.

Shane took a breath. He looked like he was walking towards his execution.

Then, “I think I’ve loved you my entire life." He said it so quickly that it took Ilya a second to register what he had even said.

“Shane—”

“I don’t need you to say anything back, Ilya. In fact, please don’t.”

He went on. “It never went away. I thought it would, after what I did and how much you hated me for it.”

In a way, Ilya wondered if he had known since the minute Shane had offered him the job of head coach. What he was surprised by was that Shane had actually said it. Unprompted, and about as casually as one could.

“It’s not the same, obviously,” Shane went on. “We aren’t kids anymore. But it’s still there. It's different, but just as strong." He took a breath. “I tried to find that feeling in other people. With other people. But it was impossible.”

“You were right. I wasn’t lonely," he continued. "Lonely for you, maybe. I was mostly just sad that I couldn’t have what I wanted.”

Ilya took a breath himself. It killed him how much he understood what Shane meant. Couldn’t either of them have an original experience, something not extrinsically tied to the other? Shane looked tired more than anything. Past fear, past sadness.

“What are you going to do about it?” Ilya asked.

And Shane looked at him in surprise. “What I’ve always done,” he said with a sad laugh. “Do nothing and try to get your attention.”

“That is not very hard,” Ilya found himself saying, because that was the truth after all.

“Then I realized that getting your attention, giving you this job, it wasn’t enough. Trying to give you a shot at the Cup I’d taken from you.”

Ilya frowned at that last part. Shane went on. “I just wanted to give you everything I could. To make up for all of it.”

“Shane,” Ilya began. “You did not have to give me this job to have a conversation with me.”

Shane raised an eyebrow suspiciously. Ilya thought about what would have happened if Shane had called him out of the blue and how quickly he would have ignored that call.

“Ok, maybe you did," he corrected.

Then Ilya thought of Harper and Bartek. “I did something recently that surprised me."

He went on. "I told the truth to someone without thinking twice.”

"About us?"

Ilya just nodded. Shane looked at him. He appeared surprisingly calm.

“And how did that feel?”

“It felt fucking amazing.” Ilya remembered the awe on the two men's faces at him speaking about Shane so plainly. It was the most potent drug he had ever taken. 

Shane looked at him a little wildly.

“I’m in love with you, Ilya.”

He held a hand out, touching Ilya’s chest like he was both reaching for him and holding him back. “I have never wanted anyone like I want you, and I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I have to say it.”

“We spent years never saying a single true thing to each other," he added. "Not lies either, just words that meant nothing.”

Shane twisted his hands together. “That was the worst part. Knowing I could have said it a thousand times and didn’t.”

Ilya gaped at him. These were words that Ilya had spent years waiting to hear, hoping that he might. And here those words were, at his doorstep, and he had no clue what to do with him. After all, Shane saying them didn’t change the reality of what he had done. Loving Ilya had not changed Shane's choices.

“Ilya, please—”

Without thinking, Ilya covered the man’s mouth with his hand. It was oddly intimate, the feel of his lips against his palm. He helplessly ran a finger along Shane's lips.

Then he was on him. His body shook as he and Shane made contact and other man pulled him closer, their solid bodies against one another as their lips met. Shane ran his hands through his hair as he pulled back for a breath. Then he consumed him.

Ilya was on fire. He couldn’t believe they were kissing. After all of these years, it was surreal. He was dreaming, he was sure of it.

Shane felt so impossibly familiar and yet different in a way that made Ilya want to map out every inch of them. He tipped the man back onto the sofa and straddled him, devouring Shane’s open mouth like they were teenagers. He cupped his cheek in his hand and he could hear I love you coming from the other man like a mantra.

Ilya wanted to bathe in those words. He wanted to suffocate in them. The other man planted kiss after kiss on his face. His temples, his cheeks, like he was checking for each familiar part.

“I could do this forever,” Shane mumbled. 

“I am glad you told the truth, but I think you should leave.”

Shane looked surprised and then understanding lit his eyes.

He pulled back. “It’s not enough, is it?"

“It is not, no. I love you,” Ilya said. “But it is not enough.”

Shane frantically rushing forward, kissing him again, and Ilya let him. It felt incredible, so incredible that any person less hurt than he had been would have folded then and there.

“Shane, you should go.”

The man was panting. He looked frantic, wild even. In that moment, Ilya was struck by how unpredictable he could be. It was Shane, after all, who had first gotten down on his knees when they were teenagers.

“I’m sorry I did that,” Shane said, stumbling off the sofa. “It was unprofessional, it was—”

“It is fine, Shane. It is ok. Go home.”

Shane looked panicked.

“I love you. Go home.”

The man nodded, and he left.

Chapter 11: The Dragon's Lair

Chapter Notes

Take Care - Beach House

The first two weeks of April blurred together as the Metros rocketed towards the post-season. Teams far more experienced than Montreal somehow fell at their hands.

First New York, then Detroit, and Washington. The city was alive in a way Ilya had never seen. It hummed with the energy of possibility, and Metros flags waved from every street corner and passing vehicle. By this point, it felt like Ilya hadn’t paid for a drink in weeks, which was convenient since Hollander was certainly no longer footing his bar tab.

The two of them were fine. They continued to talk about their team at all hours of the day, but hadn’t discussed what had happened in the Plateau apartment. That seemed to suit Shane just fine, who was focused on the post-season like it was the only thing standing between him and salvation.

When it came to hockey, the cards always fell in poetic ways. That was part of what grabbed the attention of millions of fans. Anything could happen in a season with eighty-something games and twenty players on the ice a team. This season was no different. For here they were staring down a final game that would decide if the Metros secured the Atlantic wildcard, and that game was against Ottawa.

The Centaurs had already made it to the playoffs, but Montreal had to win this game to have a shot at facing them in the post-season.

Thankfully Astala was in a more secure position, though his performance was far from certain. But even with all of that, Ilya couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, that there was some problem in need of solving for them to have a shot at a playoff run. Not an individual issue, perhaps, since Ilya was confident in his players. More like some larger chemical one. Sometimes it felt like each member of his team was playing a different game.

Pavlovski moving to the second had helped their chemistry. He and Lassiter were developing something special. He was massive, and once he had the puck it was near impossible to wrangle it from him. Lassiter, on the other hand, was tiny, at least for a professional hockey player, and quick. What one had in spades, they lent to the other with great result.

Bartek was a problem. Not so much in performance, but in attitude. Ilya couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was wrong. He had tried to have one-on-one conversations with the man, but most of those ended in a string of grumbles, like he was talking to a sullen teenager, which in a way he was. Ilya finally reached his limit after their particularly hard-fought victory against Washington and summoned the winger to his office the following day.

Bartek plopped down in the chair in front of him as if he would prefer to be any place but there.

“Something is wrong,” Ilya said matter-of-factly, as he looked away from his computer screen.

The other man frowned. “I don’t know what—”

“I captained a team for close to two decades,” Ilya interrupted. “Do not insult me.”

“I’ve seen it all,” he went on. “Depression, addiction, divorces, deaths in the family…homesickness,” and he counted issues on his fingers as he went.

“I’m not a child,” Bartek grimaced.

“I don’t think you are, Lukas.”Then he paused. “Well, sometimes I do. But in ways I appreciate, in ways that remind me of how I was at your age."

Bartek took that in. Ilya was slightly annoyed that the other man wasn’t more outwardly appreciative of Ilya comparing him to one of the greatest offensive players this league had ever seen.

“So, tell me, if it’s not homesickness, what is it?” He lowered his voice. “Trouble in paradise?”

Bartek scowled. “Look, I’m happy you’re…” he trailed off, “whatever you are. Grateful, even,” he continued. “But just because you like men doesn’t mean you need to give me advice about dating one. In fact, from what I've heard, you definitely do not.”

Ilya scowled back, muttering something in Russian that roughly translated to "ungrateful little shit" as he crossed his arms. “Your dating life becomes my problem when your boyfriend is our captain.”

Ilya dug in. “So what is it? Can’t decide who does the laundry?”

Bartek looked like he was going to continue putting up a fight, until a pained expression flashed across his face. He paused, taking a breath. “I think we should tell the team. Alex does not, obviously.”

“I see,” Ilya said, stretching back into his chair.

“I thought you were going to give me advice or something. So, give it.”

“You know what I think,” Ilya said, leveling him with a stare. “But I can’t make you or Harper do anything you don’t want to.”

He went on. “What do you think it would take to make him comfortable?”

“I don’t know,” Bartek said, scratching his head. “Something ridiculous. Winning a Stanley Cup, probably.”

Ilya laughed. “Amazing. Well, you’re about to have a shot at one of those if we can beat Ottawa.”

Bartek just shook his head. “Are you telling me I should win a Cup so that my boyfriend might actually hold my hand in public?”

“No, you said that, not me,” Ilya responded with a grin. “But it wouldn’t hurt, I think.”

Bartek sighed. “I love playing with him. It’s the most powerful feeling on earth. But I wish this was easier.” Ilya looked at him and frowned in thought.

Two days later, Ilya and Shane were in Ottawa. Ilya tried not to think about how cosmically bizarre this was, to enter Ottawa’s city limits with Shane Hollander. Hollander, not as an adversary or rival, but on his side of the aisle.

The team had been low energy as they made it to the hotel ahead of the game. Ilya had gotten them ice time that morning so they could be extra limber ahead of the make-or-break match up that night.

As the team whizzed around the local rink a few hours later, loosening their season-worn muscles, Ilya took stock. No matter the outcome, they had played a season to be proud of. Not that that meant anything to Hollander, whose only currency was Cups. But to Ilya, it was something.

The Metros had been the laughing stock of the league for years. A team with so much history, so much pride, yet too much pressure and too many expectations. In that way, Hollander was a curse of sorts, but he was swiftly becoming their solution once more.

Ilya was relieved that, at this point, he and Shane had few secrets left to hide. Even the last year of their relationship, something they had talked little about, had come into clearer focus with all that had been revealed. Shane doing his best to juggle the pressures of his team and illegible romance, all while Ilya becoming more depressed and disappointed in Ottawa.

Ottawa had been tough for him. No friends and very few reasons to call it home. The one thing he had was proximity to Hollander, and during that year Shane seemed to do all he could to avoid visiting. Probably because being in Ottawa with Ilya steered Shane closer and closer to the cliff, or the fork in the road, the decision about what he might take from this life.

Love, glory, but seemingly never both. Looking back, Ilya was so sure that he told Shane he loved him. That he had communicated how much he wanted to be with him, and that he’d sacrifice anything for it.

But the more he thought about it now, the more he realized that those thoughts had remained in his head. He had said versions of them out loud, but never anything close to what he and Shane had said to each other over the last few months.

Their relationship had been one long string of subtext. It wasn’t their fault, at least not at first. Being gay and bi men, being men like that who were professional athletes, subtext was their native tongue. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to learn fluency in any other language until it was too late.

Back on the ice, a guttural sound broke Ilya from his revery. Startled, he searched for its source. There in front of him lay a body curled in on itself in pain.

It was Mikkelsen, and he was writhing. Around him, his team looked terrified and helpless. Ilya yelled for one of their trainers. It took about five minutes to get Mikkelsen safely off the ice, and another five for Ilya to properly realize how screwed they were. It was an MCL tear and Mikkelsen was the definition of irreplaceable. He made up a critical part of their productive top line.

Ilya was so overwhelmed by what this might mean that he could barely entertain a solution. This season had been a nice experiment, but they were finished. It was Ahmanson who snapped him out his state. Zaborin and Moreau hovered next to her, cautiously inspecting their head coach.

“Coach,” she said. “We have a few hours if we’re lucky.”

They had alternates, that wasn’t necessarily the problem. And frankly Ottawa and Montreal were close enough geographically that they could easily get a scratched player or farm team replacement over in time. But could that person jive with this team? Could they help deliver the only outcome they needed to survive, which was winning?

Moreau began moaning about how horrible their luck was. He was talking as if they could kiss their season goodbye. Ilya had never been someone to give up easily. That was his style of play, always finding opportunities where others couldn't see them, and in coaching he was no different.

He scanned the panicked players huddled on the ice. There was Harper, who centered Mikkelsen, looking like he was about to be ill. Bartek skated to the man’s side and cautiously placed a gloved hand on his back. 

Looking back, it was something about watching the two men seek comfort in each other that made it all click. Ilya looked to Ahmanson, to Zaborin, to Moreau. He felt stupid. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner, Mikkelsen or not.

“Bartek,” he said abruptly, hopping the boards and walking onto the ice.

The winger sailed over. “Yes, coach?”

“Think you two can make sense of it?”

Bartek, Harper, and the rest of the team looked over at Ilya in confusion.

“Your line,” Ilya said patiently. “Can Harper center you?”

Harper’s eyes widened at that. Bartek looked at his boyfriend and teammate, and something passed between the two of them.

His captain nodded.

“Yeah, I can center him.”

“Keller, you’re on the second. Bartek, get to work.”

A few hours later they were in Ottawa’s arena surrounded by a sea of screaming enemies. They were late into the second, and Harper and Bartek were something beautiful on the ice. The Metros had scored four times, and every single goal had come from their line.

The on-ice chemistry was electric, like you could blindfold one of them and they'd know to within an inch where the other was. No pass went incomplete. Shots that had no business going in seemed to find their way to the back of the net. After each goal, Bartek leaped on Harper, and the other man looked joyful in a way that Ilya had never seen. In a way that made him feel like he was bad at his job, like he had never really given his captain what he needed.

Even with this extraordinary alliance, the outcome remained far from certain. The third period came and went without a goal for either team, on their side thanks in part to Astala holding the line and some expert defensive work from Marin and Leroux.

Then, with a minute left on the clock, Bartek did the unthinkable.

He scored.

It was a subtle, beautiful thing. Skirting around a defenseman and looking for open space only to find Harper waiting there unbidden to receive his pass and feed it back as he assaulted the net. It wasn’t some fancy trick shot. It was clean hockey executed at the highest level. Two athletes reading each other’s tells with a level of fluency that was shocking to anyone but Ilya.

All Ilya could think about as the team swarmed the ice was Tampa. What it had felt like to score with Hollander, a feeling so powerful it had been enough to make him pick up and move to Ottawa then and there without even consulting the man. This feeling, oh he knew it, and it was a heady drug. Harper and Bartek wore grins a mile wide as their team dog-piled them.

A few minutes later, he glimpsed Shane from his perch. The man was silent and still, like he was surveying some vast empire and taking stock of it. He caught Ilya’s eyes, and for a moment he swore understanding passed between them.

Ilya tipped his head. He had delivered on the first part of the deal. He had delivered Hollander a playoff team.

Back in Montreal, the city was on fire. It was a bacchanal. The bus stopped at their hometown arena so that the Metros could soak up the extraordinary thing they had just accomplished. Outside, drunken masses were chanting and dancing. They greeted their return like the team were heroes coming home from a war, even if ten years late. When Ilya appeared from the bus, the crowd howled. Amid the rush of noise, he could hear it.

Ilya.

He had always been Rozanov to this city. When had he become Ilya? Then Shane appeared behind him and the crowd really lost it. They screamed, and screamed, and Hollander raised a hand to wave and drink from the fountain of their adoration. He soaked it up like a familiar balm.

Watching him like that, Ilya could almost understand why Shane hadn’t been able to give it up. Whatever this was, it was glory. Words from an ancient poem, simple and powerful in their brilliance. Shane turned and his gaze met Ilya’s. He reached out a hand towards him and without thinking he grasped it. Then Shane pulled him towards the crowd, raising their entwined fingers in the air for all to see.

The response was deafening. What either brought out of this crowd individually, together was something it had never seen. Shane just looked at Ilya and smiled. Ilya was close enough to see his freckles, his frown lines. The private parts of this man that existed underneath the divinity.

He would always love him, of that he was sure. Even with all of that history, he would always love him. This victory, it didn’t solve their problems. But it lit him up inside. Finally, he and Shane had a kingdom of their own.

Now it was time to get to work defending it. After that night, the comedown had been hard. Ilya was in an adrenaline hole he couldn’t climb out of. There was so much to do in advance of their series against Boston, and he could feel the panic hovering over him like a knife above his shoulder.

Then, late one evening, two days out from their first game in Boston, Ilya received a text.

“I need you.”

Ilya thought about asking questions about what that meant, of which he had many, but he ultimately decided against it. He and Shane had done so much talking. Maybe he needed to just show up.

As he pulled up at the Outremont mansion, he wondered if he should have texted back. Maybe Shane wouldn’t even be home, or that text had actually been a request to meet him at the office. But the hour was late, and something in Ilya’s gut told him this was the right move. He knocked on the door and waited.

Nothing, no foot steps. But he could tell the lights were on inside, and so he waited and tried again. Minutes passed by, and still nothing. Finally he took a breath and tried the door.

It opened with a pop, swinging slowly from its massive hinges. Stepping in, he moved through the foyer and towards the living room. A bizarre and overwhelming sight lay before him. 

It was a mountain of stuff, towering towards the heavens. And there, at its center, sat Shane Hollander, curled up like a child in a man’s body. It took Ilya a moment to realize what he was looking at. To register what it all meant.

He noticed the jerseys first.

Jersey after jersey.

In the blue, white, and red of Montreal. In the red, white, and black of Canada. The unique designs of two decades worth of All Stars teams and Worlds tournaments. It was enough jerseys to cloth an army.

Then sticks in twisted heaps. Poking out from every direction like piles of swords. Signed from every season the man had played. Genuine collector’s item after collector’s item.

Then, stacks and stacks of pucks, commemorating this game or that, this goal or that. Pucks with tape and sharpie signatures. All had clearly felt special and worthy of note at the time, but in their totality now disappeared into a uniform mass of black rubber.

And on top of all of that, framed pictures, clippings, flags, and posters. A career’s worth of detritus haphazardly balanced for Ilya to see.

And at Shane’s feet, the plaques commemorating his league awards. Stacks of them in silver and gold. The Olympic medals glinting like treasure in a dragon’s lair.

And in Shane’s palm, rings.

Four of them.

One for each Cup.

“Shane,” Ilya said, finally finding his voice.

“Are you ok?” he asked, taking what was in front of him with horror.

Shane was shaking.

“I don’t want them,” he said, brandishing the rings. “Take them, please.”

Ilya shook his head. “I can’t do that, Shane. They’re yours. You earned them.”

The man shuddered in pain. “I don’t want them,” he repeated. “I wish I’d never asked for them.”

“You didn’t ask for them,” Ilya corrected. “You fought for them."

"You won them,” he added quietly a moment later.

Shane’s eyes welled with tears. “No one told me what they’d cost.”

Ilya approached and sat in front of him on his hands and knees. “Look at me, Shane,” he said. “You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

The man just shook his head, looking at the ground.

“I am proud of what you’ve accomplished. The man I loved,” Ilya began before trailing off, starting again, “the man I love, he wins like it is breathing. He is the closest thing to a hero.”

“How can you say that?” Shane moaned, looking at the metal in his hands. “I’m a coward. Every choice I’ve made was worse than the last one. Take them, Ilya,” he begged, holding out the treasure once more. “Payment for all those horrible choices, for what I couldn’t give you.”

He went on. “Don’t you get it?” He beckoned at the trove around him. “I want it out of my sight.” Shane looked like he was suffocating. “When we stood in front of that crowd, all I could think about was your hand in mine. That I had been waiting for that feeling for twenty years. That I would give up anything for it.”

Ilya looked at Shane, and he was overwhelmed with the feeling that he didn’t recognize him. It was like being struck by lightning, the realization. He didn’t recognize him, because he had changed, but he loved him all the same. Shane’s eyes were haunted, the objects surrounding him suddenly more prison than life’s purpose. Being extraordinary was never without its costs. Shane, in this moment, wanted out of that pact, of that Ilya was certain.

He looked at him again. ”Shane,” he started, curling the other man’s fingers over the rings in his hand. “I’m so proud of you. Not for this, but for who you’ve become.”

“You are so brave,” he went on. “When did that happen?”

Shane shook his head wordlessly, tears tracking down his face.

Ilya ignored his response. “There is no one who isn’t in awe of you.”

Then he changed course. “I am in awe of you, Shane. And I am so, so proud.” He gathered Shane in his arms and hugged him tightly.

Shane leaned into him and accepted the comfort, his body wracking with sobs. He looked up at Ilya like a child in his mother’s arms and Ilya leaned in, planting a lingering kiss on his cheek.

Then Ilya said it, his marching orders. He hadn’t realized what he needed until the words came out of his mouth. It was a hunger to win, as he always was, but it was more than that. To claim the prize he had been promised, to know what it felt like to do so with the man beside him. 

“I want our Cup.”

