Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Svetlana Vetrova, Original Female Character(s), Jessica | Shane Hollander's Ex-Girlfriend

Additional Tags:

POV Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Nude Photos, revenge porn, Texting, Twitter, Ilya and Shane are Going Through it, Invasion of Privacy, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Reunion Sex, Humor, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Coming in Pants, Insecurity, set during the 2015-2016 season, pre tuna melt, references to racism misogny and mental health issues, i love putting shane in situations and making ilya React, it’s my favorite thing to do actually, no outing, yeah this is another hollanov fic about personal info leaking on the internet what about it??, i beefed it on the tags this time sorry guys, oh yeah, Shane Hollander Has a Big Dick, ilya loses his mind lowkey but it's okay, Comedy of Errors

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-09-06 Completed: 2026-10-03 Words: 36,504 Chapters: 5/5

Photo Finish, Picture Perfect

Summary

There were four pictures in the tweet that ruined Ilya’s life.

Or, a woman secretly takes explicit photos of Shane while she is hooking up with him and later vindictively posts them online, causing a shitstorm of a media scandal that just keeps getting bigger. Shane freaks out, of course, but somehow Ilya is the one who really feels like his life is ending.

Notes

Finally writing another Ilya POV, huzzah! This fic is already 90% written (unless I decide to add anything wild) but unedited. I'm hoping for weekly updates. Check out my new tumblr, maybe I’ll do updates about it over there! (Edit: slightly modified summary to make it more clear, but there is NO OUTING in this fic! the pictures were taking while shane was hooking up with a woman, not ilya!)

It is canon to me that hockey is way wayyyy more popular in the GC universe than in real life, so if you need to suspend your disbelief for anything in this fic, just know that it is grounded in textual evidence.

this is my first true mixed-prose-and-socmed fic, but it’s much heavier on the prose especially in later chapters. I still haven’t decided how to best represent texting and social media in the middle of prose, so just know that I really, really went back and forth and spent wayyyy too long looking at different coding options and rewriting entire text conversations to fit different ways of formatting. This is what I settled on, sorry for all the italics. anyway, onward!

Chapter 1

Chapter Notes

(Using the name "Jessica" just as the ex-hook up Hayden mentions in ep4/2016, so she was not Shane's high school girlfriend in this verse, btw!)

There were four pictures in the tweet that ruined Ilya’s life.

The photo previews were positioned in neat, awkwardly cropped rectangles and aggressively captioned, well okay then, @ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer i guess if you’re just not “feeling it” anymore then you won’t mind me sharing these, right? great. goodbye, asshole.

The post was taken down within an hour, which was not fast enough to save Shane’s dignity or Ilya’s quality of life.

Honestly, they might as well have left them up for all the good it did.

Four pictures, varying in explicitness, all showing Hollander in a state of undress, posted by his jilted ex-lover.

His jilted female ex-lover, which was a distinction that only Ilya knew the significance of. When he had first checked his phone and seen the explosion of mentions, messages, tweets, and news alerts, all blasting Hollander’s full name and number, Ilya thought he was going to have a heart attack. It had shocked him badly. Ilya had been so terrified that it took him almost twenty minutes to piece together what had happened—and what, exactly, had not.

Their secret, his and Shane’s, was still hidden. Still safe.

Only Hollander’s body had been exposed.

#HollanderNudes was trending. The Boston Bears' group chat was blowing up, and so were a few of the other assorted NHL chats Ilya was in, full of capitalized messages and emojis and a few interjected sympathetic messages.

Ilya closed the team chat and opened his conversation with Jane. They had a game in Montreal in just two weeks, so Ilya had already started his usual slow build-up of flirty texts to rile Hollander up in advance. In return, Ilya had received confirmation that they would meet after the game and a lot of Fuck offs and Shut ups. But their last messages had been exchanged two days ago, when they were both oblivious to the impending disaster looming on the horizon.