At that, Shane looked blank.  He gazed into the distance in some private conversation with himself. Ilya could see so many emotions run through his body like spirits possessing him, though he couldn’t tell which emotions were which.Except for resoluteness. That one seemingly remained at the end of it all.

Shane nodded. He buried his face into him, and breathed Ilya in. 

Chapter 12: Wake Up

Chapter Notes

Wake Up - Arcade Fire

Even deep into a brutal series against Boston, Ilya somehow had a spring in his step. The Atlantic rivals had taken turns trading overtime wins, but wins were wins, and the Metros had just secured game five, giving them the much-needed advantage going into their next match up.

Ilya wasn’t interested in assigning credit until they made it through the series in one piece, but it was obvious to anyone with an ounce of hockey knowledge that Astala was on a generational run. He couldn’t think of a rookie goaltender who had ever performed so dominantly in a playoff series. Shane, ever the know-it-all, had smugly informed him that it hadn’t happened since at least the nineteen seventies.

Even with Astala on such a run, one would have never known it by how the man acted. He was a strange, reclusive creature, as most goalies were. It was necessary for a position where failures got far more attention than simply doing the job. That was especially true in Montreal, a city that had never been very good at loving its goaltenders, thanks in part to expectations so massive they could smother the average person alive.

But, for whatever reason, Astala wasn’t average. He carried the weight of the city on his back with ease, even going so far as to achieve a shut out their last game, a career-defining accomplishment for any goaltender in the post-season, whether rookie or vet. When the press swarmed Astala afterwards, the Finnish man had just mumbled something about everyone doing their best and wandered away.

The Metros mostly left their netminder alone. Who were they to tease a man who had helped secure them playoff win after playoff win?

With three of Montreal’s games in Boston, Ilya hadn’t spent much time with Shane over the last two weeks. What time they did have looked like Shane falling asleep on Ilya’s sofa as they watched Western Conference games late into the night. Ilya had developed a routine of leaving the sleeping man alone, since he didn’t have it in him to wake him.

The first time it had happened, Ilya had turned off the living room lamp and drifted off to sleep on his end of the sofa, his feet barely grazing Shane’s. When he woke up, it was in the earliest hours of the morning to the steady sound of the other man’s breathing.

He’d thought about pulling him onto his end of the sofa and into his arms, but had stopped himself. Once he did something like that, there was no going back. If he were to do that, Shane would invade his mind to a degree he wasn’t ready for, not when they were fighting for their lives every other night on the ice. So he had fallen asleep on his end, and every other night the two men were both in Montreal.

In their hometown arena, game six ended up being just as tight as the ones before it.

Throughout the series, Harper and Bartek had been leading the Metros like two wildly in synch co-consuls. If teammates found their united front bizarre, they didn’t mention it. Instead, they fell in line like good little soldiers. That level of order amidst the chaos was critical when six ended in a painful loss and a forced game seven.

A few of Ilya’s players were beating themselves up over sloppy errors that had cost them that particular victory. Ilya, on the other hand, wasn’t so bothered. He had never thought this series would be anything but a battle to the bitter end and had been fortifying the team for that reality from the very beginning. They would be tired. They would have to dig deep. There had never been another way.

Thankfully Bartek and Harper’s happiness seemed to power this team like a battery, even under the darkest circumstances.

Ilya often felt like he was staring directly into the sun when he watched them. It didn’t matter if they were down a point and getting the living daylights beat out of them, these two men looked like there wasn’t a single thing on earth they’d rather be doing more than playing hockey together.

The team didn’t appear to notice the two-star system they were suddenly orbiting. Yet Shane miraculously did.

“Bartek and Harper are on fire,” he observed one night, as he pulled a blanket over himself and settled into Ilya’s sofa for another game on the screen.

Ilya just nodded and sipped his beer. He didn’t know why he felt so strongly that this wasn’t his secret to share with Shane, but he did. Perhaps because Ilya was their coach, but Shane was ultimately their boss. Not that Ilya thought anything he could say would jeopardize either man’s standing on this team. He simply wanted to reward them for trusting him, and so he nodded absent-mindedly along.

But Shane simply wouldn’t let it go.

“Who would’ve thought all we needed was those two on the same line,” he said a few minutes later.

Ilya continued to sip his beer.

Then, “what does Harper think?”

“Think of what?” Ilya asked, glancing at Shane. 

“Of playing with him. Has he said anything?”

“He knows he’s not going to stop centering him anytime soon, obviously,” Ilya said. There was no way Mikkelsen would be back for the post-season. Those two were stuck with each other for a long, long time, not that they seemed to mind.

Shane frowned in thought. A riddle like this could drive a man like Shane insane, a man who prized himself on being able to pick apart every piece of hockey to within an inch of its life to make sense of it.

“Sometimes the chemistry is right,” Ilya offered, hoping that would stop the discussion then and there.

Shane looked at Ilya. Then he slowly began to speak.

“The first few games, it was like deja vu. I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

Ilya held Shane’s gaze.

“Then I realized,” he continued.

He cocked his head. “They remind me of us.”

Ilya remained stock still.

Shane squinted at him. “Ilya, why do they remind me of us?”

Ilya was prepared to keep this secret, but he wasn’t going to lie to the other man's face. Not after the amount of half-truths they had spent their lives trading. He let out a breath.

“Maybe because they are.”

“Are what?”

“Are us,” Ilya offered. “In a way.”

Shane looked at Ilya blankly. Then, the tiniest kernel of something. It was odd to watch Shane march through each emotion in steady succession—confusion, suspicion, disbelief, shock, anxiety, awe, and then, finally, understanding.

“No,” Shane began. “That can’t be…” He trailed off, looking to Ilya for guidance.

Ilya nodded tightly, and let out a small smile. “Funny, right?”

“Not really,” Shane said, and he looked out of breath. “Not funny at all actually.”

He went on. “Are they ok?”

“What do you mean?” Ilya asked in surprise.

Shane repeated the question like he had stalled.

“Well, yes, I think so, Hollander,” Ilya laughed. “They are scoring a lot of goals.”

The man beside him looked like he had been hit over the head with a blunt object. “And you,” Shane continued. “You knew about this?”

Ilya nodded. “I ran into them. Wasn’t so hard to figure it out.”

Shane frowned.

“They are very sweet, actually,” Ilya continued. “Very in love.”

“I’m grateful for it,” he added. “Bartek is insufferable without him.”

“And they’re out?” Shane asked, massaging his temple.

“What? No.”

“I see,” Shane said. “But they want to be?”

“Bartek, yes,” he said. “Harper, not so much.”

Shane took that in. He nodded slowly. “I see.”

“Like father, like son,” Ilya said with a shrug, as if that somehow perfectly explained the situation.

“I am not anyone’s parent,” Shane shot back. “I sign that man’s checks.”

“Well, I love my son,” Ilya responded with a laugh. “An annoying Slovak, maybe, but he is very good at hockey.”

The next day, Ilya stopped by Metros HQ and there was Shane coming out of their preferred conference room with Harper at his back.

The two men looked up at Ilya in unison. Both wore guarded expressions on their faces, their similarities striking in that moment. Not necessarily in looks, since Harper was no doubt larger than Hollander, but in their body language and bearing.

“Ilya,” Shane said politely, placing a hand on his shoulder in greeting.

Harper openly stared at the two of them, like he was finally getting a look at them for the first time in broad daylight.

“Shane,” Ilya nodded back.

Then, “Harper, what are you doing here?”

“We were catching up,” Shane explained, nodding towards his captain, who was still awkwardly taking them in in silence. Ilya could laugh. Shane was a lot of things, but a friend and mentor to his players was not one of them. He was more a deity casting down decisions from on high.

“Harper, nice to see you,” Shane continued. “You’ll think about what I said?”

Their captain needed weakly and walked away.

“What did you say?” Ilya asked cautiously, once it was just the two of them.

Shane shrugged. “That’s between me and him.”

Ilya was happy Shane was taking an interest in Harper. He wasn’t about to argue with that.

Then, the Metros were back in Boston, a daunting proposition for a team that was staring down a make-or-break match up. Ilya had mistakenly thought this game would feel like the six before it, but it hit him how wrong he was when he entered the arena and saw an ocean’s worth of black and gold as far as the eye could see.

It had been a long, long time since he had played to seven and the feeling of doing it here of all places was a contact high unlike anything else on earth.

He felt like he could run a thousand miles, or dead lift a car. The air felt thick with anticipation, equal parts intoxicating and exhausting.

Ilya tried to remind himself that he would be proud no matter the outcome. But as he stared down this game, oh did he want to win it. A part of himself that he had kept caged for so long was snarling at the bars, waiting to be let out. Of course, he had racked up plenty of wins since his time in the league. The Storm had grown into a dominant team under his watch. But they hadn’t won like this, at the highest level for the world to see.

As the minutes ticked by until game time, he could feel that long-caged part of himself continue its snapping and howling, frenzied at the potential of a kill. It was a feeling so powerful it made Ilya want to put on skates. As if that would transform him into the version of himself who was in his twenties and winning Cups for this very city he had now been tasked with beating.

He knew Shane was somewhere in this arena, and the knowledge that he was there was the only thing that seemed to control his prey drive. As he always did, he stayed out of the locker room ahead of the game. The space belonged to his players, and they knew what they needed better than anyone.

But as the time approached to hit the ice, he finally walked in.

What he walked into was silence. Much like their homeopener, two semi-circles of blue, white and red with sticks in hand, awaiting his orders. Except the energy was different. Nervous, sure, but regimented and ready.

He took it all in. What alternate reality had he and Hollander stepped into when they had walked up that tunnel in Saratoga?

“Hockey is a funny thing,” he began, motioning to the men around him. “I won Boston her last two Cups. And here we are taking away her shot at the next one.”

A few of the men cracked small smiles before their faces took on grim expressions once more.

“No victory is guaranteed,” he continued. “You wake up every day with the hunger to win. You work hard. You skate your heart out, and you leave nothing behind.”

He looked at the young men around him, most of whom had never played a post-season game in their lives, let alone the six they had recently survived. “There is no such thing as an underdog. There is only the team who wants it more.”

His gaze ran the length of the room. “And I think we want it more.”

He corrected. “I know we want it more. You have all been working so, so hard for this. You have sacrificed so much for it.”

He paced as he continued. “Hockey is not a solitary sport, or a sport for stars.”

That got a few puzzled looks. “I know, funny coming from me. Coming from a team managed by Shane Hollander. But it’s not,” he dug in.

“Do you know how many minutes I played in the game that won Boston its last Cup?”

The room shook their heads.

“Nineteen,” Ilya responded. “Stars are nice. They sell jerseys,” he added. “But this is a team sport.”

He stopped his pacing, taking in the room in front of him. There were Harper and Bartek side-by-side in their stalls at its center. He met their eyes and he was surprised by what he felt. Not surprised by his love for them, which poured forth freely, but by the sheer scale and certainty of it.

“Yes, this is a team sport. And there is no question we have the best team.”

The room roared.

Sticks banged against one another. Ilya walked down the row, shaking his players fiercely as he went.

Harper stood up and pulled Bartek and Dimitrov with him, wrapping an arm around each wing. “There is no one I’d rather do this with,” he said, shooting a glance at his boyfriend. The other man grinned, planting a sloppy kiss on Harper’s cheek without a moment’s hesitation.

Ilya was so high on the energy in this room that by the time he registered that the moment had passed. Dimitrov, for one, didn’t seem startled by the gesture and knocked his helmeted head against Harper’s as the man grinned.

On the ice, each minute of hockey dragged out longer than the next. The play was physical and lightning fast, and with every resounding crunch against the boards, Ilya felt a spike of fear that one of his players would fall to the ground and not get back up.

But somehow the Metros held the line. Dimitrov scored, then Lassiter, then Marin. Boston was a well-oiled machine and set the pace with a goal two minutes in. By the third period, it was obvious this game would go into overtime again. Just as Ilya had made his peace with this going to seven, so too had he made his peace with it ending like this.

As the team panted in the locker room ahead of their overtime period, Ilya talked strategy. Once again, he was struck by how young they looked. What had they sacrificed to be here? Everything, probably. No one got to this level without placing the sport firmly in the center of their world. That had always been the unique brilliance of Ilya, his drive to win, his skill in doing it, and yet his casual relationship to hockey itself. This was a game, a beautiful game. A game these men loved so much. But it was a game.

“Having fun?” he asked with a grin.

His team laughed and panted, pulling desperately from their water bottles.

“I like what I’m seeing,” he continued, “but I want more.”

Then he turned to Harper and the forwards. “No more being responsible. Every opportunity, you take.”

Then to his defensemen. “You are glued to these men. You see them on the back of your eyelids when you sleep.”

Then he turned to their goaltender. He was a blue, white, and red sea monster in his pads. “And you. Don’t fuck it up, kid.”

The Finnish man nodded, his goalie’s mask pulled back to expose his serious but boyish face.

As overtime began, it felt like the entire arena was holding its breath as they waited for a mistake to be made or an opportunity to be created.

Then it happened.

A two minute minor. Blessedly, against Boston, and with Bartek, Harper, and Lassiter on the power play anything could happen.

They took the first minute trading the puck in the offensive zone. Then Harper took a shot from up top. The arena hushed as the puck grazed one of the posts and ricocheted off of it and into the possession of Boston’s star forward.

Fuck, Ilya thought. The man was off in an instant, heading towards the net with nothing but open ice between him and Astala. All Ilya seemed able to focus on was Astala’s eyes behind the cage of his mask. They were laser-focused on the Raiders forward as he approached the crease.

Then, the man took his shot. A well-placed one, too.

But not well-placed enough. Astala knocked it down, diving on the puck as the arena groaned.

Ilya felt light-headed. He felt like he could cry. Without even celebrating the extraordinary thing he had just done, Astala efficiently shot the puck to Harper at center ice and their power play continued.

At this point, they had ten precious seconds left and Harper was doing what he could to make the most of it. In one last attempt, he drove towards the net and faked a shot before slyly passing through the channel to Bartek.

His winger made contact with the puck. On pure instinct, Bartek hurled it into the net with every last ounce of his strength.

Rubber hit the bar, and once again Ilya’s body clenched in panic.

Then the puck shot in.

Ilya yelled.

His players were on their feet before the buzzer could even go off, jumping the boards as they ran onto the ice and skated into each other’s arms. Around them, shocked Boston fans sat in their seats dazedly as the final score flashed.

Ilya looked to Ahmanson on his right and Zaborin and Moreau on his left. All looked frozen in various states of shock. Then he pulled them towards him. Ilya hadn’t hugged many people in his life, especially not while on dry land. The feeling of his coaching staff pressed around him on all sides made his heart swoop. He was pretty sure Zaborin was crying.

Then he heard a gasp from the crowd. Ilya craned his head up from his coaches’ huddle.

Sure enough, there were his players celebrating. Except two of them, two who appeared to be wrestling one another at center ice. For a brief moment, Ilya panicked. Then he realized what he was looking at.

Harper was holding Bartek’s face in one hand while pushing back the man’s helmet with the other.

Harper was kissing Bartek senseless.

A ripple ran through the arena as the crowd tried to make sense of what was unfolding in front of them.

Harper finally surfaced for air only to bump his helmet against Bartek’s playfully. The other man looked wind-whipped and red, a goofy smile on his face as his eyes met his captain’s and he whispered something in his ear. Then he pulled Harper into a hug and pressed his face into the man’s shoulder.

Ilya was pulled out of his gaping by the sound of cheers. Not from the remaining Raiders fans, but from the Metros, from their team. The players took turns knocking the two men on their backs as they continued to hug and ignore the outside world.

Dimitrov whispered something to Lassiter, and the other man laughed and shook his head fondly.

Ilya looked for Shane, and there he was, leaning over the rails of his box with a perfect, pleased grin. And, for some reason, all Ilya could think about was wanting to wipe that grin off his face then and there. His stomach twisted with it.

Ilya wasn’t sure how they got on the plane and to Montreal in one piece, but somehow they did. Shane had flown ahead with Metros ownership and Ilya was itching to talk to him.

“Tonight, you party,” Ilya said to his team before they got off the plane. “Tomorrow, we get back to work.”

“No partying for you?” Bartek said with a genuine frown.

“My time has passed,” Ilya said, shaking his head. "But make me proud,” and he leveled a particularly long look at Harper and Bartek, who both blushed.

Once he was in a car heading home, Ilya texted Shane that he was around to talk. Montreal was alight, even at this hour, as he made his way from the airport towards the Plateau. He could hear yelling in the streets, car alarms and fireworks punctuating the air amid the faint but persistent sounds of olé, olé, olé ringing through the night.

When he got to the apartment, he stumbled through the doors and into the darkness, flipping on the light.

There was Shane, and his perfect, pleased grin.

Before the man could speak, Ilya was on him.

Shane moaned into the kiss, pulling him towards the table and wrapping his legs around him in a vice grip. Whatever this was, this was nothing like what they had done a month ago. Those kisses had been tender and longing. These were filthy and raw.

Ilya couldn’t help but press his full weight into Shane, toppling him backwards as he scaled him and the kitchen table. The other man gasped in surprise and cradled Ilya’s face in one hand, running another hungrily down his front.

Ilya felt like he was going to burst at the seams. He needed everything he could get, or he might die then and there. Without thinking, his fingers grasped for Shane’s belt, undoing the buckle as he dropped to his knees.

The other man stopped him.

“Not now,” he said breathlessly. “I need to see you.”

Then Shane yanked him up and continued to suck the life out of him. Ilya wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, all he knew was that it felt like heaven. His hands were everywhere, touching every part of Ilya’s body like he owned it.

“You feel so good,” Shane gasped, pausing to press his lips against the side of his neck before reuniting their mouths once more.

“Fuck, I forgot how perfect you are,” he added like an afterthought. 

Ilya laughed against him. “A little less in shape, I think,” he warned as he let Shane attack his neck again. 

“I don’t care,” Shane said between kisses.

Then, “when did you become a man?” 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

He pulled Shane from him so their eyes could meet. They both panted as they came slightly back down to earth.

“Not everything is like it used to be. At least, not for me.”

The other man shrugged. Then he cupped Ilya’s face in his hands. “You have no clue what you look like, do you?”

He let out a groan that was equal parts aroused and annoyed. “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“In Saratoga,” he added. “God, in Regina too.”

Then, “I’ve wanted every version of you.”

Shane began kissing the stubble on his jaw and Ilya was sure his eyes were rolling into the back of his head.

“We won, Hollander,” he gasped under the man’s attention.

“We fucking won,” Shane agreed, and cupped Ilya’s cock like he was claiming a prize. 

Ilya needed to claim his. He picked him up in a single abrupt motion and Shane wrapped his legs around him without thinking twice. It was a move Ilya hadn’t done to him in decades and yet the muscle memory of it was enough to take his breath away.

In the bedroom, he made quick work of Shane’s clothing. It was infuriating and arousing how deeply in shape the man remained, and Ilya was hit with a momentary wave of insecurity as he thought of his softer parts.

Shane, on the other hand, didn’t give him time to dwell on much of anything before he dragged Ilya’s shirt over his head. Then Shane was on him, trailing kisses down his pecs, lightly biting at his nipples as he buried his face in the silver-brown hair of his chest and inhaled. And further still, where he pressed lingering kisses on Ilya’s stomach. There was still definition there, but softer no doubt and something about Shane reaching these parts, discovering their newness, didn’t make him self-conscious like he'd worried it would.

It made him hard. Harder than he already was. Harder than he had been in a long, long time.

Ilya flipped Shane over, continuing to tear his clothing off of him.

Finally the man was completely naked. Ilya refused to wake up from whatever dream this was. He would see this through.

Pushing the man’s legs up, he avoided touching his swollen cock, instead dipping downwards to press messy kisses agains his hole. The feeling of it tightening in response against him made him want to eat Shane alive.

After a few minutes loosening him up, he pulled away to meet his gaze once more. The other man’s lips were plush red and his hair a silver black mess. No one in the world looked better undone than Shane.

Ilya pulled a bottle out of his beside table and got to work. Shane just sank his head back and sighed as he let him slip a finger, and then another, into him.

“I don’t need that,” Shane said with a frustrated groan after a minute, as he watched Ilya’s fingers slowly move in and out of him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Ilya cautioned.

Shane’s eyes looked far away. “You won’t,” and he said it with utter certainty.

That did something to Ilya. Like he was speaking directly to the creature who had been snarling at the bars since their game in Boston, and was finally giving him permission to run free. 

Without thinking he squared up against Shane. It was such a familiar and oddly nostalgic motion, even as he felt himself light-headed at how hard he was.

He looked down as he pushed into him.

The first few seconds were unbelievably tight, and for the briefest moment Ilya did wonder when Shane had last done this with another person. About halfway in, he paused, letting the man underneath him acclimate to the sensation.

Shane took a deep breath and shuddered. “Don’t stop.”

That was all of the permission Ilya needed. He pushed fully in until wet heat enveloped him to the hilt. Shane’s eyes went dark and unfocused as Ilya began to fuck him. Not as respectfully as he would have liked, but he was long past the point of control. He had waited far too long for this, and in that moment he was taken over by a singular desire.

The desire to claim what was his. What should have been his, if things had been easier. If they had made things easier, instead of getting in each other’s way again, and again.

After a few minutes tangled and grunting, Ilya flipped Shane onto his stomach and palmed his ass.

“Fuck,” he murmured, momentarily in awe of the sight of the man on all fours in front of him.

Shane gasped as Ilya sunk into him once more, hitting spots inside him that felt so deep he thought he might split him in two. If it weren’t for the thick cords of muscles running from Shane’s shoulders towards his waist and sculpted ass. 

“I’m so close, Ilya,” Shane whined, his legs shaking as he buried his face into the bed and continued to take his cock.

Ilya wanted to howl at his warning. Instead he took up an even harsher pace and the sound of his sweaty skin slapping against Shane was a sound that made him wild with how much he had missed it.

“I need to see you,” and he stopped, flipping the man on to his back once more.

Shane wrapped his long, muscled legs around his torso, pulling him in with another sloppy kiss.

“I love you,” he panted.

“You’re mine,” Ilya moaned.

Shane came.

It was abrupt and continued on and on, like Ilya was wringing him dry. His eyes were wide, frozen in a painful ecstasy as garbled words escaped him. Some of them Ilya recognized, words like, “I love you,” like, “I’m yours,” like, “forever.”

Then Ilya emptied himself into him.

Shane looked at where their bodies joined in wonder as Ilya' cock pulsed for what felt like minutes. Finally he pulled him forward for a long slow kiss.

“We should win more game sevens,” Shane mumbled against his lips a moment later.

Ilya smiled. “You were always so horny for winning.”

Shane just laughed and laughed.

Then he got serious. “I wanted this the moment I saw you. I don’t need this team winning to want that.”

“I’m joking, Hollander,” Ilya said. He kissed Shane’s sweaty brow and then rolled off him, pulling the man into his arms.

“Stay here,” he added, planting a kiss on Shane’s head as the man curled into his chest.

They laid in relaxed silence as their heart rates settled.  “Maybe if we win another series, I’ll let you fuck me,” Ilya said with a yawn after a few minutes had passed. 

Shane lifted his head off Ilya’s chest and shot him a questioning look.

“What? You have a lot to catch up on, Hollander,” Ilya said with a wink, and he pulled the man in once more.

Chapter 13: Like a Prayer

Chapter Notes

Like a Prayer - Madonna

Ilya was back in Ottawa. Why was it always Ottawa? If he didn’t know better, he would have thought this city was his own personal purgatory. The Centaurs had won their series, bringing the two teams to a head-to-head battle for the Atlantic Division. While Montreal's games against Ottawa had fewer overtime wins than theirs against Boston, they were just as exhausting as they took turns having the upper hand.

On a good day, the Metros played brilliantly. On a bad day, Ilya was surprised by how low the lows could go, including a full period in and a half without a single shot on goal. Astala was, once again, their saving grace. It was obvious Montreal would not be in this series if it weren’t for him. For him, and for Marin. The two played with a frenetic energy that made one believe they might actually die then and there if they let in a single goal.

Marin had become one of their high scorers this series. To the point that it had struck Ilya that the kid might walk his way into a Norris nomination if he wasn't careful. He could only grin and shake his head at the thought.

Harper and Bartek continued to play together effortlessly. Of course, everyone now knew where that effortlessness originated from. 

Shane had taken control of the situation the day after their win against Boston. A fleet of public relations professionals had closed rank around Harper and Bartek. Their captain was already media trained to within an inch of his life, but anything Shane could do to create the illusion of safety and control he gave them.

The discourse had been fascinating. There were the typical disgruntled MLH fans, who felt the kiss was a distraction from the great game of hockey. They mostly found it inappropriate, disgusting, or some combination of the two. Very few Metros fans had anything bad to say about what Harper and Bartek had done given the performance their star players had gifted them that game. From their perspective, these men could kiss all they wanted if that secured Montreal its much-needed overtime goal. Then, some fans even insisted they had always known, which Ilya found hilarious and ridiculous in equal measure, though he would take any support they could get.

Ilya couldn’t help but feel like he was watching an alternate reality of what might have happened if he and Shane had actually done what they had promised one another.

While Shane handled the outside world, Ilya handled their team.

Two days after their Boston win, Ilya called a meeting from which Harper and Bartek were suspiciously absent. As his players filed into the room, he was impressed by how battle-tested they seemed. The injuries were starting to pile up, the missing teeth especially, but they looked confident and proud. The Metros were finally a single, seamless unit.

“Boys,” Ilya said, waving a hand at the empty chairs.

Once everyone was settled, he took a breath. “You know why I called you here.”

“It’s the winning, right?” Lassiter interrupted with a grin. “You want less winning?”

“Yes, less winning,” Ilya said dryly.

He paused. “I asked Harper and Bartek to give us the room.”

At the mention of those two, the air practically hummed.

“We will talk about them. But before we do, I would like to tell you a story.”

Ilya’s gaze ran down the rows of men, many of whom were fidgeting nervously even as they seemed utterly transfixed on their coach and what he was about to say.

“The summer before my rookie year," Ilya began, "I fell in love.”

Twenty-something looks of confusion. Whatever his players thought this meeting would be, it had most certainly not been that. 

“I was eighteen and spoke maybe ten words of English,” Ilya continued carefully. “I had spent my entire life in Russia until that point.”

Dimitrov, Pavlovski, and the other Europeans nodded in understanding. They knew what it was like to arrive in this brave new world as children and scramble for ways to survive.

“It was complicated,” Ilya continued, rubbing his face with a hand.

Then, “he was a hockey player. And a man.”

The room was silent. More silent, somehow, than even ahead of a playoff game. Every man looked at Ilya with wide, shocked eyes. Some seemed awed and overwhelmed. Others, confused and in disbelief.

“He was a boy, really,” Ilya corrected, after a few moments had passed. “We both were.”

He went on. “But over our ten year relationship, we became men. Stars in the league. Champions, even. We got so much of what we wanted, but never what we wanted most, which was a relationship we did not have to hide.”

He looked around the room. “I am telling you this because you control their fate. How you choose to act, it will decide the happiness of these men. And I want you to make the right choice because you want to.” Then he squinted.  “But I am not above forcing you to make it either."

He paused at that, letting his gaze rake over the men who were in his charge. "If you do anything to hurt them,” he continued, "you will be finished on this team. And in this league, if I can help it.”

The team looked shell-shocked. Ilya had to imagine they had run many scenarios, and no possible speculation had led to this.

Then Lassiter raised a hand awkwardly, as if he somehow needed permission to speak.

Ilya dipped his head.

“Uh, coach, well. First off, I’m proud of you.” The man stumbled through his words like he was learning to speak for the first time.

Ilya’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.

“That’s pretty fucking bad ass.”

Many of the other men nodded in agreement as Lassiter spoke. “I mean, you are like a hero to us,” he said a little bashfully. “The guys won’t say that out loud because they think it’s lame, but it’s true.”

He went on. “Obviously, you’re a legend. You’re the reason half of us play hockey to begin with.”

Lassiter took a breath. “No one centered a line like you did. And the way you scored,” he paused, rubbing his face, “god, it was superhuman. I swear I spent most of my childhood thinking you were a god. Hollander too, of course. But you. Especially you.”

The rest of team muttered their agreement. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s not surprising that someone who always did things his way loved his own way too."

"It’s bad ass," he repeated. "Though I'm sorry you had to go through that."

Ilya was torn between feeling emotional at what his alternate captain had just said, feeling shocked that he had found it in himself to share that story, and feeling silly at how placidly the team seemed to have taken his words. He was skating dangerously close to the truth at the center of his life, though no one seemed to ask the obvious question out loud.

The question of who.

“It was decades ago," Ilya offered Lassiter, as if that somehow made the hurt any less.

Then Pavlovski chimed in. “What about the women?” Count on their golden retriever to ask a question like that, Ilya thought.

“He’s obviously bisexual,” Dimitrov said, shaking his head like he was disgusted at his teammate's idiocy. Pavlovski just shrugged and looked like he was going to research that one later.

Ilya ignored his players and continued. “I am not telling you this to feel sad for me. I want you to think of Alex and Lukas. If someone had said what I am saying now, in my time, to my team, and especially to his…” he trailed off.  “Maybe, just maybe, things would have been different.”

“Well, fuck his team, then,” Dimitrov said loudly, and the rest of the team agreed, taking arms up on Ilya and Shane’s behalf without realizing exactly who they were fighting for and that they were cursing the very blue, white, and red they proudly wore.

Then Lassiter spoke again. “The thing is, coach, I really don’t think this is going to be a problem.”

Ilya cocked his head at that.

“I mean, if it were a problem then we wouldn’t be here, right?”

Dimitrov nodded, jumping in. “Yes, no offense, Coach, but we have shared many, many hotel rooms with them.” The winger shook his head at that and his teammates just laughed.

“The sneaking around," Dimitrov continued. "I do not think they were fooling anyone.”

Ilya felt like he was on the outside looking in. He was in awe of this room of men who seemed fully aware of the romance that had been blossoming under their noses and not concerned by it one bit.

“You knew?”

The men nodded slowly.

Lassiter shot an exhausted look at him. “Like, yeah, kinda?”

“It’s not that big a deal, coach,” Dimitrov added.

“But you’re, you’re Russian?” Ilya sputtered.

Dimitrov shrugged. Then, “mnogoye izmenilos, Ilya.”

A lot has changed, Ilya.

The words felt like a pit in his stomach, and a promise.

Later that night, Ilya told that particular story to Shane as they lay naked and sweaty on the sheets. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off of each other since the night of their series win. Ilya had known it would be like this. Like sleeping with Shane was crossing the Rubicon, some permanent and terrifying move on the chessboard that was their decades-long dynamic. 

Now that he had him again, he couldn’t get enough. That night, it had been taking the man in every possible position he could think of. Against a wall, on their apartment floor, in the shower. Shane on top, their gazes fixed on one another unbreakably. The man in his lap, or underneath him with his legs bracing him in a tight hold. Or, with his ass in the air as Ilya took him brutally from behind.

Every way was a mixture of desperate and loving, rough and sweet. How had they waited almost a year to do this? Ilya felt like they deserved Olympic medals for that feat alone.

Shane, on the other hand, looked a level of blissed out that Ilya had never quite seen. More often that not, his eyes were glazed over as he took Ilya’s cock, his mouth parted like he was thirsty and finally being given a precious drink.

In a way, Ilya was grateful for their age. For their stamina, really. Since Ilya felt like the last few days had been sex, hockey, and little else.

Shane found Ilya’s retelling hilarious. “They all knew?” He gasped between laughs. “And Lassiter said he was 'proud of you'?”

Ilya just shook his head. Shane guffawed in a way that looked particularly brilliant on a middle-aged man. “I wish I had been there.”

Initially, Ilya had waited for him to be angry at what he had shared, since those truths veered close to ones that Shane had purposefully kept hidden. But, miraculously, he hadn’t been. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you too,” Shane said slyly after a moment had passed.  He planted a hungry kiss on Ilya’s lips.

“Show me how proud you are, Hollander,” Ilya found himself grunting back, and the man complied.

A few minutes later, with Shane’s warm mouth wrapped around his cock, Ilya felt like he was in heaven. He never wanted this to end. He didn’t want to think about what the future might hold, and frankly didn’t need to. In a playoffs run, everything ultimately came back to the Herculean task at hand. Any choices made, no matter how insane or irrational, could be explained through that distorted lens, he reasoned. 

As the series against Ottawa unfolded, Ilya and Shane found themselves once again in that dreaded city. Their second win against the Centaurs had been on enemy turf. As the Metros inched closer and closer to the mountain top, they were so focused on winning that celebrations had grown superstitious and muted.

Ilya made his way back to their hotel after the win and thought of Shane. They had not talked about meeting up after the game. Their hook ups had been exclusively contained to Montreal’s city limits.

He pulled his keycard out and fiddled with it. Then he laughed.

He texted Shane.

“1221?” he got back in seconds.

“1221,” he texted again.

“You’re joking.”

He sent a picture of his keycard and that miraculous number stamped on it.

Twenty minutes later, Shane was at his door. When he let the man in, his body was tense with anticipation. This was how it had been for so many years, taking what either could get in dark hotel rooms. Praying that they might have a few hours to spare for one another against the backdrop of their seasons and the unbelievable pressure of their lives.

He pulled Shane towards him and into a bruising kiss. The man groaned and ran a hand through his curls.

“Good game,” Shane mumbled into him. 

“No hockey,” Ilya responded without thinking.

The other man nodded helplessly and ground against him, their erections pressing up on one another.

“What do you want?” Ilya muttered as he unbuttoned the man’s shirt and peeled it off of him.

He ran his hands territorially over Shane’s muscles, mapping them out for later.

Shane just looked at him. “I want you to fuck me until I can’t think.”

Ilya grunted, and he backed him into the wall, almost knocking a lamp as he went. Shane’s back hit the wall with a thud, and he let out a whine. Flipping him over, Ilya pulled Shane’s pants down, exposing the thick rounds of his ass.

His mouth practically watered at the sight before him. He ran a finger along the crevice, slipping in to locate the man’s most intimate parts. Shane let out a low moan, almost like he was in pain.

“I’m ready,” he begged. Then, “I got ready for you.”

Sure enough, Ilya could feel that Shane was already lube-slicked and open for him. It made him feel crazy with want. He lined himself up and pushed in in a single thorough stroke, his cock sliding in until he was buried. The man gasped. His legs and chest shook against the wall.

“Say something,” Shane begged.

There were so many things Ilya wanted to say. Too many things, if only he could find the courage to say them.

“Ty moya,” he said, realizing a second late that the words had come out in Russian instead of English.

You're mine.

Shane just nodded, his face still buried as his ass took what Ilya would give him.

“Sometimes I worry we were built for each other,” Ilya continued, the thick Russian syllables rolling off his tongue with ease. “That there is no one else that will ever come close to you.”

Shane pressed his cheek against the well and shook his head as if to say more.

Ilya continued in Russian. “That I can’t escape you, even if I wanted to.”

He picked up his pace, slamming himself into Shane with unforgiving thrusts. The sounds were slick and delicious, and the sensation made him want to come then and there.

He breathed. “You were made for me. You can see that, can't you?” He said those last words harshly, not that Shane understood any of what he was saying.

Shane just nodded, and nodded, his wanton and blown out gaze in a universe all its own. He continued pounding into him. Gripping his ass in his hands as he fucked the man onto his cock like he wasn’t two hundred and something pounds of pure muscle.

“Ilya,” Shane gasped as he took him. And he repeated his name like a mantra, like it was the only thing tethering him to this earth.

“I would give up everything on this earth for you,” Ilya continued in Russian, sweat running down his temples and along his chest. “I have given up everything for you," he corrected. "And the crazy part is," he paused, gripping Shane's ass cheek with one large hand, "I would do it again. I would do anything for a chance at having you.”

Shane moaned loudly, reaching back to pull Ilya closer as he fucked him.

“You have no clue what I am saying, do you?” Ilya continued in Russian.

Then, "what do you have to say for yourself?”

It was an angry question, made to feel angrier by Ilya fucking him to within an inch of his life. Shane looked at him blankly. He looked like he was in some uncomprehending trance.

Then, in English, “Shane, what do you have to say for yourself?”

That seemed to wake the man up, and he looked at Ilya.

“Ya tebya lyublyu,” he gasped.

Ilya was already coming before the words had fully left Shane's mouth. Only after he had finish did he realize what the man had said, or rather the language he had said it in.

He flipped Shane over and a streak of come ran down the length of the wall. The other man looked at it sheepishly and then at him.

“Ya tebya lyublyu?” Ilya asked.

Shane nodded as if he perfectly understood the source of his confusion. “You aren’t the only one with a tutor.”

Shane took his hand in his. “Ya by otdal vso na svete radi tebya.” It was a familiar phrase. It was a phrase Ilya had spoken mere minutes ago.

I would give up everything on this earth for you.

“You know that, right?” Shane continued in Russian.

Ilya’s ears were ringing. He felt like he was going insane.

“Kogda?”

When? Ilya asked.

Shane just shook his head. “I've spent a lot of time alone over the last ten years," as if that was explanation enough, and the Russian flowed from the man’s mouth clean and smooth.

Ilya smothered him with a kiss.

“You cannot do this to me,” Ilya murmured against him. “You make me crazy.”

Shane smiled against his lips.

“You will kill me, Hollander.”

“Ilya,” Shane said back. And the way he said it was unlike anything Ilya had heard in their thirty years of knowing one another. Four letters, but the way he said it now, it was the Russian way. The right way, really. The front two letters eliding together and a thick consonantal drop on the second.

“Say it again,” he begged.

And Shane did, murmuring it over and over again as they kissed.

“Kto ty?”

Who are you? Ilya gasped in amazement, and Shane just shut him up with another kiss, as if that were answer enough.

Days later they were in Montreal’s arena again. It wasn’t that Ilya wasn’t focused on winning. He didn’t know how not to be. But it was safe to say he had other things on his mind too. Shane, obviously.That man, who had always been on his mind whether he cared to admit it or not, had now squarely invaded it.

Ilya would be doing something as simple as calling a line change and the image of Shane on his knees would flash unbidden. It was like being in psychosis. The real world and the imagined blurring together with startling frequency. Except this wasn’t some fantasy. At least, not anymore. These images were real. So real that Ilya was taken over with a feeling of frustration that he was wasting his time doing anything that wasn’t making love to that man.

Everything else felt like a distraction. Even things as seemingly important as the task in front of them.

Thankfully Ilya had played a decade against Hollander and never once had his feelings impacted their game play. Here too, it was no different. The Metros and Centaurs continued to trade wins until Montreal, once again, found themselves staring down a game seven.

Like with Boston, this had always been the best possible outcome. The Metros were playing well, but they were holding on for dear life. Every victory was hard fought. It was as Ilya had said in the locker room ahead of their game against Boston, every day they woke up and decided they would win. It was tenacity any truly great team had. Winning was a mentality as much as an act.

Ilya was proud beyond measure. This team’s success had finally transcended a statistical error or luck, and the media and world were starting to pay attention. When had the Montreal Metros gotten so good?

Shane talked to him surprisingly little about these hard-won victories, but as they approached game seven Ilya was once again consumed by that familiar prey drive, whether he had Hollander there to egg him on or not.

Ottawa had come out of the gate strong, unfortunately. By the second period, they were up three and the Metros hadn’t managed to get a single point on the board. The atmosphere was grim. Ilya could feel panic slowly seep through the bench as the minutes ticked by.

As his team sat in the locker room ahead of the third, Ilya took stock of them. They were exhausted. He thought about what he might say but found himself not wanting to do that performance. There was nothing he could say in this moment that would make this team a winning one. That was a battle they had to fight against themselves, and, as Ilya silently took them in, he could tell this team was at war.

He looked at Harper, Bartek, and Lassiter. “The time is yours. Do what you want with it," and he left, the hefty locker room doors slamming behind him.

He stepped into the coach’s office and took a breath. His phone vibrated from its game day position on his desk. Picking it up, his eyes flitted to the screen.

“No matter what.”

He ran his finger along the words. They felt too good to be true. He was sure this was a promise Shane couldn’t keep, even if he wanted to. They needed to win. They needed to win because Ilya, against every sane instinct in his body, wanted that Cup.

It was greedy. He didn’t care. It was his. It was Hollander’s, and it was. And he wanted to win because he was scared to find out what waited for him on the other side of a loss. He refused to find out. Not yet, not until he had drunk his fill.

A minute into the third period, Marin scored. It was from the blue line. A strong, quick shot that whizzed past player after player as it found the back of the net.

One goal, Ilya found himself thinking with a grin. The next come from a more likely source. Harper executed a particularly brilliant bit of footwork that lost a defenseman, and then another, before he found a clear shot in. That celebration had consisted of Bartek running into him at full speed, their helmets bumping up against one another.

Ilya tried to tell himself that this outcome, this comeback, was enough. But now that they were staring down a tie, he knew it was a lie. He wanted to win. Here, at home, in front of their fans. In front of Shane Hollander.

With under a minute left on the clock, it was Dimitrov who ultimately showed up to work that day. On a long shot from Bartek, he gracefully tipped the puck in and the arena roared. Ilya was painfully aware of the time left on clock.

21 seconds. The number looked at him angrily, as if his team had somehow flouted fate. So this would be an overtime game. Ok, Ilya could live with that.