His thumb hovered over the empty text box.

Two days ago. The handle of the woman who had posted photos of Hollander was @JessicaWalton. Had Hollander been in Jessica Walton’s bed just two days ago, telling Ilya to go fuck himself from her couch or on a stool in her kitchen? 

Ilya scoffed under his breath. So what? It wasn't like it mattered. Two days ago, Ilya had been in a nightclub, making out with a woman he had never learned the name of. Hollander was just as free to do whatever the hell he wanted, and given that he had won his first Stanley Cup only four months before, at the end of the 2014-2015 season, it made sense that he wanted to party and sleep around. That was what Ilya had done, so who was he to judge?

Hollander should have picked better, though. Ilya knew personally that Hollander had terrible taste in partners.

He swiped out of his messages and opened Twitter. It only took Ilya five minutes of listless scrolling before he organically stumbled across another repost of the original pictures. Reposts were getting reported en masse, probably by a squad of interns hired by Hollander's legal team, but this one hadn’t been taken down yet. All four pictures were displayed right there, proudly, like this was Pornhub or OnlyFans, and this time the post was captioned: I just KNEW hollander was packing, he walks like it’s big bc it is feeling #vindicated xoxo

“You did not know,” Ilya gritted out. “I knew. You know nothing.” Helpfully, he started to report the account for indecency, then thought better of it and went back to staring at the pictures anyway.

Probably, Ilya should not have been looking. Probably, as a captain and a respected figure in his own room, he should shut down the speculation going on in his team chat. Maybe he should even make a statement of his own, maybe even on Twitter. Ilya had already seen the same joke repeated a thousand times—I can’t believe Hollander’s nudes leaked before Rozanov’s—and maybe he could use that to justify weighing in. He could tell them all to fuck themselves. He could tell the world to stop fucking looking at him.

Fuck it. Maybe Ilya should release his own dick pics. That would take a little heat off Hollander. Play into the whole rivalry thing. Show off, just a little, for one person in particular, while pretending it was for the world. And maybe Hollander knew Ilya well enough to see through the ruse.

Ilya stared, just as much of a voyeur as any of the other spectators (#VoyageurVoyeur was, unfortunately, also trending in Canada). The only difference between himself and the other denizens of the internet was that he had seen this view before, and with Shane’s actual consent. That was a pretty big difference, to be fair.

The first picture showed a view of Hollander from behind, standing at the foot of the girl’s bed, which had almost as many pillows strewn across it as Hollander’s did. He was checking his phone or something, just standing there, completely naked in the middle of the room, his strong shoulders and biceps resting, the curvature of his back rippling down in a beautiful arrow toward his tight waist. His ass was in the shot, which was probably why the girl had taken the picture. It was a one-of-a-kind ass. Impossible to resist. She should have just been gracious to be amongst the limited few who would ever get to view that perfect ass, but she had been greedy instead, and then cruel. Now this picture, a sight Ilya had seen many times as Shane folded his clothes and set them aside before sex, was out there for public consumption. Unfair.

The girl's room was slightly dim, lit only by lamps. Golden-orange light bathed Hollander, showing off the curves of his muscles and the dimples in his lower back, and reflected off the perfect silver lines rippling across his muscles and his ass. Ilya knew the texture of those lines against his tongue. In the image, they looked flat, but they weren’t. It was gentle scar tissue created by the dedication and worship Shane Hollander bestowed on his temple of a body.

He forced himself to hit the report button and the pictures disappeared. Ilya scrolled, but there was no escaping the conversation that had taken over all of hockey Twitter.

And people were tweeting things like, SHANE HOLLANDER TIGER STRIPES SHANE HOLLANDER TIGER STRIPES THIS IS NOT A DRILL, and question for the audience, what would those feel like if i licked them? asking for a friend!