As the next face off came and went, Ilya was already beginning to strategize about their next period.

Until a blaring buzzer suddenly broke his reverie. Around him, his players began jumping the boards and rushing onto the ice.

For a moment, he wanted to call them back as if they had made a mistake. But they hadn’t. He looked up at the scoreboard, where the final tally flashed loud and true alongside a shot of Marin’s grinning face.

And there, on the replay, Marin waiting patiently behind Harper as he crouched in a face off. And, as his captain won it, a tip back to Marin, who skated the few necessary paces across the center line and swung his stick like a prayer. 

Watching the goal in slow motion, Ilya felt like he was dreaming. If it weren't for the arena that roared, and roared their approval, chanting and howling like nothing Ilya had ever heard in his time on this earth. A dangerous and ecstatic energy that frightened Ilya even as it awed him. 

In front of Ilya, the Metros swarmed each other. Around them, a sea of blue, white, and red as far as the eye could see. Above them, banner after banner hung like stars in the sky.

Then he glimpsed it. Hollander’s jersey, hanging in the rafters, and, in this moment, Ilya was sure it was a talisman granting a sailor his safe journey home.

He looked towards the boxes only to find Shane already looking at him. He wasn’t smiling this time. No, this was something else. Something deeper and more profound than happiness.

Ilya knew what this was. It was a word they had willing exchanged with one another again and again over the last few months. But to see the look so plainly on this man’s face. Words were just a promise. For a moment Ilya was certain, this, this was the real thing.

Chapter 14: The Known Universe

Chapter Notes

My Tears Are Becoming A Sea - M83

Shane picked up Ilya in the earliest hours before dawn. The sky was still blue with night as they drove north. He had never been much of a morning person but was grateful to not have to wait any longer to depart.

Cityscape quickly transformed to forest and farmland. Spring always came slowly to this part of the world, and Ilya rolled down the window to breath in the chilly morning air. Around them, Quebec had only just begun to bud and blossom. Shane’s hand reached over for his and his other remained firmly on the wheel.

The man wore glasses and one of his many pieces of Metros gear, though this one decidedly vintage. He looked boyish, and like a powerful man hiding in plain sight. Ilya was grateful to have known the boy and the man, and to have gotten to love each. 

They had returned from Ottawa the day before. Thanks to a scheduling delay, the Metros had a weekend of downtime ahead of the battle for the Eastern Conference. Ilya hadn’t dared to suggest they actually do something with that downtime. They were in the middle of a playoff run. As players, they hadn’t communicated at all during those brutal weeks. At least, not until it was clear which one was the victor. 

Surprisingly, it had been Shane who suggested this. He had done it in his typically awkward and elliptical sort of way, by calling Ilya and letting him know that he would be offline for two days with spotty service. Ilya had, of course, asked where he was going, which led to a half-mumbled answer and a suggestion that maybe he might like to go with him.

They were going to the cottage. 

To Ilya, the cottage had built up a near mythic level of importance over the years. Outside of a single documentary that had been shot on its grounds, Shane had never let camera crews in. He had built this place from scratch. It was his fortress of solitude, and the closest thing he had to a true home.

Ilya had known many parts of the man's life, but never this one. A part of him couldn't help but think that here he might find a critical final clue.

He received a version of an invitation to come here ahead of his trade to Ottawa, before Shane realized he was actually going to go through with his end of the bargain. That summer had suddenly been taken over by moving his life and acclimating to his new team, and so the cottage remained an unanswered question.

The next invite was for the following summer. This time, they made grand plans. Weeks together in the heart of July with not a single person but each other. By then, this had become Ilya’s ultimate fantasy. Not holding Shane in his arms and having his way with him, but unending time alone together.

Shane had revoked that invitation last minute. It stung beyond belief, though at the time Ilya had been so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he recalled conjuring a million reasons for why it might have been warranted. Knowing what he knew now, there was no longer any mystery behind why Shane had done that. Their planned trip had fallen right after Shane’s failed request to move to Ottawa.Then came the next season, the slow death of their relationship, and an eventual summer with no cottage invite to be found at all.

As they continued their drive, Ilya did his best to calm himself. He couldn't help but clock how abysmally utilitarian Shane's car was. But he didn’t care, not with the other man’s hand firmly in his.

“It’s nothing crazy,” Shane explained as they continued to whip past forrest. “But it’s remote, and peaceful. And the lake is beautiful.”

Ilya nodded. He didn’t care if it was a gas station off the highway, as long as it was just the two of them. 

“I told everyone we'd be gone for two days,” he added. “DeLisle can figure it out. Lord knows he’s been waiting long enough to be in charge.”

Ilya looked at him with surprise. Shane kept his eyes on the road, but it was like he could sense Ilya’s unasked question.

“What?” he began. “We’re friends.”

Ilya laughed. “You treat your friends like this?”

“Like what?” 

Ilya shook his head. “You’re hopeless.”

He continued. “I am glad you are taking your good friend Ilya Rozanov to your sex cottage in the woods.”

“It’s not a sex cottage,” Shane responded indignantly. “It’s an oasis.”

“So what, we will be doing head stands?”

Shane frowned at him.

A few seconds later, “obviously other things too.”

“If you want,” he added under his breath. 

Ilya laughed. “Oh, I want, Hollander.”

By the time they arrived, the sun was high in the sky. The final road into the cottage was a windy gravel-filled affair that took at least thirty minutes. Ilya was nauseous with anticipation. It was just a house, he tried to tell himself. 

Until they pulled into the driveway and he realized it was not just a house. “What the—“ Ilya trailed off, as he got out of the car.

He didn’t even think to grab his bags. He moved towards the structure like he had entered its gravitational field. Shane followed, punching a code into the door and swinging it open for him.

“Hollander,” Ilya began again.

This was not a house. It was a work of art. Warm wood from floor to ceiling. Exposed beams like branches crisscrossing overhead. The whole building smelled of pine. Sprawling rugs were artfully placed everywhere. And at the center, a living room with massive sofas facing floor-to-ceiling glass windows and the lake behind them. 

There was more art on the walls than in Outremont. But what was here somehow felt less like investment pieces and more like artifacts with genuine sentimental value. A corner of the living room even had towering bookshelves and a deep arm chair.

“Since when do you read?” Ilya marveled without thinking.

Shane looked at him with amusement. That was the other thing Ilya noticed. There was no hockey paraphernalia. As far as he could tell, there weren’t even books about the sport on the shelves. If someone were to enter this house, they might not even know that a hockey legend occupied it.

That was new. Being with Shane reminded Ilya of all the things he loved about this man. Things that were delightfully and frustratingly permanent. Then there were things like this, like the books, like the Russian, like his sense of humor. He was getting to know this version of Shane, and realizing how much he liked him in his own right. 

He stepped towards the shelf.

Ilya had never been much of a reader, but even he recognized a few of the titles. Great works of Canadian and American literature, history books, trail guides and atlases, a set on North American birds. And then, in the corner, tomes in Russian.

Ilya stooped down and peered at them. “You read these?”

Shane nodded. “I don’t know why all Russian literature is so long, but I made it through a few.”

“Our suffering,” Ilya said bluntly. “We want others to feel it too.”

Shane just laughed. “Well, I liked that one a lot," and he pointed at a book at the end of the row.

Ilya squinted at the title. “Shane Hollander, the romantic,” he said, shaking his head.

He picked up the copy of Doctor Zhivago. “No War and Peace for you, Hollander?”

Shane shook his head. “Couldn’t get through it.”

He moved towards Ilya, hugging him from behind. “I loved Yuri and Lara."

“It it is not a very happy ending, you know.”

Shane shrugged. “Maybe. Their love lives on in their daughter. They didn’t get what they wanted, but that felt like something. After what they had suffered.”

Ilya didn’t know what to say to that, so instead he said, “I think I was supposed to read this as a teenager.”

“Did you?”

“Hockey,” Ilya shrugged. “But maybe there is time now.”

He threw the book onto the sofa.

Hours later he was engrossed in it as Shane swam at the lake front, a feat that was not for the faint of heart in April. What was Hollander on about, he couldn’t help but think, as he made it through chapters. This book was incredibly depressing.

Dinner that night had been about eight too many burgers. As the evening moved towards darkness, Shane tended to a fire and Ilya sat beside him, looking up at the night sky. 

“The stars here,” Ilya said, as if there was nothing else to say.

Shane nodded. “I know. I come here as much as I can.”

He paused. “After things ended, with us, I came here a lot.”

Ilya looked at him but remained silent.

“I would disappear here. My teammates never knew where I went. It's not like they could say or do much,” he added. “I’d always show up when they needed me. And we kept winning, and winning.”

Ilya recalled that during his second year playing for Ottawa Montreal had won another Stanley Cup, Shane’s fourth during his tenure.

“I started taking things,” Ilya said abruptly.

Shane looked at him in confusion.

“Antidepressants,” Ilya explained. “I still do.”

“Really?” 

Ilya nodded, and took a sip of his beer. “I am clinically depressed, apparently,” he said. “Have been my entire life.”

He went on. “It is not much of a problem now. The medicine helps.” His eyes met Shane’s dark ones. “But back then, it was not so good."

"It was very bad, actually,” he added a beat later.

Shane leaned over and pulled Ilya towards him, so his head rested on his lap as he looked into the flames. The man ran his fingers through his curls. Maybe it was the familiarity of the motion, or the feeling of complete privacy, but Ilya found the words forming before he could stop them.

“My mother had it too.”

“Your mother?” Shane asked quietly.

"Yes, she was depressed."

“What is she like?”

The tense of that particular verb made Ilya's stomach drop. It was scary to think about how little this man sometimes knew about him. 

“She was amazing,” Ilya said. “So alive, and beautiful, and kind.”

Shane paused, as if calibrating. “I didn't realize she had passed.”

“I was twelve.”

“What?” Shane began. “But—”

Ilya looked up at him from his place in Shane’s lap.

“It never came up,” he interrupted, answering the question before he could even ask it.

“We did everything wrong, didn’t we?” 

Shane went on. “I’ll never forgive myself for not knowing that."

Ilya just shrugged sadly.

Then, "what happened?”

He took in a breath. “Pills.”

“God, Ilya—”

“Shane, no,” he interrupted. “I am happier than I have been in years." Maybe in decades, he thought. “She would not want us to be sad, not about her.”

“Sometimes I think she is watching,” he continued. “And I know, even after everything, she would have loved you, like I love you.” In a way, those words were the closest he had ever come to truly forgiving Shane.

Ilya looked up into his eyes from his spot in his lap. “She was a romantic. Maybe because she and my father never really loved each other.”

He continued. “It is the people with the least love who understand how special it is. She would have told me to fight for you. Maybe if she had still been alive I would have been brave enough to do it all those years ago.”

Shane pulled Ilya up from his position. He cradled the man’s face in his hands. “You shouldn’t have had to, Ilya.”

He went on. “I wish I could’ve met her and told her that.” He let out a sad laugh. “I would have thanked her. That’s what I would have done. I would have told her how horrible my life is when you aren’t in it, and how brilliant and perfect it is when you are.”

Ilya kissed him. It was slow and meandering, their tongues grazing one another in a steady dance.

The way Shane had recently begun talking frightened Ilya. It was final, like there was no next chapter, just some endless, hazy future in which they were together permanently. Ilya was scared to ask about what came next. He didn’t doubt Shane’s love, not now. But he did doubt what Shane would do to keep him, or rather the sacrifices he would be willing to make. 

Ilya climbed into his lap. Shane cradled him as they continued to kiss. There was something novel about being held in another man’s arms. Then, the man picked him up. Their lips stayed close together as Shane maneuvered them to the bedroom.

The room was mostly windows, and the blinds were up. Around him, a million stars were visible in the inky dark. Ilya felt like he was at sea, looking up from the deck at the known universe. The finite and total world stretching as far as the eye could see. Any call into the dark would travel lightyears until it found its willing listener. 

Here too, he felt like he and Shane were communicating across time and space. They had been speaking into the darkness, and never directly at each other. But what Ilya felt now was that love, that care, that devotion careening through the ink-black void in its decades-long journey toward its intended recipient. 

Soon after Shane placed them on the bed, they were naked. There were a thousand things Ilya wanted to do with his man, so many he was finding it hard to pick. Then he thought of Shane and his bookshelf, of the ways they were making room for the other to grow and change. The ways they were meeting each other as they were, not as some frozen image of adolescence.

“I want you to fuck me,” Ilya murmured against him, as their erections rubbed up against one another.

Shane pulled back. “Ok,” he said slowly.

“Only if you want to,” Ilya added. He wasn’t interested in doing something that Shane wouldn’t enjoy, no matter how appealing.

“No, I want to,” Shane responded quickly. “I’ve just never done it.”

“That’s ok,” Ilya comforted. “You will be gentle.”

Shane spent plenty of time teasing him and opening him up. He had bottomed enough to understand the importance of that. As the man lined himself against Ilya, his body shook slightly. It wasn’t the weight of holding himself up, of that Ilya was sure.

No, topping was intense. Ilya found it addicting. He felt powerful, complete, and strong. But it was hard work holding someone’s pleasure in your hands. 

Shane pushed in slowly. So carefully that it took Ilya a moment to realize his cock had slipped into him. Then he felt like his insides were burning. He breathed out.

“This ok?” Shane murmured in his ear.

Ilya just nodded, and the man continued to push in. 

Then Shane bottomed out, and he let out a groan that sent a shiver down his spine.

“It feels good, yes?”

“It feels fucking amazing,” Shane said, gasping. “I’m going to come if you move.”

“Then stay there,” Ilya suggested. “I’m not going anywhere.”

They remained like two interlocked pieces and breathed each other in.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Shane said after a minute had passed.

Ilya laughed. “I’m old.”

“You somehow look even better than I remembered.”

Ilya knew the man was blushing in the pitch dark as he spoke. Then Shane readjusted himself into Ilya in a way that made him gasp.

”God, when I first saw you in Saratoga…” Shane trailed off. Ilya bucked his hips up slightly, letting him slide in deeper.

The man looked down at him and nodded, beginning to slowly move in and out.

“Does it feel good?” he asked after another minute had passed. 

Ilya let out an involuntary groan as Shane dragged his cock against that specific spot inside him. That was answer enough.

The man began to pick up his pace and confidence. The way he fucked was different than Ilya. He wasn’t dominating. He was chasing his pleasure Whatever it was, Ilya was obsessed. Watching the man steer himself closer and closer to the edge.

“You feel so fucking good. So tight.”

Ilya grunted. “I have only ever done this to myself,” as if that were explanation enough. 

Shane let out a surprised whine at that. Ilya had taken so many of Shane’s firsts. He had never thought about what it might be like to give the man something in return. 

“I was waiting for you,” Ilya admitted, and it felt like the truth. At that, Shane grabbed his hips and began to fuck him harder. The sensation of their slick skin meeting and parting made Ilya feel like he was going crazy 

“No one gets this but you,” he went on. He wasn’t sure where this was coming from but he didn’t care, and he met the man’s pace with his hips as he fucked himself onto his cock. 

Shane moaned, and moaned, finally taking Ilya in his hand.

Then, Ilya put his palms against Shane’s chest, pushing him back, and he fixed himself on the man’s lap. Shane’s cock somehow felt even deeper inside him from this position.

Ilya moaned. Then, “you own me.”

Shane swore as he wrapped his arms around him and drilled in.

“Forever,” Ilya promised, his sweaty face pressed against his. “This is mine,” and Shane’s cock slammed into Ilya in a single brutal stroke. “You are mine.”

Shane slammed him down harshly onto his lap once again and emptied inside of him. Ilya could feel his insides warm with it, and he remained seated as his heart rate slowed. Shane looked at him with a stupid, satisfied grin. It took a second for Ilya to realize his own come ran down his stomach and cock.

“Fuck,” Ilya said with a shaking laugh, as he carefully rolled off of the man and stumbled towards the bathroom.

As he cleaned himself, he thought about the amount of times Shane had run to the bathroom after their time together. It made his heart warm for the man who had given him things in ways he had never even realized.

Shane was sprawled out naked on the bed upon his return.

“Did you like it?” he asked, and Ilya could tell the man meant it with genuine curiosity.

“With you, yes,” Ilya nodded. “I like it when you take care of me.”

Shane grinned and patted a spot next to him on the bed. When Ilya was settled in his arms in the dark, he once again was floating at sea under the stars.

This was safe and private. He didn’t feel like they were hiding, but there was an overwhelming sense that this right here, this precious thing, was theirs.

In that moment, he understood the difference between secrecy and privacy. What they had done as kids, that had been secrecy. Hiding at all costs, lying if they had to. Then, internalizing those lies and the shame that came with them. This was different. Their staff knew where they were. Ilya hadn’t told his team about their relationship, but he hadn’t exactly hid the fact pattern that led to it either.

They were together. And in this moment Ilya genuinely believed they would answer truthfully to anyone who might ask the right questions. This was privacy, and it was precious.

Ilya had never been a very studied bisexual person. He had few friends in that community, though living in Montreal had helped. He struggled with the language of coming out. Not because he didn’t think it was brave and necessary to do so, but because that looked like a different thing to different people. Ilya wanted their relationship to live in the light. He also didn’t want to sacrifice this.

They hadn’t touched the obvious, that they couldn’t be together, at least not in the way they wanted, so long as Shane was Ilya’s boss. It was one thing to do this in private, and another to have their relationship call into question all they had built over the last year, and Shane the last decade. 

He drifted off to those thoughts until suddenly a hand was shaking him awake. He cracked open an eye. It was still pitch black outside.

Shane’s face loomed above him. The other man reached to the side table and turned on a lamp, its warm hue feeling harsh in the middle of the night.

“What is it, Shane?” Ilya asked, running a hand over his sleepy face.

“I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured out what?”

“Us,” Shane said with a hint of annoyance, as if he was frustrated Ilya couldn’t keep up.

He rattled on. “We obviously can’t come out as a couple right now. There would be questions about me hiring you, determining your salary. Plus ownership would have an aneurysm.”

Ilya shook his head, trying to rid it of sleep. “We are a couple?”

That was the only piece of what Shane had said that he actually cared about. 

The man looked at him with fond exasperation. “I mean, yes.” Then, “right?”

If Ilya wasn’t still half-asleep he would have rolled his eyes. Instead he just groaned into his pillow.

“We are, right?” Shane asked again, panic seeping in.

Ilya rolled over to face him. “Would you like to be my boyfriend?”

It felt goofy coming out of his mouth. They were grown men, not teenagers. There were words like partner, and other words, words that made Ilya’s head spin to even fathom, that felt better.

“Yes,” Shane breathed. “Please.”

There was a desperation to his voice that Ilya could’t help but find charming.

Ilya just squinted. “So what is this plan?”

The man paused and took a breath. “We need to win the Stanley Cup.”

“Yes, well, we have been trying to do that.”

“We have no choice but to win it, not if we want to not hide what this is.” Shane continued. “If we win it, no one can say anything or doubt our choices. Hiring you will have saved this franchise.”

“We will be heroes,” he went on.

“We already are,” Ilya said, running a palm down his face. “It won’t make a difference, Shane.”

“It will, Ilya. Trust me. You saw what Montreal was like with Harper and Bartek. As long as we win, they leave us alone.” He looked at him ruefully. “And you and I, we are so good at winning.”

Ilya nodded. That was true. So maybe this was no longer about winning to satisfy some aching part of himself that wondered what it was like to actually fight alongside Shane. This was something else, this was securing their future. This was fighting for nothing less than their happiness. Ilya had performed under pressure before, but never like this. Not with stakes like this. 

Shane looked so sure that he couldn’t help but be swept up in the current of the man’s confidence.

Ilya shook his head. “Ok. Then we win it.”

‘It’ could have been many things, the Cup, the man he loved, their future. All of it was worth fighting for, as far as Ilya was concerned. Shane just kissed him long and hard.  Then he turned off the lights, and they sat in darkness once more.

Ilya couldn’t fall asleep, not after that. He felt like he could put on skates and play a full game of hockey then and there. “And after we win?” he asked quietly into the dark.

He could feel the rustle of Shane’s body beside him. “We get everything we’ve ever wanted.”

Ilya thought about that. Coaching at the highest level, doing it alongside the man he loved, loving that man out and in the open. Shane made it sound so simple. Maybe it was. Either way, he knew Shane wanted him wholly, and that feeling powered him.

So much had changed in the last year. He thought of the Eastern Conference. They would most likely face New York. That alone would be a gauntlet. The Admirals were very good, and a team with plenty of men who had played play off series and lived to tell the tale.

Then, if they somehow survived that, and that was a big if, they would face Colorado. Dreaded Colorado, who had gone on a winning streak this season the likes of which the league had not seen in decades.

Ilya stared down the absurdity of Shane’s plan, and the simplicity with which he had suggested it. As his mind played through every possible scenario, the night sky slowly began to lighten.

Tomorrow, they would get to work.

Chapter 15: Champagne Supernova

Chapter Notes

Champagne Supernova - Oasis

Even in late May, New York was stifling. As Ilya jogged block after block on his morning run, the streets were thick with heat and the various smells of millions of people cohabitating on a single tiny island. At Rockefeller Center he finally took his break, panting as he inspected a massive bronze statue carrying a globe on its shoulders. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the frozen figure. Around him, skyscrapers pressed in from every side. The Cup, the world, it was all the same to Montreal.

While Ilya jogged around Midtown, the Metros were holed up in their hotel in advance of their first game against the Admirals. Due to Madison Square Garden's tight schedule, they would play two games here before returning home for three and four.

The team was buzzing with a blend of anxiety and excitement. It wasn’t every day one made it to a Conference final, a reality that hadn’t sunk in until Ilya saw an image of Harper towering like a colossus on the side of The Garden. Between Ilya and Shane, they had played in plenty of Conference finals, but it was something else to watch their players experience this particular brand of madness for the first time.

While in New York, Shane was staying in his apartment, one of his numerous pieces of real estate littered throughout North America. Ilya wished he could stay there with him, but knew he needed to be with his team. Generals slept among their soldiers, as far as he was concerned.

After Ilya returned from his run, he realized he still had a good portion of the day before he and the team needed to report at the arena. He felt like a race horse rearing at the gates. Thankfully his phone vibrated, taking him out of his state. 

“What are you up to?” the screen read. Once again, it was Shane, offering him a lifeline like he could read his thoughts.

“Nothing," he texted back. “Trying to hold it together actually.”

“Seeing Scott Hunter for lunch. Join?”

Ilya laughed at that. He hadn’t thought about Scott Hunter in what felt like a century, which was probably how old the man was by now. Hunter had captained the Admirals during his and Shane’s first decade in the league, and been a frequent and formidable adversary. Like them, he was a Hall of Famer and Cup winner. That being said, that was where the similarities ended between Hunter and him.

There was very little that sounded less appealing than lunch with the man, whose gentlemanly self-righteous persona only seemed to intensify further when with Shane. Ilya had played enough All Stars games to have experienced that particular duo first hand.

It was a testament to how exhausted he was by his own nerves that Ilya agreed. A half hour later, he found himself walking into a nondescript diner in the West Village. He could see the two men already parked in a booth. Hunter’s warm laugh carried through the room in a way that sent a current of familiar annoyance down Ilya’s spine.

Shane’s eyes caught his from their corner, and the man waved, a dopey smile flashing on his face for the briefest moment.

Ilya took off his Metros cap and sunglasses.

“Hunter,” he said as plopped down beside Shane.

“Rozanov,” the man nodded back.

Unfortunately, Hunter looked good. Healthier, somehow, which didn’t make sense when Ilya took into account that the man was well past fifty. Hunter’s skin was a warm tan, his face covered in smile lines, his once light hair entirely silver, though the color somehow looked more senatorial than ancient. But more than anything, Ilya noticed his smile. Hunter had always been serious and stiff, always playing the leaderly part that he felt had been assigned him. The diplomatic posture remained, but this version of the man felt different. More present, perhaps, or somehow more human.

“Scott was telling me about his summer plans,” Shane said. “He has the most wonderful cottage in upstate New York. Not so far from where you lived, actually.”

Ilya looked at Shane with a raised eyebrow. The man had neglected to mention he visited Hunter’s vacation homes, let alone hung out with the man at all.

Shane ignored him. “He and Kip are great hosts.”

Kip must be whichever poor woman had doomed herself to an eternity of boredom with this man. Ilya knew essentially nothing about what Hunter had been up to since retirement. He hadn’t done what Ilya or Shane had, which was remain involved in the hockey industrial complex in one capacity or another. As far as Ilya was concerned, the man was birdwatching and woodworking by the Finger Lakes.

A waiter came by and deposited a mug of black coffee in front of him in greeting.

“Nice to know you found a woman who can put up with you,” Ilya said wryly once he had taken a sip.

Shane and Hunter broke out into a round of cackles at that. Sure, Ilya was hilarious, he reasoned, but he had better material than that. What could possibly be so funny?

“That never did happen, did it?” Hunter finally said between laughs, he and Shane sharing a private smile as if they were in on a cripplingly hilarious inside joke.

Then, “Kip’s my husband.”

Ilya let out a strangled sound. It was like Hunter had bodychecked him against the boards, a feeling he remembered better than he cared to admit.

Hunter glared at Shane as if to ask why he had insisted on inviting this buffoon in the first place. Then he fixed his glare on Ilya.

“Look, Rozanov. I don’t need your approval,” he began. “I’m long past needing that from anyone in the league. But you could at least be—”

“No, no,” Ilya interrupted, feeling winded. “So you’re gay. No big deal. Trust me," he added with a laugh, a short shriek that he was sure sounded insane. Shane eyed him with amusement and slight concern.

Hunter, on the other hand, just looked at him warily. “We’ve been together since around the time I retired."

“It was actually why I retired, if I’m being honest,” the man said a beat later. 

“Kip is awesome,” Shane butted in. “He teaches history. How he puts up with all these hockey players is a mystery to me.”

Ilya looked at the man next to him, his eyes narrowing. Once again, it was like Shane could read his mind and he shot him a somewhat apologetic grin.

Hunter sipped his coffee. “It took Kip a long time to forgive this sport for what it did to our relationship.”

Ilya and Shane both trained their eyes on him at that.

“Or what I did in the name of this sport,” he corrected. “There were so many times I wanted to be honest. To live our life in public."

“I got so close when we won the Cup,” he said, a sad laugh escaping. “It sounds stupid, but he was at that final game and I almost invited him onto the ice.”

He shook his head. “If I had, I would have kissed him then and there. I’m sure of it. But I couldn’t get myself to celebrate the biggest achievement of my professional life with the man I loved.”

Ilya frowned as Hunter spoke. He thought about what his life might have been like if the man had, in fact, done the very thing he spoke of. As much as he hated to give this man any credit, an act like that would have gone off like a nuclear explosion, or the death of a star, destroying the old world and birthing something new in its wake.

That kiss would have impacted Ilya and Shane, no doubt. Ilya remembered watching that game with a tentative invite to cottage hanging over him, and an impending contract from Ottawa around the corner. And that kiss would have impacted the league at large, and the thousands of boys who dreamed of being professional hockey players, boys like the ones Ilya had coached in Saratoga, who turned to players like Hunter and Hollander to show them what was possible in this world.

That was a lot to put on one man. Ilya, more than anyone, understood why Hunter had done what he’d done. He didn’t begrudge him for it, but he couldn’t help but marvel at that alternate vision of the future just as he mourned it.

Shane jumped in. “It was so hard. The league is different now.”

“The league and me,” Hunter responded curtly. “You’re being generous, Hollander.”

Then his eyes twinkled. “Now that Harper and Bartek, though. Pretty extraordinary stuff what they did."

Ilya and Shane grinned like proud parents.

“I’m scared to think what they’ll do on the ice if we win the Conference,” Shane confessed. Hunter chuckled in response. Ilya found himself laughing along side them against his best instinct.

“Scott was one of the first people I came out,” Shane said once the laughter had died down.

“Well, besides you,” he added, throwing a fond look Ilya’s way.

Hunter caught that and raised an eyebrow at both of them. “You told Rozanov you were gay before you told me?”

So Hunter wasn’t the only one living in the dark, Ilya thought to himself with a smug grin. Shane looked at him and he knew the other man was asking permission. They were past lying, not when someone was asking the right questions. He dipped his head.

Shane took a breath. “There wasn’t much telling, actually.”

Confusion passed over Hunter’s face. There was no way Hunter was going to crack this code on his own.

Ilya jumped in. “It was more show, less tell.”

Hunter’s head shot his direction. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Ilya said with a smirk, and he said it slowly, as if that was what it might take for Hunter to process his words. Shane shook his head as Ilya circled his prey.

“What do you mean you, you showed him?” This time, Hunter looked to Shane for support. But the man was covering his face with a hand, hiding the blush already blooming there.

“Yes,” Ilya finally responded with a grin. “Shane showed me many, many times.”

“Oh my god."

Hunter looked like he might be sick. “No,” he said, a pained whine in his voice.

Shane and Ilya just nodded.

“When? How long? How on earth—”

“Too many questions, Hunter,” Ilya jumped in. “Though ahead of our rookie season, if you must know.”

Hunter’s face took on an even paler shade. “Your rookie season?”

Shane shrugged. “We were on and off for a long time.”

“All those All Stars games.”

Shane nodded. “Yeah, we were seeing each other for most of those.Throughout our playoff runs too,” he added like an afterthought.

“It was not so serious at the beginning,” Ilya began. “At least not for him,” he added, pointing at Shane.

He went on. “I loved him from the moment I saw him.”

Shane frowned at that, even as he reached to squeeze Ilya's hand.

“You loved him?” Hunter sputtered.

“I love him,” Ilya corrected. 

Hunter placed his head in his hands and groaned. “You are fucking kidding me. Hollander, you couldn’t have mentioned this any of the hundreds of times we’ve talked about being burnt out gay retired hockey players? Really?”

Shane shook his head. “It wasn’t just mine to tell."

“You’re right. But fuck.” Hunter exhaled. “Ilya fucking Rozanov? Jesus Christ. Were there no nice men in Montreal?”

Then he squinted at Ilya. “And don’t you, like, famously love women?”

“It is called being bisexual,” Ilya replied, rolling his eyes. “You really are a dinosaur.”

A flash of anger appeared in Hunter’s eyes and for a moment he thought the man might slam him against the boards, against the table in this diner.  “God, don’t think that just because you aren’t straight, or something, I’m gonna like you.”

“Don’t worry,” Ilya said tightly, taking a sip of his coffee. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

The two just glared at each other in silence for a few moments.

Finally, Shane intervened. “What Ilya was trying to say,” he began, “is that we were together in one way or another for a long time. A decade, really.”

Hunter shook his head in disbelief at that. “And now what? You gave your douche bag of an ex-boyfriend a job coaching your team?" 

Shane ignored the dig. “We started seeing each other again recently, actually,” he admitted carefully. “No one knows. Well, except you.”

At that, Ilya watched Hunter puff up with his typical air of self-importance, as if he alone could shoulder this great secret. Thankfully, while the man was a lot of things, Ilya knew he would keep his mouth shut.

Hunter looked at Shane. “I’m happy for you, man,” and he reached out across the table to pat his forearm. The two of them exchanged another private smile, though Ilya found this one more heartwarming than annoying.

“Kip and I tried to set him up with so many men over the years,” Hunter said. “Nothing worked, obviously.”

He went on. “And we couldn’t for the life of us figure out why.”

Shane took a sip from his mug and remained silent.

“Not so many people for me to kill then,” Ilya said thoughtfully. Hunter just looked at him in horror, as if he thought he was legitimately contemplating taking out Shane’s exes one by one.

Ilya rolled his eyes. This man wouldn’t know a sense of humor if he walked right into it. Shane, however, was blushing at his words, which made the whole thing worth it.

The rest of the conversation went much more smoothly. Shane and Ilya took turns coloring in the details of their relationship, both past and present. They talked about Ilya’s move to Montreal, the Metros and their historic run, and the state of hockey as they saw it.

Hunter told them about Kip and their two daughters, both of whom they had adopted over a decade ago once the man was squarely in retirement. Ilya had no trouble imaging Hunter as a family man, but this, this configuration was something entirely out of the realm of possibility. At least, what had felt possible when he had stepped into this diner an hour ago.

It was funny how quickly the universe’s limits could expand. It took one person being brave, whether accidentally or intentionally, for those boundaries to gain an inch, or mile. Suddenly the spectrum of possibility grew wider, and one could see in entirely new colors. In that moment, Ilya chose to find that fact heartwarming, and inspiring even, instead of what it could also be, which was bittersweet.

That night, the Admirals trounced Montreal, and two nights later they did so once again. It wasn’t that the Metros hadn’t played well. They were simply up against a team who offered them little to no margin for error.

Ilya could only hope their luck might change once at home in Montreal.

Miraculously, it did. They won their third game cleanly. Their fourth had been a particularly beautiful showings from Harper, Bartek, and Marin on the power play.

After that one, Ilya somehow found himself in his office with Shane pressed up against him as their players' raucous celebrations sounded from behind the closed door.

This was unprecedented. For one, the Metros had somehow appeared to right the ship, a move that was all the more impressive from a team as inexperienced as theirs. And, of course, the other unprecedented piece being that Shane never visited their locker room, and certainly did not visit it to make out with Ilya on his desk.

Shane’s hand was halfway into his pants when they heard the tell-tale click of the door popping open.

“Ilya, zdes pressa i oni sprashivayut—”

Ilya clenched, and could feel Shane do the same against him. They had been so foolish and drunk with victory. He realized there was nothing to be done but pray.

A head appeared around the door.

Unlike Hunter, Zaborin just blinked at what was laid bare before him, looking placidly at their frozen embrace. Then he appeared thoughtful, like he was inspecting a line for its weak spots.

“Ya mogu vernutsya?”

I can come back? the man finally asked.

By then, Shane had stepped away and was now brushing his collared shirt and sports coat like he was trawling for a million pieces of invisible lint.

“Nyet,” Ilya began. “Ostantes. Pozhaluysta.”

Stay. Please.

Shane beckoned towards a chair, which their assistant coach sunk into willingly.

“Ilya, it is not my business,” Zaborin said in Russian. “I don’t care what you do in your free time.”

Ilya looked at him carefully. He liked this man. He even counted him a friend, and maybe the only one he had who was actually Russian besides Svetlana. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t suspicious of the decades of conditioning that this man had gone through, conditioning that made him, more likely than not, hardly accepting of what he had just witnessed.

“No,” Ilya agreed. “You are right. But you should not have seen that.”

He went on in Russian. “Not because I am ashamed. But because of who we are,” and he beckoned between him and Shane.

“That is hardly a problem, Ilya.” Then, “as far as I'm concerned, you are the only person that man will ever call an equal," Zaborin said in Russian, as if Shane wasn’t even in the room. “I didn’t see this coming. But I can’t say I’m surprised. You two have always had a special…” he trailed off, searching for the word. "A special connection.”

Shane jumped in. “Ivan, ob etom nikto ne dolzhen znat.” No one can know about this.

“Po krayney mere, seychas." At least, not right now, he added.

Now that got a look of utter shock from Zaborin. “Vy govorite porusski?” he said a little desperately.

You speak Russian?

Shane nodded. "A little."

Zaborin looked between him and Ilya again, and again, like he were solving a particularly intricate puzzle. He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face.

“The things we do for love,” he finally offered.

Shane smiled at that.

The man turned to Ilya. “And you are happy, Ilyusha?”

Zaborin had never called him by anything but Ilya, Rozanov, or Coach. The nickname made him want to reach out and grab ahold of him.

“For the first time in a long time."

“Good,” Zaborin nodded.

He changed course. “The game. It was very good.”

“It was a fucking fantastic game,” Shane agreed.

The three men exchanged pleased grins, and their conversation turned towards that.

A few days later, the Metros were back in New York and, once again, losing at the hands of the Admirals. Staring down their third game six of the playoffs, Ilya felt like he had entered a flow state the likes of which he had only ever experienced a handful of times as a player. They had to win this or they were finished.

The morning of the game, Ilya found Harper doing laps around the hotel lobby and forced him to accompany him on a stroll. The heat of the day hadn’t entirely taken over as they headed towards Central Park. Thankfully, Ilya had played enough games in this city to know his way around its more famous parts.

Ilya and his captain didn’t say much of anything. It was a comfortable quiet. Or, perhaps, not comfortable, since Ilya was acutely aware of the pressure that man was shouldering in that moment. But it was silence filled with mutual understanding, nonetheless. If anything, this reminded Ilya of how he and Hollander used to be ahead of games.

The two of them walked and walked until they inevitably made it past large perfectly groomed meadows, taking paths through twisted forests and up a set of steep stone steps to a structure that looked oddly like a fairytale castle teetering on an overlook at the center of the park. Harper leaned on the railing and took in the view of the meadows below them.

“What are you worried about?” Ilya finally asked.

The man exhaled. “Losing, obviously.” Then, “Making a fool of myself. Disappointing you," and he looked at Ilya at that.

“That is not possible.”

Harper frowned at him.

“What? It isn’t.” 

“You and Hollander,” Harper began. “You and Shane,” he corrected. “You've been so good to us. But this isn’t about self-improvement, or happiness." He leaned forward, placing his chin on the railing. "This is about winning. And that is all our fans care about,” he sighed. "At the end of the day, that is all this league cares about too.”

“You do not think those things can coexist? Happiness and winning?”

Harper frowned at Ilya. “Maybe. But none of that matters if you can’t deliver on the winning.”

“Did Shane ever tell you why I agreed to coach this team?”

Harper shook his head. “He’s very private," he offered by way of explanation. “I guess you know that, though.”

Ilya laughed. “I am aware.”

He went on. “I loved hockey as a boy. It was a means to an end, sure. Money, freedom from Russia. But I loved it in the way a boy loves any great game that challenges him. I couldn’t leave it alone. I practiced constantly. I won and lost with boys who loved it just as much as I did.”

Then he pivoted. “You are young, but you are hardly a rookie. You are staring down the best years of your career.”

Harper nodded, biting his lip.

“You play well under pressure. You are intelligent on the ice. You know how to lead.”

Ilya said these compliments offhandedly but his captain’s body tensed beside him as he ran the list.

“You have the simplest, hardest job, as I see it.”

“And that is what?”

“Now you have to remember why you love this game in the first place.”

Ilya continued. “You have to have fun, somehow. Even under the pressure."

"I wish I could say that I knew what putting you and Lukas on the same line would do, but I didn’t. I should have known, since I know a version of that feeling," he offered. "But I only experienced something like that with Shane once, and chased the feeling for many years."

He looked at Harper, still slumped over the railing but with his head now cocked towards him. “You need to treasure that. What you two have, and how you play the game."

Harper nodded fiercely, only for anxiety to return a moment later. “And even with all that, what if we lose?”

Ilya shrugged. “If you are asking will I be proud. I told you, I already am.”

Harper let out a breath.

“But will he be?” The he in question needed no explanation.

“He loves you, Alex.”

Harper frowned.

“He does,” Ilya insisted gently. “Look what he did when you and Lukas came out. He would have done anything to protect you.”

He went on. “I don’t know what he said to you ahead of the game against Boston, but I know it came from the heart. Shane is a hard man to understand,” he added. “But not a hard man to love, or be loved by.”

Harper nodded at that, then a look of surprise flashed across his features. "He didn’t tell you what he said?”

Ilya shook his head.

“He said he saw a lot of himself in me. That I'd chase Stanley Cups, just like he had, and that I'd win some too.” A small, satisfied, and oddly familiar smile appeared on Harper's face. “But that none of it would ever fill me up, or make me whole," he continued.

Harper looked thoughtful. “I don’t think anyone could've said that and I would've listened, except for him." He shook his head. "God, as a kid, I couldn’t tell if I was in love with him or wanted to be him.”

Ilya listened intently.

“If you had told me Shane Hollander was going to give me advice about anything I would've died then and there.”

He went on. “I remember watching old videos of his Cup wins. Him skating around and holding it over his head, kissing it again and again. I’d fall asleep to them. It was all I ever wanted. To win like that. Like him. And then here is Shane Hollander himself telling me none of it matters," he said, shaking his head. "At least, not more than the man he loves."

Harper twisted towards Ilya, meeting his gaze. “I see how he looks at you and I believe him. But, even with all of that perspective, I can’t turn off the part of me that will die if I don’t win this. I just can’t, and I know he can’t either.”

He went on. “There is no option but winning, not for me, not for him, and not for you.”

Ilya took that in. Harper wasn’t wrong, though maybe not for the reasons he realized.

He placed a hand on the man's shoulder. “You don't owe us anything.”

Harper looked him. His eyes were wide and watery. Then Ilya pulled him in. He was easily as tall as him, but the feeling of holding this man in his arms was the closest thing Ilya had ever experienced to cradling a child.

Without thinking, he placed a kiss on his head. “It will be ok, Alex. No matter what. I promise.” Then, “you will always have us," and the man just held him tighter.

That night, they won.

Harper dictated the game from its opening minutes, scoring a playoff hat trick the likes of which this league hadn’t seen in years. As the final buzzer rang, the man didn’t skate towards Bartek or his teammates, but towards Ilya, and he picked his coach up, swinging him around in his arms like a ragdoll as they howled with glee.