People were making fun of his stripes (stretch marks, Ilya knew from his own conversations with English-speaking trainers and teammates who developed their own silvery lines around swelling muscle, or mentioned them, often derogatorily, on the bodies of the women they slept with). People were making fun of Hollander’s body and the way he pushed it, shaped it, molded it. He wielded his body like a tool or a weapon, and it was still so breathtakingly beautiful in the aftermath.

People spoke as if they had a right to his body, or like it was a gift he had given them.

A user with the handle @shanesfamfanclub and a measly few hundred followers had tweeted, I’m so serious, seeing Shane’s stretch marks genuinely healed something in me. Like I’ve always been so embarrassed about my own, but that’s Shane motherfucking Hollander… my heart feels so full <3

It made Ilya’s lips curl.

He vindictively reported them as well, and then another screenshot appeared in his feed, obtrusive but also exactly what Ilya had been unconsciously searching for.

The second picture was probably the most impactful of the four, already the most re-shared and talked about, because the second picture was the dick pic.

Most of the guys in the league would have a lot more to be embarrassed about if their nudes had gotten leaked. Most NHL players barely knew how to take a proper shower, much less how to manscape or even clean their pubes, and frankly, in Ilya’s experience, most of the guys he’d shared locker rooms with had less than impressive packages. Hell, maybe there was a correlation there—aerodynamics or some shit, or how comfortably a cup fit around their dicks, and Rozanov and Hollander were even bigger outliers than everyone thought because they were working against literal physics.

Because Hollander had a huge dick, and the evidence of it was staring right at Ilya.

Hollander was probably hiding somewhere in Quebec with his head buried beneath a mountain of pillows, but Ilya knew, and the internet knew too, that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

It was clear that Hollander hadn’t seen the phone aimed his way in this picture either, as the camerawoman had caught him in profile. Hollander was standing in front of a dresser, a bottle of something (lube, probably) held in one palm as he carefully pulled a condom off a strip. His expression, as in all things, was focused and intent exactly on what he was doing, so he clearly hadn’t noticed the camera tilted at an awkward angle in his direction, slightly downward, cutting off the top of his head and showing the corner of a rumpled bed in the bottom left.

Hollander’s cock was fully hard in the photo, so heavy and long that even fully erect, it drooped slightly down, unable to support its own weight and length.

Ilya would always remember the first time he had seen Hollander’s erection in the showers in Toronto. He was pretty sure his first thought had been something like, Damn. And it wasn’t every day that Ilya Rozanov was actually impressed by another man’s erection. His eyebrows had crept up, and he had to scramble to turn it into a wink when Hollander turned and caught him looking. Not that Ilya had been hiding. He had nothing to be embarrassed about either.

Hollander had a big dick and a fat ass, and the internet now had possession of both.

Jesus Christ, said user @voyageurdeathdrop, ENOUGH! HOLLANDER! LEAVE SOMETHING FOR THE REST OF US, YOU GREEDY FUCK. It had three thousand likes already. The comment section was full of sweaty-faced emojis and water droplets.

Someone else was going viral for a simple two-word, nine-character post: no hole? :(

Ilya reported every account he could, stabbing his phone screen so hard that the tips of his fingers started to chafe. He was going to break a nail if he wasn’t careful.

Ilya had listened to jokes about how Shane Hollander was a sexless hockey virgin robot for his entire career (the metaphors were often quite mixed). When guys thought he wasn’t listening, or earlier in his career, when they thought Ilya, white and muscular and Russian, would appreciate those kinds of jokes, they talked about the size of his dick and then Ilya would deck them, or try to rip their heads off while Marly and Saint Vic held him back. Eventually, Ilya stopped hearing his jokes. And then, eventually, after a few seasons, a few All-Stars, and a few trades of former Voyageurs, the rumors about what Hollander was actually packing began. Not that it was a popular topic of conversation, but Ilya’s ears always pricked up whenever Hollander’s name was mentioned in his vicinity.

Privacy was an illusion for athletes. That was the accepted expectation, but there had always been limits.

Their bodies, more or less, belonged to the league. Gossip rumor mills were unavoidable among groups of young men who spent so much time together in close quarters. News spread fast between locker rooms, and nothing was ever totally off limits. Ilya liked knowing that his cock was probably being discussed in surreptitious mutters as far away as Vancouver, and a part of him liked even more that Shane Hollander was so undeniably impressive, from the top of his head to the tip of his dick, that no one could avoid noticing for long.

But Hollander wouldn’t have liked those rumors. No one in the league could truly be shy about their bodies (hell, public showering was half the reason Ilya and Hollander got together in the first place), but Hollander would draw the line at literal dick measuring. Knowing that people, especially hot, sweaty men, were talking about his cock would’ve had steam pouring out of Hollander’s ears—for more than one reason, Ilya suspected.

There was nothing to be done about it, though, or about the fact that the reputable inches Hollander kept in his branded Calvin Klein boxer briefs had far surpassed the league’s whisper machine.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, there were still two more pictures in the collection.

Ilya’s thumb stopped scrolling. His face had already been contorted in a scowl, but his lip curled into a true snarl. Someone had reposted just the third picture, explicit sections slightly blurred as if that would get around Hollander’s lawyer. The user had written, omg, he’s literally the cutest to ever do it, who knew leaked sex pics could be so cute??? i’m getting cuteness aggression, please god let me squeeze his tits just once before i die! just once!!

The third picture made Ilya’s blood boil.

Shane was fully naked except for his socks.

His white socks, always the same brand of stretchy ribbed material, always pulled perfectly up to the same point on his calves, laid so neatly over his body hair that Ilya wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Shane combed it down every day and tucked it inside the elastic. All of Ilya’s white socks turned dark at the bottom within a few wears, but Hollander’s were always pristine. It wasn’t as if Hollander wore socks every single time they fucked, but he said he got cold easily, and sometimes if a hotel wasn’t up to his standards, he would get squeamish about standing on the carpet on bare feet. Ilya could reliably guess whether Hollander would be wearing his socks just by the time of year and how neat the hotel lobby was.

And now it felt like the internet knew that, too.

Hollander’s socks, his socked feet and covered ankles, peaked out behind the arch of his back as he kissed his way down the stomach of the woman taking the photo, one arm reaching out of frame and probably cupping her tit in his broad, hard palms, but she had taken the photo from an angle where her own body was mostly obscured, Shane’s broad shoulders hiding any sight of her crotch. She used his body to cover her own.

Hollander’s eyes were tightly shut. His brow furrowed in deep concentration.

He never looked like that with Ilya. And he always kept his eyes open, for as long as he could manage, until Ilya overwhelmed him with pleasure and they fluttered shut or rolled back. It was a game Ilya liked to play with himself, to see the moment Shane lost the self-control he had perfected and finally had to drag his eyes off Ilya’s body, resisting like it was physically painful to look away.

Ilya always won that game.

In the picture, Hollander’s eyes were shut but not in pleasure. Because of that, he clearly did not see the phone. What, had she been waiting with her phone by her pillow, whipping it out the second he wasn’t looking at her? What kind of psychopath was she? Ilya ignored the way that thought made panic squeeze at his throat. Did she know where Hollander lived? Ilya had to shake his head and blink rapidly to dispel that thought, and the only way to stop thinking about it (was Hollander even safe right now?) was by returning his attention to the picture.

It was crude, and the most suggestive photo of the bunch, showing Shane’s ass again from such an intimate angle, not meant to be shared, that Ilya had been given many times before, and which people were stealing now, willfully.

And Shane’s fucking socks were visible.

Fuck this. He reported the user, blur be damned. He scrolled.