Then game seven arrived, and, once again, Shane and Ilya were staring down a potential end to their miraculous run. But neither Harper nor Bartek seemed capable of going down without a fight. They played the best hockey of their season during that critical game, delivering a definitive win on home ice for Montreal, and the world, to see.

Afterwards, bottles of champagne went off in the locker rooms like a series of violent explosions. Harper and Bartek’s hair stuck to their faces in a mixture of alcohol and sweat, and they clung to each other as they celebrated. Their rookie defensemen, Marin and Kucerka, were drenched and dumbstruck. Astala quietly cleaned his gear amid the spray.

Somehow, the Eastern Conference was theirs.

What Ilya hadn’t expected was what came next. Shane entering the locker room and pulling Ilya into a long hug in front of the crowd of men. It wasn’t romantic necessarily, but the touch communicated all that Ilya needed in that moment, and for Shane to take the risk of such a display made him feel drunk with happiness, on top of the win and the liter of champagne already in his blood stream.

Finally, Shane pulled away. He surveyed the room and his players within it. The men looked at him with wide, awe-filled eyes. Suddenly it occurred to Ilya that they rarely if ever saw the man up close.

Shane found Harper, peering at him from the middle of the scrum. He reached out and took the man’s hand, pulling him forward. Then he embraced him, and their players roared at the display. Ilya couldn’t help but think back to what he had said to this team ahead of their game against Boston. Hockey wasn’t about stars, but here their brightest star had finally anointed a successor.

As the two men hugged, Shane pressed his cheek against Harper’s and whispered something in his captain’s ear, and his eyes went wide with joy. Harper shook his head violently at whatever had been said, and the older man just laughed.

Then Shane happily knocked their heads together and, for a moment, Ilya was transported decades back to a young Hollander, the pitch black hair, his baby-faced freckled cheeks, the dark unassuming eyes that could flicker to a battle-ready stare at a moments notice. There, in front of him, stood that boy celebrating proudly with his teammates on the ice.

Chapter 16: Bittersweet Symphony

Chapter Notes

Bitter Sweet Symphony - The Verve

Ilya pressed his cheek against the cool window of the plane. Below him, the tips of the Rockies reached upwards like outstretched fingers. He had been managing a low grade headache since they had won the Eastern Conference and the chill of the pane felt mind-numbingly good against his skin.

Beside him, sat Shane. Ilya had watched the man fight off sleep for hours, first with a newspaper, then with his tablet, before finally passing out. Each time a player used the bathroom, they walked by the shocking sight of their general manager slumped on his head coach’s shoulder. If anyone wondered about the status of the rivalry, they only needed to look here, Ilya thought.

After they arrived at their hotel and home base for the Stanley Cup final and Ilya helped his players settle in, he pocketed his keycard and finally went in search of his room.

He paused as he opened the door. The shower was running.

“Ilya, is that you?”

He stepped into the suite. When he moved into the bathroom, he ran into a wall of steam. Shane was naked under the spray.

“Couldn’t afford your own room?” Ilya asked, leaning against the door frame and crossing his arms in a vaguely disciplinary pose.

Shane shrugged as suds ran down his front. “Being GM has its perks.”

“Like what?” he responded, shucking his shirt and jeans off his body. “Surprising your sexy Russian head coach in his hotel room?”

The other man laughed. “Like getting to share a hotel room with my boyfriend on a work trip,” and he pulled Ilya into the shower with him.

Once inside, steam enveloped Ilya in the most delicious way. It made him lightheaded. Without thinking, he pressed Shane up against the tiles and kissed him.

“Lucky us,” he mumbled.

Shane groaned in agreement and ground his erection against him.

“I like ‘boyfriend’,” Ilya continued, “but it is a silly word, no? There are better words for us, I think. Words I like more.”

“Like what?” Shane asked.

Ilya just smiled. Then he pulled back. “We are are men, Hollander, not boys.”

“Thank god,” Shane responded, kissing every inch of skin he could find. “Because you are the sexiest man I have ever seen.” And for that, Ilya let him have it.

Minutes later, he was somehow even sweatier, his curls plastered to his forehead. Rivulets ran down his front into his thick chest hair. Shane looked perfectly pink against him, as he ran a hand along Ilya’s pecs and stomach, feeling each muscle as he went.

“Sometimes none of this feels real,” the other man admitted, as his hand dropped to Ilya’s cock and he lightly tugged at it.

“Mhm,” Ilya nodded, biting Shane’s lip. That was the best Hollander was getting out of him in his current state.

The man went on. “I dreamed about this for so long, but my memories were no good. Maybe at first they were ok, but not as I got older.” He continued to play with Ilya’s erection as he spoke. “By then, I didn’t want you in the way I remembered, like when we were kids. I wanted you like you are now.”

He let out a frustrated laugh. “I had to imagine all of this,” he said, as he felt for Ilya’s thick chest hair and stroked his gray-flecked stubble. "Stupid made up fantasies,” he mumbled as he planted another kiss on him. Ilya’s cock twitched in his hand and Shane looked at it with a pleased smile. “But now I know,” and he ran his other hand over Ilya’s stomach like he owned it.

“Tell me every one of those stupid fantasies,” Ilya murmured as he made his way along his neck and thrust into his grip.

Shane couldn’t possibly flush more. The man’s silver and black hair stuck to his forehead and cheeks like silk, and his head dropped to the side as he let out a groan at Ilya’s cock moving in and out of his hand of its own will.

“It was stupid really. Sex, sure. But silly things too. Like falling asleep with you and waking up in your arms.”

Ilya frowned. “Not silly. I thought about that too.”

He disentangled himself from Shane and walked out of the shower, dragging the other man with him. The cooler air hit them immediately as they stepped out. The bathroom lights were harsh and glaring, exposing every inch and divot of their naked bodies. There were few middle-aged men more in the shape than the two of them. But even with that, they weren’t teenagers. Scars from various hockey injuries littered their bodies. One particularly gruesome line ran along Ilya’s right knee and up his thigh. Freckles and sun spots dotted Shane’s back like constellations. There were wrinkles too, including a dimple on the man’s ass that made Ilya’s mouth water.

Shane watched Ilya watching him.

“Like what you see?”

Ilya nodded. “I love what I see.”

Those words were in Russian, and he could see comprehension in Shane’s eyes. He would never get used to being able to do that with him. Shane could read the grocery list in Ilya’s native tongue and it would sound like a love poem.

“Why don’t you take a closer look?” Shane said, and slinked out the room and towards the freshly made king-sized bed.

Ilya pushed him on to the sheets with a shove, caging him under his body.

“Do you have places to be?” Ilya exhaled.

Shane shook his head. “No, I told our staff I’d be offline until tonight.”

Until the game. Was it reckless that they were doing this? Could they still be pouring over stats, or watching video of Colorado until their eyes bled?Maybe, Ilya found himself thinking as he shimmied down and took Shane in his mouth. The man firmed up even more as he ran his tongue along him.

After a few minutes of swallowing the man’s cock, Ilya realized he would give up anything if it meant getting to do this every day. Anything to pleasure Shane, hold him in his arms, bicker, lie in boredom, and do all the things couples did.

Shane was babbling as Ilya took him deeper. The sounds were a familiar song. No one knew the man’s tells like Ilya did. It was a string of whines and moans, of coherent phrases and utter nonsense. Ilya smiled around his cock and flicked his tongue in a specific way he knew would drive him insane. Sure enough, Shane emptied himself in Ilya’s mouth like he had pressed a button.

Then the man took matters into his own hands and gave Ilya one of the most excruciatingly perfect hand jobs of his life.

After he had come, Ilya rolled over and breathed deeply. He lazily looked over at the other man. Shane was still pink and damp in a way that made Ilya want to devour him. Maybe it was the heat they had both just endured or the joint orgasms, but for some reason the  words that came out of his mouth were the ones he least expected.

“We should get married.”

Shane froze, as if moving a muscle would somehow activate a trip wire. His eyes moved anxiously towards Ilya’s.

"Did you just—”

“No,” Ilya interrupted. “I mean, yes. But more like is that a thing you would want.”

“I see,” Shane breathed

“So you aren’t asking me,” he continued slowly, carefully even. “You are asking me if that is hypothetically a thing I would want?”

Ilya nodded in relief. “Yes, that. Plus my knees are fucked.”

Shane giggled, the sound especially marvelous coming from someone usually so dignified. “Who said you’re getting down on one knee?”

“I don’t know, Hollander,” Ilya retorted. “Maybe I wouldn’t want to wait for you to get the courage to do it. Maybe I’d be too impatient.”

“Courage?” Shane asked with slight annoyance. “I’d do it right now.”

“Very funny,” Ilya laughed. "No you wouldn’t.”

Shane frowned at him. “Yes, I would. I’d ask you to marry me right now if you’d say yes.”

“Obviously I’d say yes,” Ilya said with exasperation. “I have been in love with you for thirty years.  A little hard to play hard to get, I think.”

At that, Shane seemed like he was at a loss for words.

“You would?”

“Uh, yes.” Then, “Shane, what is this expression?”

The other man rolled off the bed and walked toward the hallway. That perfect new dimple on his ass flashed at Ilya like a wink as he went.

“It’s nothing crazy,” Shane’s voice carried from the other room. He reappeared by the door way, still entirely naked and beautiful. In his hand was a box.

Ilya felt like his stomach had dropped twenty stories. “What is that?”

“This?” Shane asked, brandishing the box like it was a weapon or a dog treat. “Catch,” he said, and he threw it.

Ilya would have his lightning-fast relaxes until the day he died. He grabbed the object mid-air with confident catch.

Then he looked at it in the palm of his hand. “What have you done, Shane?”

“As always, beat you to it apparently,” the man said with a grin, crossing his arms. “Now open it.”

There, nestled in black velvet, was a band of white gold. It was elegant and understated in a masculine way, but unquestionably beautiful.

Ilya looked at Shane with questioning eyes.

“I bought it a long, long time ago.”

He went on. “In Ottawa. The first year you were living there.” He moved towards the bed, peering at the ring over Ilya’s shoulder. “I didn’t know when I was going to ask you, I just knew I wanted to. It’s been my good luck charm during the playoffs,” he added sheepishly.

“I can’t wear this,” Ilya said without thinking.

Shane didn’t seemed deterred. “I get it. You can wear it when we're no longer hiding.”

“No, I can’t wear this. I can’t wear this because I don’t have one for you.”

Shane planted a lingering kiss on his lips at that. “We can pick something out together. But I want you to wear this now, if you’re comfortable.”

Ilya looked at him with surprise. Then, he nodded. He slipped the band onto his ring finger. Even twenty years late, it fit like a glove. He curled his fingers into a fist, looking at the way the metal glinted on him.

“It’s beautiful, Shane.” Then, “the word I think is better. It is ‘husband’.” Ilya pressed a kiss to his cheek. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“My husband,” he added.

Shane purred happily at that, and he climbed on top of him once more.

Later that night, Colorado beat Montreal.

Obviously, Ilya cared. Nothing less than his future hung in the balance. But at some point during the playoffs, the two most important things in his life, hockey and Shane, had inverted. Alone time with Shane was no longer some interlude during the endless blur of games. Now the games were pauses from the meat of his life, which was time with the man he loved.

In Montreal came another loss. This one had been closer. Astala had an outstanding game, blocking attempts he had no business touching. But the Metros shots on goal were far too low. They were playing cautiously and nervously, like children who had finally been granted access to the adults table.

Svetlana came to that particularly game and unsurprisingly had a lot to say. Later that night, about halfway through her deluge of unsolicited advice, Ilya wondered if Shane should have hired her instead. She was giving her takes while draped on his couch in head to toe Raiders gear.

“You know we eliminated them, right?” Ilya asked, and the woman flipped him off.

A few minutes later, Shane walked into the apartment only to find her splayed on his sofa still in that pose. Ilya suddenly wondered what the man might say. He just looked at her and grinned. “I can’t believe we’ve never met.”

“I know,” she said, shooting up to greet him. "And you speak Russian?” she barked with glee. “No wonder he said yes. That and were always the hottest player in the MLH." She winked, eyeing the ring glinting on Ilya’s finger.

“Oy,” Ilya called. “I’m right here, Sveta.”

“Oh shut up,” Svetlana cooed. “You’re doing just fine for yourself,” and she slapped him playfully on the shoulder.

“Can I get you anything, Shane?” she asked as she wandered towards the kitchen like she lived there.

“What are you going to do about your team?” she asked a moment later, as she sat back down with a can of ginger ale in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

“We need to lower the temperature,” Ilya said calmly. “They have what they need to win, if they can calm themselves down enough to actually do it.”

Svetlana eyed him. “You don’t seem very worried.”

“That makes one of us,” Shane said, frowning.

The man continued. “Ilya was always like this. Making it all look easy while the rest of us panicked.”

Ilya shrugged. “I’m not sure what worrying will do.”

“For what it’s worth, it’s clearly not your lines,” Svetlana offered. “Moving Bartek up was inspired. Pavlovski has great chemistry with Lassiter.”

“And Marin,” she whistled. “Oh boy, you got lucky with him.”

Shane grinned. “That was all Ilya.”

“Of course it was,” Svetlana responded. “But you’re missing something else,” she continued. “It’s an attitude thing. It’s like they’re asking permission to score.”

Shane just leaned back and sipped his drink in thought. Ilya could tell he was watching a game of hockey in his mind’s eye.

Back in Colorado, they lost for a third time. As accurate as Svetlana’s diagnosis had been, Ilya couldn’t figure out the solution. Every speech of his had been more rousing than the next. He didn’t know what more he could offer these men.

As they returned to Montreal, Ilya felt like the jig was up. He didn’t want to wander into defeat, but that was the inevitable direction they were headed. His stomach twinged with the realization that that meant another year of battling for the Cup, of keeping their relationship secret until they had created the conditions under which they could live it proudly.

At the thought of that, Ilya was overwhelmed with the desire to drive to the airport and board the first plane to anywhere. To the most remote island he could think of, some oceanic rock with more sheep than people. Shane would be there too, of course. Who needed the world. Maybe they could live out their days there together. Surely that would be enough. But he knew Shane was wired differently. Whatever this was, Shane needed it. The victory, and the legitimacy it offered. Their relationship wasn’t hanging in the balance, not like it had been the last time, but their happiness certainly was.

The night of game four, Ilya felt like he might detonate at any moment. As he walked toward the locker room to give his last speech of the season, he found Shane leaning against the doors. For a moment, it reminded him of the sight of Shane leaning against the locker room doors in Saratoga. The man then and the man now were one and the same, and yet so much had changed. Ilya felt like he had circumnavigated the world over the last year only to find his way back into Shane’s arms.

No one talked about how hard it was to forgive the people you loved. Hard because it hurt, but harder still because you so often wanted to but didn’t know how. Happiness was talked about like it was a gift one was given, but as Ilya got older he realized the only thing standing between him and his happiness was himself.

It was he who had finally agreed to go to therapy and take the pills his doctor had prescribed. It was he who had gotten in a car the minute his jersey had been hung in Ottawa’s rafters and driven east for some explicable reason, only to realize he was in Montreal. And it was he who had then turned south and driven and driven until he had pulled off the I-87 with a drop of gas in the tank and found himself in Saratoga, and it was he who had stayed.

Years later, as the Storm became a force, people asked him ‘why Saratoga?’ as if Ilya had thrown animal bones to divine the right place to build North America’s next great U12 team. The truth was Saratoga was as far as one could get from Montreal on half a tank.

So, yes, happiness was a choice. It was the choice to pick up one’s life, and to fight for what one wanted. It was also the choice to forgive someone. It was a choice to come home.

Shane looked at him from his place against the doors. “Mind if I join?”

Ilya dipped his head. “Be my guest,” and he held the door open for Shane, the man stepping in with him at his back.

Again, the semi-circles of blue, white, and red. They had grown so familiar to Ilya that they were comforting even as his adrenaline spiked. A ripple ran through the lines as the men clocked Shane’s presence. They were like soldiers standing to attention. It was an involuntary yet disciplined motion that made Ilya shake his head. Whatever it was, Shane still had it after all these years.

Their GM looked at them and crossed his arms. He was in one of his typical navy game day suits, a Metros pin on one lapel and the number twenty-four on the other. The suit was well-tailored and underneath it all was clearly the body of an elite athlete hiding in plain sight.

He walked to the middle of the room and stopped at its center. Then he looked back towards Ilya, who remained by the doors as if he was ceding his time to Shane.

The man exhaled, taking in the sight around him. “I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been in a locker room like this one since I wore a jersey like yours.”

Their team took that in.

“I have a few things I’d like to say, if you’ll let me,” he began. Every man nodded. Obviously they would let him. They would be so lucky.

“I recognize this battlefield isn’t mine, at least not any more. It’s yours,” he said, pointing at Ilya, “and it’s his. But I’ve been in your position,” he continued, nodding towards Harper and the center stall in which he sat.

He looked at Ilya. “When I was drafted in this league, I was furious. I’d been drafted second overall,” he explained. “Thanks to some Russian guy.”

The room laughed at that. Ilya shrugged apologetically.

“The only thing that seemed to make that ok was being drafted to Montreal. All I could think about was wearing the colors of this team. Anyone who’s had the privilege of being a Metro knows what we have transcends sport.”

He paused. “It’s a funny thing. We worship at the altar of this team and we are its gods.”

“That’s a heavy weight,” he added. “But one it’s an honor to bear.”

Ilya watched Harper meet Shane’s eyes and nod in agreement.

“No matter what happens tonight, I want you to remember the colors you wear. The traditions you’re apart of, and the men that came before you. You skate alongside every jersey that hangs in our rafters, including mine.”

Then the man pivoted. “Hockey can be cruel. We play more games per season. Our playoffs are some of the most hard-fought of any sport. And yet we come back time and time again because we love it.”

He paused. “We come back for the sport, and for the people we play it with."

"There was no one I loved playing with more than him,” Shane said, and he pointed right at Ilya. The men looked between the two of them and took the weight of those words in. Ilya dipped his head in silent acknowledgment.

“There is nothing more powerful than true competition. Nothing better than victories you’ve fought tooth and nail for.”

He went on. “In the challenge, lies the glory. Playing with Ilya was a gift, and it’s part of why I knew he needed to coach this team. There was no better on-ice coach than Ilya Rozanov. He built the Raiders into a generational force, and he made the worst team in the league a playoff contender.”

Shane paused. “And he always had something I didn’t.”

Ilya cocked his head at that, not sure where the man was going.

“He loved this game with a pure heart. It wasn’t blind, desperate love. The sort of thing that makes a man sacrifice everything.”

He went on. “No, it was something else. Like him, it was free. And it was beautiful to watch.”

Shane stepped towards Ilya and took his hand in his.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is you won’t win this game tonight playing like me. But you may just win it if you play like him.”

The men nodded in unison. Like bobbleheads, Ilya couldn’t help but think. 

That night, the Metros dominated.

The media tried to call it a fluke, but Ilya called it what it was.

It was a sea change.

Some permanent and unalterable current had sent them in a new direction. And again, and again, they won. Until once more, for the fourth and final time, they were staring down a game seven.

The last week had felt like a fever dream. The ring on this finger only furthered the feeling that this was a fantasy, some lush vision he might wake up from. The only thing that tethered him to this earth was Shane. Shane, whose most steady and leaderly qualities always came out under pressure, this time being no different.

The game started as so many others had. A quick goal from Colorado, and a definitive rebuttal a few minutes later from Harper and Bartek. Lassiter had gotten in another as the first period ended. Then came two from the enemy in rapid succession in the second. The game had been contact heavy, even as Montreal did their best to avoid the box.

Nevertheless, there was a penalty kill and another as the Metros held on for dear life. Then Marin scored from the blue line, another one of his shocking and abrupt goals that made the arena groan and scream in equal measure.

Tied going into the third, the wheels started to come off. Their men were tired. Ilya could feel it from his place behind them on the bench. Their sheer and complete exhaustion as they ran their tanks empty.

Colorado scored again and was up with three minutes left on the clock. Their defensive effort was fortress-like, but the Metros would not give up. They took every shoot available to them, the sorts of trick shots that had a place in a game of pond hockey more than they did in an MLH final.

These men were fighting for their lives. Then, it happened. With a minute left on the clock, Bartek scored.

Ilya felt insane with relief as the puck hit the back of the net. Bartek barreled into Harper and knocked his head against him, an awed expression on the other man’s face. They just needed to hold the line and bring this to overtime. Thankfully, they had Marin and Leroux on the ice.

The next minute was long. So long it felt like it encapsulated the last two decades of Ilya’s life in its sixty seconds. Every emotion, from heartbreak, to victory, to depression, to boredom, to love.

All of it hung in the balance of those numbers ticking by on the clock. There was nothing to be done now. He had taught these men all he could. Shane had too.

Now they just had to pray, and let them play. And play they did, until a Colorado winger slotted the puck into the net.

It happened in the blink of an eye. The black rubber weaving through the tightest of channels in the crowded crease. It was luck. The painful and worst sort of luck, Ilya would tell himself for days afterward.

But it didn’t matter. Colorado had scored, and with that, they were Stanley Cup champions. 

They rushed the ice as quickly as the Metros fled it. The locker room was silent, and the flight somehow even more so.

Ilya hadn’t texted Shane because he didn’t know what to say. All he did was rotate the ring, that terrifying promise, around his finger again, and again, wondering if it was more conditional than he had realized. Their plan had felt so simple they had forgotten its odds.

In the earliest hours of the morning, Ilya returned to his apartment in a fugue state.

Only then did he text Shane, “I’m sorry.”

It was all he could say right now. He hoped the other man would forgive him. He had done his very best, surely Shane could see that. He had gotten them right to the summit, a thing no one had thought possible with a team like Montreal.

“I love you,” came back a few moments later.

He thumbed those words.

Then, “I’m flying to New York.”

“??”

“The commissioner asked to meet.”

Ilya froze. That could be a number of things, but the only one that really made sense after a crippling game seven loss was something as disastrous as the public relations nightmare that might follow if their relationship came to light after such a loss.

Ilya looked at the time. There were no planes to catch at this hour, and his brain was still playing that final horrible goal over and over again. He packed a bag, clipped Anya into her leash, and headed towards his truck. The vehicle had remained largely untouched since he had moved here a year ago.

He checked the gas. He had enough to at least get him across the border. Then he got in the car, and he drove.

The agent at the sleepy Champlain border crossing looked surprised to see Ilya Rozanov, fallen angel of Montreal, at his door step in the earliest hours of the morning. He had been so shocked that he had just waved him through after asking for an autograph.

Once again, by the time Ilya was approaching Saratoga his tank was low. He pulled into the nearest gas station and finally did what he hadn’t been able to do all of those years ago. He filled up the tank and drove towards the man he loved.

A few hours later, he arrived in Manhattan. He made it to Shane’s apartment and, thanks to an extra key, stumbled through the door. The place was empty. He could go to the MLH’s headquarters right now and interrupt whatever conversation Shane was having, or he could wait.

Unfortunately his own sheer exhaustion made the choice for him and he passed out on the sofa, waking up to the sound of the lock moving.

“What are you doing here?” Shane gasped.

“I had to make sure you were ok. Are you ok?”

The other man nodded. “I think so. The last twenty-four hours have been the craziest of my life.”

“I’m so sorry, Shane.”

“For what? Everyone knows we have you to thank for how close we came.”

He went on. “You are a hero to Montreal. To me too, Ilya.”

“We will win next year,” Ilya said resolutely. “There is no other way.”

Shane just shook his head sadly. “No, Ilya. I don’t think we will. I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen until I finish, ok?”

Ilya just nodded dumbly. There was a tone to Shane’s voice that terrified him, that briefly reminded him of how he had sounded in their last few conversations during his time in Ottawa.

“The commissioner doesn’t know about us. At least, if he does,” Shane corrected slowly, “it didn’t come up.”

Ilya frowned. What could possibly be worse than that potential conversation?

Shane took a breath. He looked pale and exhausted. “It was a job offer, Ilya.”

“What?” he found himself saying out loud. “To work with him?”

Shane dipped his head. “No, Ilya. He didn’t offer me a job.”

Then, “he offered me the job.”

Ilya looked at the man in confusion. Nothing made sense. He felt concussed and exhausted, like he wanted to curl up in a ball in the dark.

Shane went on. “He told me the board of directors were unanimous. That upon his retirement this summer, they would instate me.”

“What?” Ilya asked again. Shane was saying so many words, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what they meant.

“Ilya,” the man said, taking his hand in his. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ilya just shook his head. He felt helpless, like a current was peeling him off in some dangerous and permanent direction.

“They want to appoint me the next commissioner of the MLH.”

Hearing those words said so plainly made Ilya feel ill with terror. Not terror at the job itself, Crowell hadn’t held that position in years, and there was no reason it needed to hold such power over him. But terror at what he knew was coming.

“Ilya…” Shane began.

Ilya could hear it in the tone. It already sounded apologetic even as it sounded definitive. There would be no swaying Shane. He had made his choice. He had made his choice before he’d even left the meeting.

“It is ok, Hollander,” Ilya found himself saying. “I understand.”

“I understand,” he repeated, again, and again. He could feel his eyes water, the ring on his finger suddenly felt like a weight that might drag him to the ocean floor.

Shane looked at him with confusion. “What are you talking about?”

As Ilya saw it, it was one thing for them to have a clandestine relationship as they tried to win Montreal its Cup. But this, this was a whole other thing. This was a fork in the road. There was no universe where Shane took this job and their relationship remained intact, not with what this job represented to the league.

“I get it, Hollander. You deserve this.”

“Ilya, what are you talking about?”

Then Shane said the last words he could have expected.

“I said no, obviously.”

Ilya felt like he could scream.

“I told him it was an honor, but not one I could accept.”

He went on. "I told him I was getting married this summer. And that, come fall, I wouldn’t be managing the Metros, let alone running this league.”

That halted Ilya in his tracks.

“Of course I wanted to talk to you about it first, but—” He stopped. “I think this is the end, Ilya. I spent so much time tying myself in knots this year,” he continued. “So much time figuring out ways for us to be together that I missed the most obvious solution.”

“And what is that exactly?”

Shane held his gaze. “Walking away.”

“No one is asking us to do this,” he continued. “No one is asking me to manage this franchise.” He took Ilya’s hand once again in his. “We have won so much, Ilya. More than anyone has a right to. But never the prize we wanted most, not until now. And now that I have it, I won’t give it up.” He shook his head. “Not again. Not to be commissioner of this league, or for some fantasy of another Stanley Cup.”

Ilya felt like he had been submerged in ice. He couldn’t believe these words. Not because they weren’t true. He had known them to be true since he’d lost Shane all those years ago.

Nothing was worth what he had lost, or would ever be. No, the shock wasn’t what Shane was saying. It was that he saying those words unbidden, as if they were thoughts he had come up with entirely on his own.

Suddenly, Ilya realized he didn’t recognize the man in front of him. And then he realized he couldn’t have been happier at that fact.

“Who are you?” he said in awe.

“I’m here, Ilya,” Shane insisted. “And I will always choose you. For the rest of my life.”

Ilya was on him. His hands running through the man’s fine hair as he pulled him in.

“I love you,” Ilya murmured. “I love you so fucking much.”

Then, “I will always love you.”

“I know,” Shane agreed. “I’m sorry it took so long. And for all the mistakes I’ve made. I can never give you those years back, but let me give you this,” he promised and he kissed him again. “Let me give you my future.”

Chapter 17: From the Fire

Chapter Notes

Genesis - Grimes

One Year Later

Today was the sort of Saturday that, a year or so ago, had become the beginning of the rest of Ilya Rozanov’s life.

Thermos of black coffee in hand, he stood in his usual hoodie, track pants, and sneakers. In front of him, bodies skated back and forth like waves crashing against the shoreline.

Ilya took a pull of his drink as he tracked the movements and the desperate panting. Finally, the whistle. Shane’s whistle.

His husband was leaning against the boards in the red and black of the Ottawa Firebirds. The object hung loosely in his mouth as he trilled it again and twenty-something sets of oversized pads skated towards him.

Like bobbleheads, Ilya thought with a grin, as the sea of boys gathered around them.

Shane stepped onto the ice, his arms crossed. “We can’t keep going through the motions,” he said with a frown. “It's not enough to skate. You have to think.” Shane was still working on his phrasing. Sometimes he forgot the people receiving his feedback were ten and eleven-year-olds, and not adult professional athletes.

“Some of us survive just fine without thinking, Hollander," Ilya said as he joined him on the ice. He got a round of nervous snickers from the children at that.

That had become their dynamic over the course of their first season leading this team. Shane was unquestionably bad cop, so much so that Ilya sometimes kicked him out of practice, and Ilya was whatever the opposite of bad cop was, he reasoned. The division of labor was not so different than how it had been when they had run the MLH's most decorated franchise. Shane managed and Ilya coached, though neither was above occasionally switching positions.

Ottawa had been the only real choice. As much as Ilya feared what he might feel upon returning to that place, he was surprised by how little it weighed on him, at least not with Shane by his side.

They had taken the summer to move their lives there. No conversation had been harder for them than the one with their team. As miraculous as the Metros playoff run had been, that final game had been devastating. Ilya refused to make them feel abandoned. If anything, that was the real price he and Shane were paying for their happiness, leaving these men they loved behind. He wanted to do all he could to ease that pain.

They told Harper and Bartek first. The two men were not angry, nor were they sad. They were thrilled, actually.

Harper shook his head at Shane and smiled, and some mutual understanding passed between the two of them.

“Am I allowed to tell Shane Hollander I’m proud of him?” their young captain asked.

“No," the man responded. “But your friend Shane, maybe.”

At that, Bartek cackled and embraced him, a thing no one dared to do except for the crazy Slovak winger, and Ilya Rozanov, of course. When he pulled away, Bartek eyed the two of them. “So what does this mean exactly? You,” he began, only to pause. “You are a couple now?”

Ilya held up his left hand. “Something like that.”

Bartek gaped at the glinting metal. “Holy shit.”

He turned to Harper. “You do realize this is, like, Alex’s fantasy.”

Their captain turned beet red as his boyfriend barreled on.

“He had your posters right next to each other on his wall,” Bartek laughed, pinching Harper's cheek. “So you could be together forever and ever.”

“Oh my god. Lukas. Shut the fuck up,” the man stuttered back.

Ilya and Shane just laughed. “We are happy to make your dreams come true, Harper,” Ilya said with a wink.

“What happens next?” their captain finally asked, once his face had returned to a slightly more normal color.

Ilya shrugged. “We move. We get married. ”

“Where?”

“My hometown,” Shane said. Ilya could see the two men trying to remember in real time where home actually was for this man.

“Ottawa,” Ilya added. “Where Shane’s parents live. Where I lived.”

“Ottawa?” Bartek said with mild disgust. No player ever really wanted to end up there.

“What on earth will you do in Ottawa?”

“Nothing,” Shane offered. “That’s sort of the point.”

Ilya nodded. “Yes, nothing sounds good.”

Of course, neither of them actually knew how to do nothing. So they had approached the city’s U12 team, the Firebirds, upon arrival. It hadn’t been a hostile takeover exactly, but it had been abrupt. Not hostile, because it would have been irresponsible for any team to refuse the leadership of two of the greatest hockey players of all time.

In their conversation with Harper and Bartek, the two had also asked them the question they still hadn’t quite figured out.

“So you’re out?” Bartek had finally asked, scratching his stubble in thought.

“As a couple, he means,” Harper clarified.

Shane shrugged. “Sort of? We aren’t exactly hiding it. But it’s not like we’re holding a press conference.”

“No press conferences,” Ilya grimaced. “It's a relationship, not a charity announcement.” He went on. “People will find out. And that is fine.”

“We do need to tell the team, though,” Shane added with a frown. “They deserve to hear it from us.”

Harper and Bartek exchanged glances. Then they laughed.

“What?” Shane said suspiciously.

“You would like to tell the team?” Bartek asked. “Ok, be our guests.”

Ilya frowned. “Lukas. What is this?”

Harper jumped in. “I think what he’s trying to say is you wouldn’t be telling them anything they don’t already know.”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

Harper pushed on. “They’ve had a lot of, uh, training,” he offered. “Picking up on the signs.”

"Yeah, they're like Soviet spies," Bartek continued. "They figured out he's a top," and he pointed a finger at his boyfriend, who looked at him in abject horror.

Shane just raised an eyebrow at Harper. There was a beat of awkward silence.

"Maybe we don't have as much in common as I thought," Shane muttered, delivering the line with the most brutal dead pan. 

It took both men a moment to understand what had just happened. Then Bartek burst out laughing. "Maybe now he will bottom," the man said, slapping his boyfriend on the back. "Anything to be like Shane Hollander, am I right?"

They all just laughed and laughed at that, even Harper. 

It was Ilya who finally turned back to the problem at hand. “So the team knows.”

"Sort of,” Harper began, before losing steam.

Bartek looked at them matter-of-factly. "They think you fuck."

"I mean, this is correct," Ilya said, shrugging.

“Ilya,” Shane implored, placing a hand on his face.

“Oh, they know,” Bartek grinned. “And they fucking love it.”

Shane looked like he was going to be sick. “You’re making it sound like we’re friends with benefits or something.”

Bartek guffawed at that. There was something amazing about those words coming out of Shane Hollander’s mouth.

“We’re getting married,” he dug in. “You're not my hook up. We’re in love.”

Harper jumped in. “I don’t think you need to be worried about that either.” He scratched his head. “I mean, we all see how you look at each other.” He paused. “Uh, no offense.”

“Jesus Christ,” Shane mumbled. “Thank god I’m retiring. I don’t think I can look at any of you in the eyes ever again.”

“You are such a drama queen, Hollander,” Ilya scoffed before pulling the man in for a kiss.

As Harper and Bartek had predicated, the talk with the Metros had been fine. Everyone was heartbroken, of course, but happy for them too, and the happiness ultimately won out.

It didn’t hurt that they were in excellent hands with Ahmanson. It had been Ilya and Shane’s final request, that the franchise wouldn’t open up an external search to fill the head coach slot. Not when they had the perfect candidate on their staff, and someone whose appointment would also make her the league’s first female head coach.

Management had gone similarly. DeLisle had finally gotten that promotion and stepped out of Shane Hollander’s impossibly large shadow. Shane had told him to not fuck it up and the man shook his head so seriously that Ilya though his eyes might roll out of his head.

By the time the fall had come around, they were settled in Ottawa. A month prior, they had gotten married at the courthouse with Shane’s parents as witnesses. That had been a particularly funny arrangement since Shane’s parents had only seen them interact a handful of times on dry land before their wedding day.

Both of Shane’s parents were in their seventies, but still clear-eyed and sharp. Sharp enough to have very real memories of the decades the two of them had spent beating each other up on the ice. Sometimes Ilya caught Yuna looking at him like it was all a hallucination, or some harebrained prank. But then Ilya would do something as simple as level Shane’s anxiety with a single word or look, and Yuna would just nod appreciatively like she was watching him execute a particularly good play on the ice. After all, she wasn't watching two people learning to be with one another. She was watching two people return home.

After the wedding had come buying a house on Ottawa’s city limits. It was a large piece of land that pressed up against a Provincial Park. Private, Ilya couldn’t help but think, when the realtor gave them the tour. Not secret, but private.

The house was nowhere near the size of Shane’s Outremont mansion, but it did just fine. They even had a version of the trophy room, though this one could only fit their combined greatest hits. Except for the gold medals, which were suspiciously absent. For some reason, they kept ending up in their bedside table drawers.

Beside overseeing the Firebirds, Ilya and Shane had finally gotten around to doing that thing they had discussed during Ilya’s first year in Ottawa. They started a charity called the Irina Foundation, named for his mother.

That had been a press conference, and one that had probably posed more questions than it had provided answers.

So Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander were friends now. That wasn’t a new piece of information. The two of them had almost lead the Metros to a Stanley Cup the season prior, after all.

But why were Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander moving to Ottawa? Why were they living in an old farmhouse together, and coaching a U12 team, and starting a charity? And why were they seen walking Ilya’s dog, or buying groceries, or going on runs, or making out on a bench in a local park?

Enough decades had passed that no one dared to ask those questions at the press conference, but they hadn't needed to. Ilya had been sure to flash his wedding band right at the cameras.

They were no longer hiding, and Ilya genuinely felt like he had nothing to lose. They had both lived enough life that they were fine letting everyone crack this riddle on their own time. It was as Shane had said to the young Firebirds: “It's not enough to skate. You have to think.”

The Firebirds had a spectacular season under Hollander-Rozanov rule. They had never been a bad team, but this degree of dominance was new to the program. Ilya liked to joke they had twenty children. Shane mostly huffed at that, though occasionally he looked at Ilya in a way that made him wonder if he might like a twenty first.

By the time spring rolled around, Ilya was already scheming up which perfectly lazy activities they might do at the cottage that summer, or at Scott and Kip’s home in upstate New York. Ilya had made enough friends in Montreal that the cottage had become a rotating guest house.

Allain visited in the winter with his boyfriend. Ilya did relish watching he and Shane interact. Shane was perfectly polite. Perfectly. Though he wore a suspicious amount of Ilya’s clothing while the man was there.

Ben and a few of his friends stopped by that spring. That had been a fun couple of nights. Ben’s crew explaining they/them pronouns to Shane, and the middle-aged man looking completely overwhelmed by the information.

“You were doing backhanded toe drags at twelve,” Ilya said with an eye roll. “You will figure it out, I think.”

By June, Ilya and Shane were in a familiar spot, though this time as fans. Montreal was preparing to play their first game of the Stanley Cup final against Vegas. As proud as they both were, it had been bittersweet leaving the Metros under new leadership.

While their season under Ilya and Shane’s watch had been an underdog’s story, this one had been a confident march to the post season. Though, as the final series played on, it became clear that this would, once again, come to a game seven.

This time, the game would be in Montreal. That was how Ilya and Shane found themselves in Metros jersey amid tens of thousands of Montreal fans.

Ilya had even been gifted a custom Rozanov Metros jersey for the occasion, which he had proceeded to swap with Shane’s. Hand in hand they walked down the tunnel with a torch, a tradition bestowed to former Metros players ahead of every one of Montreal’s home playoff games.

As they stepped onto the ice, the arena roared. For a brief moment, Ilya was surprised to sense no animosity in the crowd. Not a single person blamed him, or Shane, for what had happened. They were being given a hero’s welcome, as was their right.

He looked over at Shane, whose eyes were watery and wide. “They love you, Hollander,” he whispered.

Then, “I love you, Shane,” and he kissed his cheek in front of twenty-one thousand screaming fans.

At that, the decibel level was truly deafening. There was nothing like being at the receiving end of Montreal's attention, especially beside the man he loved, especially beside Shane Hollander. Whatever adoration this city had for Shane was unique. Brilliant like the sheen of a Stanley Cup, or a wedding ring. Devastating like a natural disaster, or the great love of one’s life. For a moment, Ilya found himself in the crossfire of that adoration and he was alight.

Suddenly the sea of bodies seemed more red than blue. Not like an ocean, but like a wildfire razing the arena from the ground up. The flames rising higher and higher as tens of thousands of fans exalted their heroes. Together, Ilya and Shane gripped their torch and raised it high.

Then the Metros played a game of hockey which even Shane Hollander could be proud of. It hadn’t been a hard scrambling fight to the end. It had been a razing dominant climb to the summit.

As the buzzer blared and the men vaulted over the boards, Ilya bawled. It was an exhaustion he didn’t even realize he was holding in his body. While they had no question made the right decision, he hadn’t realized how tense he had been all year in hopes that Montreal might find themselves here again, but this time as champions.

He looked to Shane and tears were streaming down his husband's face. Teams didn’t transform over night. A change like this took years of meticulous building. Researched draft picks, smart contracts, and thoughtful trades. This was a result many years in the making, a result thanks to Ilya, sure, but ultimately thanks to Shane.

A few minutes later, Harper got the Conn Smythe, a shock to no one, and he beelined towards Bartek with the trophy. The two hugged with the hardware between them. And as their men took their individual laps with the Cup, Ilya and Shane held hands and watched from their seats on the glass.

First the players, then the coaching staff, and finally management.

Of all people, it was DeLisle who beckoned toward them.

Shane looked at the man with confusion.

Over the cacophony of celebration, Ilya could hear the words. “Get on the ice.”

Shane shook his head politely. This wasn’t his to celebrate.

DeLisle shook his head right back at him. “Get on the fucking ice, Hollander.”

Ilya laughed at that. For once, he actually liked this man. He pulled Shane up, and they moved towards the benches and into the fray.

Once they set foot on the ice's torn up surface, cameras immediately trained on them. They hugged their players one by one. Marin sobbed into Ilya’s shoulder. Astala looked shell-shocked. Lassiter and Pavlovski were grinning, covered in snot and sweat.

Harper glided over with the Cup in his hands.

He kissed it. Then he handed it to them.

Shane took a step back, refusing to make contact with its shiny surface. Ilya took the object instead.

“It is heavy, Shane,” Ilya grunted. “I forgot how heavy. Help an old man out, won’t you?”

Shane looked at Ilya and frowned. “It’s not ours to hold.”

“You and your rules,” Ilya laughed. “Look around you.”