The fourth and final picture was not a nude and wasn’t taken covertly like the others. Shane was at least wearing gym shorts in this one, though his chest and back were bare. His shirt dangled from his fingertips as he crouched in the middle of a well-decorated, homey living room lit by the low light of orange lamps that cast him in their golden glow and highlighted Shane’s truly stunning profile. The long, straight line of his nose, the purse of his beautiful lips, even the crinkle of his brow. He looked focused, intent, like he usually did on the ice, though the only thing he was doing in the picture was gently petting a tuxedo cat pressed against his shins, black fur shining against his tan skin.

Ilya’s heart ached.

The girl had ruined this beautiful picture of Shane by slapping a bar of text over it, the recognizable mark of a screenshotted Snapchat. he strokes my pussy so well, she eloquently stated, accompanied by a little yellow emoji of a giggling face with a hand slapped over its mouth.

Ilya hated her.

He really did.

A few hours later, Ilya was still spending his off-day glued to his phone. His fingers definitely hurt now from how hard he had been gripping the case, and his thumb was starting to cramp from the endless scrolling.

He paused again when he saw the video, captioned HOLY SHIT THIS GIRL IS GOING TO GET BURIED IN THE COURT CASE, MOMMA YUNA IS GOING TO EAT HER ALIVE with about a dozen skull emojis following after. It was a screen-recorded video of a public Snapchat story. In the thumbnail, a young woman wrapped in a fucking Voyageurs sweater of all things was sobbing her heart out, her eyes swollen, face red, and blonde hair sticking to her cheeks.

Ilya unmuted the video and let it play.

“-no one understands, no one fucking understands! He was so sweet, and so nice, and I just—I just wanted something to remember him by, you know? I don’t think that’s wrong! I wasn’t going to share them but then he stopped responding to my texts and I told him—I told him I wanted to get back together and he said no but he wouldn’t explain why and I—I just got super drunk and my friends said it was a good idea, but I shouldn’t have done it and I regret it! I regret it, but what am I supposed to do now? I’m, like, sorry but I just wanted him to pay attention to me!”

On and on, she went. Ilya winced. She was clearly not well. If he had been at whatever club Hollander picked this girl up from, he could have warned Hollander away before any of this happened. Ilya was well-versed in noticing the warning signs in this particular kind of puck bunny.

There were a few sympathetic comments on the re-uploaded video, some mentions of a mental breakdown or a clearly unwell person, but most people were laughing at her. Mocking her, and mocking Hollander by proxy, or glibly saying that she hadn’t done anything wrong because the pictures were so physically flattering.

Look, I get it, she shouldn’t have done it - but Hollander’s for real got nothing to be upset about lol. As a Boston fan, you would not believe the amount of racist jokes about his dick size Ive been hearing for literal years lmao - at least thisll finally shut those assholes up!

Ilya hadn’t eaten in a few hours. He was starting to feel nauseous.

He put his phone down. Ate lunch, went for a run, then spent another hour in his gym, blasting Russian rap music until his ears hurt and he was pushing his deadlift PR. His trainers would probably be furious with him if they ever found out, but Ilya wasn’t going to tell them.

Then he picked up his phone again.

@ShaneHollanderHockeyPlayer had posted across his socials, as bland as could be expected: The recent photos posted to Twitter were taken without my knowledge or consent. This is a gross and illegal violation of privacy, and we will be pursuing legal action against anyone who redistributes or circulates the images. To be clear, this is a criminal case and should be taken very seriously. Please respect my privacy and the privacy of any and all involved parties, including my friends and family. I’m here to play a game and represent my city and country, and I am personally affected by every message about this event. I’m only asking for compassion and respect, and I think I deserve that. Thank you.

This was followed up by a tweet that was, presumably, the same statement but translated into French. Ilya wondered if that was a stipulation in his contract with the Voyageurs, in effect even today, of all days.