Shane took in the blaze of screaming fans.

“This is ours. Every person in this arena knows it. Our team knows it.”

He went on. “I thought you were finally letting yourself have the things you want.”

Shane frowned, only for it to slowly transform into a small smile. “Hand it over.”

Ilya tipped a portion of the Cup towards him and they hoisted it together into the sky. Their team roared around them, swarming them like a pack of animals. From all sides, Ilya felt the heft of sweaty two-hundred-and-something pound bodies. He kissed Shane safely at the center of the scrum.

That night, they stayed up until the early hours of the morning celebrating in bed. Shane kept his Rozanov jersey on for the first hour of celebrations. Sometime in the middle of that Ilya decided the man was never ever taking that article of clothing off if he could help it.

Ilya had his finger tips splayed across the stitching as he fucked the man from behind. Shane grunted and took every thrust, his mouth letting out a string of nonsense at the particularly direct hits.

“Fuck,” he begged. “Fucking take me.”

That only made Ilya push into him harder, pressing the man onto the bed as he piled into him.

He came all over his own name. That was a first, Ilya thought with a laugh in the haze of his orgasm. Shane didn’t seem to mind. He shrugged off the soiled jersey and greedily shoved his cock in Ilya’s mouth without a word.

That night, they kept falling asleep and waking up to one getting the other off. Then, at a certain point, the goal was no longer that, since they had reached an inevitable limit. Instead they just kissed and ground in the dark, touching each other feverishly as they went.

Just as the earliest rays of light began to filter through their curtains, Shane twisted onto his side to look at Ilya.

”This is perfect, isn’t it?”

Ilya grinned. “Perfect husband. Perfect home. What more could a man want?” and he waggled his eyebrows.

Shane looked serious for a second. “We have a lot of life left to live, you know.”

“Thanks to your ridiculous rabbit food.”

“We’re not that old, Ilya," Shane continued.

Ilya grumbled. “Speak for yourself.”

“There are plenty of things men our age can do.”

“Like what?” Ilya said warily, eyeing the naked, sweaty man beside him.

Shane shrugged. “Like have a baby, maybe.”

Ilya stared at him. “You want a baby?”

Shane exhaled. “I mean, with you, maybe."

Then, "maybe I’d want a baby with you.”

Ilya looked at him dumbly. “You want to make a baby with me.”

“I don’t think that’s really how it works, Ilya. But yes?”

“That is exactly how it works, Hollander," and he kissed him.

Ilya woke up a few hours later to the sun squarely in the sky. Shane was shockingly still asleep, his body gently rising up and down beside him.

Ilya grabbed a hoodie and pants and wandered into the living room to let poor Anya out. He made himself a cup of coffee. He thought about plugging his very dead phone into a charger, but the inevitable deluge of messages made him shiver and he left it on the counter face down.

Mug finally in hand, he stepped outside. It was June in Ontario, and around him smelled fresh and alive. A million little buds were growing. The world looked entirely new. He breathed it in. He thought of last June, and the one before that.

No life moved in some slow, plodding climb towards improvement. If anything, people stagnated. They got good at compromise, so good they didn’t realize they were even doing it.

Ilya had spent a lot of his life trying to convince himself that it couldn’t get better. Then he had made a single choice, the choice to accept what Shane had offered him that day in Saratoga. 

Then another, to befriend him.

Then another, to let himself love him.

Then another, to actually forgive him.

And each of these choices had clicked gear after gear into place until he was tilting in an entirely new direction. Change didn’t happen slowly, nor did it happen in an instant. It was a series of choices that moved those gears slowly and then all at once.

He could be sad that it had taken him and Shane so long to make those choices, or he could be proud they had gotten there in the end. As he took in the meadow behind their home and Anya’s loping gate, he chose the latter.

Behind him the screen door slid open. A pair of arms wrapped around his waste, and a face buried into his back.

“It really is so beautiful,” Shane murmured into him.

Ilya nodded, looking out onto the horizon and the marvelous stretch of open blue road.

“So beautiful,” he agreed, and he turned around to look him in the eyes.

Chapter 18: Sail By Your Light

Chapter Notes

Bright Star - Anais Mitchell

Twenty Years Later

Under the bathroom lighting, every strand looked more gray than black, every wrinkle more chasm than crevice. The fresh button-down he had selected was horribly stiff against his skin, though it had felt like appropriate attire for the occasion.

Fidgeting with his sleeves, he rolled them up to expose his forearms and then rolled them back down again. From outside, he could hear his husband regaling their guest with one story or another, the other man's laughter seeping through the door.

His husband was always like this. Congenial, sure, but more than anything good at putting other people at ease. In this case, easing both his husband and the reporter who had just entered the home of two of hockey’s most famous stars.

“I promise you look pretty,” his husband’s voice rang out. Decades into their marriage and this man still found a way to tease him like they were linemates on the ice.

Upon entering their living room, he saw him lounging on the sofa with one of his repulsive green juices in hand. Bright lights and cameras pointed at him from every direction. Their interviewer of choice, a young hot shot sports journalist, sat in an armchair. Behind him, the crew quietly milled around in preparation for game time.

“Alex,” his husband sighed. “Come sit,” and he patted the spot next to him.

This was decidedly outside of Alex’s comfort zone, welcoming strangers into their home to be quizzed about a period of their lives that had always been purposefully shrouded in secrecy. But over the years he had learned that he would do just about anything for his husband, and so he had begrudgingly agreed.

As a polite young woman expertly ran a mic up his shirt, his husband carefully watched him.

Finally their interviewer glanced at his phone. “Let’s get started, yeah?” Alex did his very best to settle in.

“I think I speak for our audience when I say this, but what an honor it is to be in your home for this conversation,” the man began, his voice instantly switching to a smooth and steady cadence. "Your story means a lot to many people, and not just hockey fans.”

Alex watched Lukas smile politely at that, brushing a strand of thick gray-brown hair out of his eyes as he dipped his head. It was one of his nervous tells, not that the interviewer would know that. Sometimes his husband would make the slightest gesture and all Alex could think about was what it was like to wrestle the puck from him for the first time, or better yet, center it for him for so many years. He felt a little insane that those thoughts could still make him breathless. 

For thirty minutes, the conversation meandered safely from approved subject to approved subject. Their childhoods, their rookie seasons, their Stanley Cups, their awards, their Hall of Fame inductions. Finally they settled on the topic that had brought this crew to a sleepy Montreal suburb. 

“I’d like to talk about a pivotal moment in your story, the season Montreal almost won a Stanley Cup.” The reporter plowed on. “You both were hardly rookies, but, Alex, you were the youngest captain in the league. How would you both characterize that moment in your careers?”

Alex exhaled. Without thinking, he nudged his shoe against his husband’s. It was an efficient form of communication, like tapping a puck back and forth, and one the man seemed to immediately understand

“You’re right,” Lukas agreed. “We’d recently taken on leadership positions. We were no longer the new guys. That season, we had Lassiter, Dimitrov, and Pavlovski,” he said, counting the names on his fingers. “But that was the year we got Marin and Kucerka too.”

“And Astala, of course,” he added with a grin. “It was the beginning of something special, no question. Not that we really knew that. We were a bunch of kids who had somehow been allowed to play professional hockey. It was insanity, and a complete dream.”

The man gesticulated as he spoke, his wedding band flashing with the movements in a way that somehow soothed Alex. He thought about that year, and how precious and terrifying it had been, and a wave of nostalgia ran through him.

“We had no clue what we were doing,” his husband continued. “Sometimes Alex and I would look at each other and wonder how on earth we’d even gotten there, let alone with letters on our jerseys. Of course, having a new head coach helped,” he added.

“Yes, I’d like to talk about that actually,” the interviewer said, glancing down at his notes as he spoke. “How did you feel when you learned Ilya Rozanov would be coaching the Metros?”

Lukas looked to Alex, as if preparing to pass. Then Alex took over.

“How did we feel?” he ran a hand over his face. “How do you think we felt?”

The interviewer smiled and nodded encouragingly.

“There wasn’t a single person on that team who wasn’t losing his mind at the thought of making a mistake in front of Ilya fucking Rozanov.”

He froze. “Sorry, uh, not sure if I can curse.”

The other man laughed. “We’ll bleep it. But I’ll allow you to say Ilya fucking Rozanov. Feels appropriate, after all.”

Alex nodded at that. “You have to understand, to that generation of guys, we’d all grown up with that man’s poster on our wall. He was the reason half of us were there.”

“And what about your general manager? A lot has been made of your style of play and how similar it is to Hollander’s. He wasn’t on your wall too?”

“Oh, he was,” Lukas interrupted with a laugh. “Believe me.”

Alex shot a look at his husband before carefully continuing. “I don’t think it’s a secret I idolized Hollander at the beginning of my career.”

“You don’t idolize him now?”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t think you can idolize a friend, or the father of your godchildren. It’s a different dynamic.”

“But at the time Ilya and Shane weren’t people to us, they were legends,” Lukas explained. “We were shitting ourselves at training camp,” he added. “Especially Alex.”

The reporter paused. “I want to talk about your playoff run that season. Obviously, the most famous moment is not your game seven lose to Colorado, it’s your on ice kiss after beating Boston.”

The man glanced down at his notes again. “‘The kiss heard around the world’, and many would argue it ushered in a new era for hockey, and gay and bisexual professional athletes everywhere. Talk about that. Had that always been the plan?”

“How can you plan something like that?” Lukas asked. “It was pure adrenaline. We’d just beaten our archrivals in game seven of a playoff series. Alex and I had been together for years at that point, but always hiding.”

He continued. “That’s not something you plan. It happened because our team made us feel safe enough to do it. And because we wanted to celebrate our win not just as teammates, but as a couple."

"At that point, there had never been a same-sex couple in the league. Did that thought cross your mind at the time?”

“There had been other same-sex couples.” The words left Alex’s lips before he had even registered they were coming. Lukas glanced at him neutrally, though his body was rigid as a board.

“Well, obviously, Hollander and Rozanov became a couple after they left the Metros,” the reporter said, looking at the two of them with mild confusion. “But I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about active players in the league. It takes a certain amount of bravery to do that, don’t you think?”

Alex felt a current of annoyance run through him. “You don’t think Shane and Ilya were brave?” He leveled a look at the man that he usually reserved for face-offs. Lukas was now watching the interaction warily.

“No, no, obviously I do,” the other man corrected. “All I meant is that it’s a different thing, coming out well past your prime versus at the height—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alex interrupted plainly. "None of this would’ve been possible without them.”

The reporter frowned at that. “How so? You were years into your relationship before you even met the two of them, and even then, they weren’t a couple at that time.”

Alex exhaled, trying to steer this back on course. "I’m not proud of the person I was back then.”

“I loved Lukas,” he continued, “but I was terrified of losing what I’d built. I cared more about winning than I did about letting us properly be together.”

The interviewer looked surprised at this famously stoic man’s moment of rare vulnerability.

He turned to Lukas. “And what do you make of that?”

“Alex was going through it,” his husband said slowly, nodding in agreement. “It was a lot of pressure leading Montreal, especially under Hollander’s shadow.”

“It sounds like you’re saying Hollander was actually the source of your problems, not a solution to them.”

Alex frowned at that. “Knowing Shane has only ever been a gift.”

“Ilya too,” Lukas added. “We’d known Shane for years at that point, but he was a very distant figure in our lives, even if an impressive one.”

He went on. “When Ilya showed up, it was a complete and total sea change. Suddenly the team was having fun and Shane was much more present in our lives.”

“Why? Because the two of them had started seeing each other?”

Once again, the questions were getting pointed, but Alex couldn't entirely begrudge the man. He had been as fascinated by Shane and Ilya's story as the public.

“That’s a question you have to ask them," Lukas said with a shrug. "I don’t know when that started up again—”

“Lukas—” Alex interrupted in panic.

But the reporter was already on him. “Again? What do you mean by ‘again’?”

Alex met Lukas’s eyes as he silently processed the crossroads they were at. They had known Shane and Ilya long enough to grasp their philosophy about this sort of stuff. Those two weren’t interested in hiding, and never had been, at least not since Alex and Lukas had known them.

Alex understood the importance of a person getting to tell one’s own story, but in this moment he was overwhelmed by the desire to correct some invisible record on behalf of these men he loved. He and Lukas’s story had an entirely different beginning, middle, and end, one that spanned three decades and four lives. Maybe he could help the world finally realize that.

He breathed. Then, “like we said. We were not the first couple in the league.”

He let that sentence hang in the air. The crew, a huddle of bodies in nondescript black, were now quietly but urgently murmuring to one another behind the cameras.

He looked at Lukas, and his husband just dipped his head in some version of acceptance and squeezed his hand once more. Then he looked at their interviewer, who was realizing in the real time that he was accidentally about to break the biggest story of his career.

“What do you mean by that exactly?” the man finally repeated, gripping his notes tightly.

Alex ran a hand through his graying hair. “What it sounds like.”

He went on. “In this league’s a hundred and fifty year history, I doubt they were the first couple. But Ilya and Shane were probably the first couple who played at that level for as long as they did.”

“Let me get this straight. They were together while playing?” The interviewer questioned, gripping his notes like a lifeline as he spoke. “But they hated—” The man finally composed himself. “For how long?”

Alex shook his head. “A long time. But those are questions for them. I think it’s safe to say that even during the height of their rivalry there was considerably more love than hate.”

“We didn’t know any of this, obviously,” Lukas weighed in. “But you can imagine what it did to us as young gay men to find that out.”

“And you,” the reporter began in a daze. “You found out how exactly?”

“How?” Lukas replied in confusion. “They told us.”

The reporter’s brows furrowed.

“Now you get it, right?” Lukas continued. “You think it’s bravery what we did. It was bravery what they did. They loved each other for many years in secret. They didn’t have a supportive team, not like we did. They didn’t have people who could look out for them, or tell them it was going to be ok.”

“For them, there was no seeing it to believe it,” Alex added. “They had to imagine their future on their own. You don’t know what that’s like.” He paused before continuing. “For a period of time, I did. But then I got to know Ilya and Shane and all of that went away.”

A wave of something hit him and he found himself breathing through the beginning of his own tears. “It was like realizing your greatest heroes held the secret to your happiness.”

“Ahead of that playoff run, Shane told me that, no matter what, I needed to pick him,” and he pointed at his husband, whose clear eyes tracked him as he spoke.

“Shane Hollander told you to pick love over hockey?” the reporter asked with a skeptical laugh.

“Why is that so hard to believe?” Lukas shot back. “And there was no picking. We got each other and three Stanley Cups.”

He dug in. “We got everything we ever wanted, but we would’ve lost what mattered most without them.”

Alex jumped in. “I’m not interested in being called a hero. Each of us was brave in our own way," he said, exhaling. "We did the best we could, but thank god we had each other.”

At that, the interviewer realized that was the end of that conversation, and the interview moved towards safer topics once more.

The sun was already setting by the time Alex and Lukas sped down the familiar gravel road. Pulling up in front of the cottage, warm light spilled from within.

“You’re just in time,” a voice rang as they stepped inside.

Turning the corner, there was Ilya, or at least, Ilya as they knew him now. The man was nearing seventy but somehow still had a version of his movie star good looks, complete with a wicked grin and sparkling eyes.

“They’re asleep,” the man whispered, placing a finger to his lips. “All Shane, of course."

They hugged the man in greeting. “Bless him,” Alex murmured back. 

As he stepped into their children’s room, it was entirely dark except for hundreds of glow and the dark stars stuck to the ceiling. There below the plastic firmament lay Shane asleep on one of the twin beds with a little body tucked in on one side. On the other bed, Alex could hear the light snoring of their eldest, who was hidden by a pile of blankets.

Alex stepped forward and gently shook the older man awake.

“Ilya,” the man started. He opened his dark eyes.

“Oh, Alex, it’s you. How’d it go?” he whispered, as he carefully disentangled himself from the sleeping child and smoothed down his clothing.

Alex tipped his head towards the door. Once they were on the other side of it, he spoke.

“We covered a lot.”

“Good, good,” Shane said, yawning. “Nice to have it all out there I’d imagine.”

“I need to tell you something.”

Shane looked at him with confusion. His face was no doubt wrinkled and worn, though in a way that only made him look more stately. His eyes, on the other hand, were as sharp as the eyes of the man who had won Montreal so many of its Cups.

Alex continued. “You both came up.”

“Ilya and I?”

“I guess it felt hard to tell our story without sharing parts of yours.”

Alex went on. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve talked to you before we said anything, and I didn't mean to and I don't know why I did. But obviously it doesn’t need to be included in the—”

“What did you say?” Shane interrupted.

For the briefest moment, a flicker of something deadly flashed in his eyes and Alex gulped. Shane was not someone who carried much anger in him, at least not now, but he braced himself for what part of this man might rear its ugly head.

 He took a breath. “We said that we were not the first couple in the league.”

Shane leveled a look at him. "Well, you weren’t.”

Alex carefully read the man’s expression, trying to interpret every inch of it even as he kept drawing a blank.

Shane sighed. “If I’m being honest, I’ve wanted people to know that for a long, long time.”

“You have?”

He nodded. “Yes. But our life is so beautiful, so simple, really. I didn’t have the energy to tell the story. So thank you, I guess. As you said, in a way it’s as much yours as it’s ours.”

That was very generous of Shane, Alex couldn’t help but think. He and Lukas had never suffered in the way the two of them had. They hadn’t spent twenty years finding their way back to each other. No, they had just had the support of the two people who had and lived to tell the tale.

Shane looked at him. “You know I’m proud of you, Alex.” And Alex did know, it was a version of what this man had murmured in his ear after they had beat New York for the Eastern Conference all those years ago. But he never got sick of hearing those words.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Hollander,” he smiled, feeling his eyes water. “You can’t say stuff like that to me. Not anymore.”

“Why,” Shane cooed, and it was a coo. “You two will always be our boys,” and he squeezed his shoulder, pulling the man in for a hug that Alex pretended to grumble at even as he melted into it.

Back in the kitchen, they found Ilya swiping through pictures on his phone as Lukas looked on.

“This one,” Ilya said with a smile, and he waved the screen towards the man. On it was a picture of a tall lanky kid in a cap and gown.

“He looks like a man,” Lukas said in awe. “When did that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya said, shaking his head. “But it’s very sad. Shane says I’m not allowed to be sad about it, though." He waved the phone at Shane and Alex like it was a cursed object.

“Definitely your son,” Shane laughed. “Probably running shirtless around Mallorca as we speak.”

“Yes, not like his sister,” Ilya said. “At least he will always have someone to bail him out of jail.”

Shane smiled. “If she can get her nose out of a book long enough to take the call.”

The four men laughed at that.

An hour later, they were lounging in the living room, and Alex and Lukas were finishing the play-by-play of their interview. Just as Shane had been, Ilya was relieved. Grateful, even.

“It’s a weird thing,” he said, running a hand through his thinning silver curls. “Wanting to be understood by the world but feeling like they don't deserve it.”

Shane nodded in agreement. Then he took his husband’s hand. “Maybe now they do.”

Ilya just silently met Shane’s eyes. Whenever they did this, Alex felt a chill run through him. Even after all these years, there was something powerful about being pulled into their orbit and left to linger there.

This league’s two brightest stars side by side. Stars, sure, but guides too, which is ultimately what stars were to a poor lost sailor.

In that moment, Alex thought of all the times he had looked up into the night sky, especially early on in his career, staring at the black depth of his own confusion, his fear of what lay out in the void, only to one day discover some brilliant and ancient formation had been hiding in plain sight.

Suddenly every path was illuminated, including ones he hadn’t even known existed, and there was love to be found along those paths, and along those paths he knew he would never be alone.

Getting to know Ilya and Shane’s truth had pulled him out of whatever cult of suffering he been in as a young man. It wasn’t that his isolation and fear were’t real, but they weren’t just his. It was as if these two men had situated every one of his feelings in a necessary and fundamental way.

Others had come before him, and they had suffered too. Not more or less, just differently.

And they had found happiness, too. Not in the same way, but in a way all their own.

What Ilya and Shane had given them was an extraordinary gift. It was the gift of their guidance, even as they themselves navigated back to one another, and it was the gift of their love. Their willingness to act like their own story couldn’t be complete without Alex and Lukas finding happiness within theirs.

No story belonged to just one person. Everyone was living a version of someone else’s.

Would he and Lukas have ever come out in the way they had without Ilya and Shane? Would those men have ever found themselves back in each other’s arms without him and Lukas?

It was a riddle that could make one’s head spin. But it didn’t really matter, at least no more than the result, which was a world that had been transformed by their combined love.

Thinking of Shane and Ilya’s legacy, that was a raft he clung to when his thoughts took him far out to sea. No matter what, he would have them. He only had to search the night sky to find the way.