There was constant debate about the scandal, with the two opposing parties (those who saw this only as entertainment, as a joke or a reality TV scandal, and those who were righteously and furiously up in arms against the injustice and demonstrated it by relentlessly posting and tagging #JusticeForShane until it was trending in the US and Canada), only growing more disparate and more agressive as the hours passed.

Montreal was probably on the brink of another riot. They had lit a few cars on fire when Shane won his Cup. They were probably sharpening pitchforks at that very moment.

Ilya closed Twitter again and reopened the Bears’ chat. They had been active in his absence, and more than one of them had commented on their captain's disappearance. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, which made Ilya feel equally bitter and furious. Like the rest of the internet, they seemed to enjoy comparing Rozanov and Hollander’s brand personas and the inversion of expectations of the scandal.

It occurred to Ilya that their rivalry and dichotomy were part of the reason why people found this scandal so fascinating. How much worse was he unintentionally, inactively making things worse for Hollander?

Ilya skimmed the Bears' chat, eyebrows raising in disbelief. It wasn’t that he expected hockey players to be particularly intelligent, least of all his close, personal friends, but they were really reaching new lows tonight.

Carmax: Ha, that guy who figures out how big things are in pictures is measuring holly against a coke can, yeah fucking right. Makes sense that you guys are rivals in everything, amiright cap?

Saint vic: … tf

Connors: NAH CAPS DICK IS WAY BIGGER CAM, CAP I GOT YOU NO SLANDER AGAINST MY CAPTAIN

Saint vic: ………… wtf

Kane: lol why is everybody looking? yall a bunch of shower peakers? ok

A few of the guys had immediately responded with a slew of gay accusations, eggplants, and memes, mostly taking the piss out of Carmichael for looking so closely at his captain’s and Hollander’s dicks—as if they had not all spent the last few hours looking at and thinking about Hollander’s naked body. At least Marly eventually shut that conversation down on Ilya’s behalf.

Marly: Your fucking gross cam knock it off. Leave hollander the fuck alone weirdos. If any of you get caught making any kind of mention of this to the media, your fucking dumb if you think roz wont put you into the earth and then pass you off to me to finish the fucking job. Shut the fuck up.

Ilya thumbed up Marly’s message but immediately exited and muted the chat when it summoned his teammates back, all of them excited to see he had finally responded. But there was nothing he could say to them, not tonight and probably not for a few days, or however long it took him to calm down. He wasn’t going to be a good liar or actor tonight. He wouldn’t be able to hide his genuine fury, or his bizarre despair, and he didn’t want to explain himself to these guys.

Ilya had been photographed kissing, dancing with, groping and being groped by dozens of women over the years. Many puck bunnies had posted their own stories about their sexcapades online. Some of the most obscene accounts were outright lies, but plenty were entirely true. Some of those posts included pictures of Ilya, but nothing explicit. The guys always got a kick out of sharing the stories women told about Ilya online, and had never been angry about the jokes they made at his expense or righteous about the breach of his privacy. He’d never cared when it had been about himself. It would make no sense if he cared when it came to Hollander.

Ilya needed to distract himself. It felt like there was a pressure building behind his ribcage, like someone had snuck a balloon in between his lungs and heart and they were inflating it slowly, waiting for the moment it would pop.

Svetlana had texted him as well. Ilya rolled his eyes as he read her message.

Sveta: He’s hot but we knew that already. He’s a Calvin Klein model, haven’t we essentially seen this? The internet, I think, is being quite silly.

Ilyusha: he wasn’t hard in the calvin klein photos, i think

He thought about adding a comment about the stretch marks also not being visible, but then thought better of it.

She responded quickly.

Sveta: Are you alright?

She was too damn perceptive. She knew him too well. Ilya wasn’t entirely sure how deep her knowledge went, so he was careful in responding. He typed slowly, aware that he was walking a tightrope. If he gave anything away, it would only take Sveta a few minutes to sniff out his secret. And he couldn’t do that to Hollander. Not tonight. Not ever.

There wasn’t any point in telling Svetlana. He didn’t tell her the details of every hookup he’d ever had, and Hollander was no different from the rest. He couldn't be.

Ilyusha: ?
yes of course?
why would i not be alright?

Sveta: I imagine Hollander is having a bad night.

Ilyusha: yes, probably
so what? nothing to do with me
i promise i was not the one who posted pictures of his dick on twitter

Sveta: It’s a nice dick, though, even you must admit that.

How strange. Ilya was pretty sure that he was feeling… jealous? It wasn’t the first time Svetlana had admired how attractive Hollander was. She liked to claim that he was her favorite player, and only sometimes added the caveat that she meant favorite non-Russian player.

Svetlana had never seen Hollander’s dick, balls, and ass before, though. This was new. It ignited a storm of confusing, riotous emotions in Ilya, and he had to violently shove down every impulse to snarl and mark his territory.

Fuck. How would he respond if this was someone else? Just a random player in the league, and not someone Ilya had been sleeping with for half a decade?

Ilyusha: whore
stop looking
he is my competition! 

Sveta: Yes, in more ways than one.

Ilyusha: carmichael said the same thing. you sound like CARMEX. that is how low you have sunken. terrible, america has ruined you

Sveta: I am not blind, and I have good taste, Ilyusha. I know you hate him, but even you can admire his looks.

Ilya stared at his phone.

Ilyusha: you know i don’t hate hollander

Sveta: No?

Fuck. Was she onto him? Svetlana and Ilya shared most things, but she had always been a more proficient liar. She was better at keeping things from him when she wanted, but Ilya thought he did okay, especially after keeping Hollander a secret for so many years. She knew about Jane but had never implied that she suspected Jane was a man, much less a hockey player.

But maybe….

Ilyusha: eh not really
and i don’t need to kick him while he is down lol
he is probably having a fucking terrible day. if my nudes were leaked, whatever, it would not be the end of the world, but hollander? i know he is spiraling about this lol
headlines will read “perfect golden boy has sex!!!” and his brain will melt out of his ears

Sveta: If you think he will be so upset, maybe you should text him.

Ilya’s fingers hovered over the screen.

Ilyusha: text him what?

Sveta: I don’t know him. You do. Since you were seventeen, I believe. Figure it out.

She wasn’t very helpful.

Ilya put his phone down and didn’t text Hollander anything, and Hollander didn’t text him. Why would they? They were not anything, and they owed each other nothing. Ilya probably had more in common with Jessica Walton than he did with Shane Hollander.

But even just thinking that made him physically twitch.

No. He couldn’t lie to himself about that.

He didn’t text Hollander that night, or the next day. Or the next.

+++

It took Ilya a full three days to cave.

The story hadn’t died down yet. People were not respecting Hollander’s eloquent Twitter statement asking for privacy. Most people thought it was funny, and the picture of Hollander petting the tuxedo cat had become a meme with several rotating formats (the most popular of which was fans photoshopping their own faces over the cat, or other objects and items from Hollander’s lore, including the Stanley Cup and a can of ginger ale).

The girl who posted the pictures had finally shut up. All of her accounts had disappeared, but Hollander’s most fervent fans were up in arms, determined to track her down and dox her. An oppositional group of fans was demanding that Hollander use his position to talk those fans down from drastic action. Every side of that particular debacle was so mind-numbingly stupid that it legitimately made Ilya want to break his phone.

Predictably, a different sect of morons was angry with Hollander directly. A conservative sports podcast (was there really any other kind?) had demanded that Hollander apologize to the city of Montreal for his “obscene and indecent behavior,” and there were dozens of shitty articles and blog posts about whether this would forever stain his reputation. The truly irredeemable racists were now claiming righteous retroactive vindication for when they had demanded that Hollander not represent Canada at the Olympics. A d-man in the Bears’ group chat shared a Facebook post that featured one of Hollander’s nudes, edited to be black and white with two black censor bars, one over his waist and the other over his eyes, and violent red text that read, Is this really who YOU want as the face of Canada?

Ilya had reamed the d-man out in the group chat and again at practice, petitioning the coach to make him do solo bag skates despite the player's insistence that he’d just thought the post was funny. Ilya didn’t give a fuck. He had made it very clear how he expected his teammates to behave, online and in his presence, about Hollander’s scandal.

Ilya knew some of his teammates were surprised by how hard a stance Ilya was taking, but the Bears were still easy enough to corral. No one gave Ilya trouble after that. They learned not to bring the pictures up around him at all.

But online, it was hard to avoid. Because hockey players were notoriously media-trained and largely offline, journalists dedicated to the sport always massively exaggerated any personal story they managed to uncover. Hollander’s popularity, and how much this scandal specifically opposed his well-constructed image, meant that it was still gaining momentum, still growing, and the memes meant that it was breaking containment. Random people online who had never watched a game of hockey or seen Hollander’s face outside of a Rolex ad were sharing it, many without the full context of where the image had originated.

It was Shane’s worst nightmare, probably. Or, second worst, at least.

So, slumped on the couch in his new house on the outskirts of Boston and still a week and a half out from the first Montreal-Boston game of the season, Ilya finally did what Sveta had told him to. (He should have given in the second she told him to reach out. She was always right. He just hated admitting it.)

It was hard to find the right words. He tried to keep it flippant, not wanting to add stress or another serious conversation to Hollander’s plate, but needing to reach out, to offer whatever minor comfort he could, even if it was only the reminder that their shared secret was still safeguarded.

It took Hollander more than an hour to respond. Ilya knew he was benched from games and practices. The rumors as to whether this had been mandated by the Voyageurs themselves or the head office were wild but entirely speculative; no one but Hollander himself had put out a real statement. Ilya busied himself with video games, imagining that Hollander was busy with meetings or avoiding his phone like the plague. However, Hollander’s eventual response made it clear that he hadn’t appreciated Ilya’s attempt at levity.

Lily: people are stupid
ive seen your dick one million times and have always managed to keep it off the internet

Yeah. In retrospect, definitely not a graceful attempt. Ilya winced as he read Hollander’s replies.

Jane: Go fuck yourself.
Delete those texts.
And then delete my number while you’re at it.
Fuck you.

He had probably selected his game poorly, because Ilya now had to listen to his character getting brutally slaughtered by zombies as he scrambled to respond.

Lily: no sorry not funny
was just trying to make you laugh

Ilya forced himself to put the phone down. He stared glumly at the red-tinged Game Over screen across from him, the fake camera splattered with his own blood. How fitting.

Hollander responded.

Jane: It’s not funny.

Lily: i know

Jane: And don’t joke about it.

Lily: okay

Jane: And don’t fucking look at those stupid fucking photos. Fuck.

Lily: …
obviously i have already seen, hollander
sorry

Jane: Fuck.

This was definitely not going well. Ilya wondered what people would do if they learned that, in addition to occasionally having consensual safe sex while fully nude, Shane Hollander also swore like a—well, like a hockey player. People would probably still find a way to be surprised about it.

Jane: This is such a nightmare.
I really can’t fucking talk to you of all people right now.
This is the last thing I need. You are the last thing I can deal with right now.

Ilya almost couldn’t believe it when he realized that his feelings were actually hurt. He had tried so hard to keep everyone in his life far enough away that no one would ever be capable of hurting him again. And yet here he was, reaching out to Hollander and getting so summarily shot down. He wanted to send back a succinct Fuck you then, but he resisted the urge and didn’t respond, throwing the phone down and picking up his remote control again.

Distracted and agitated, Ilya had already died two more times before Hollander texted him again.

Jane: Sorry.
I’m sorry.
That was shitty of me.
Just please do not send me any incriminating messages whatsoever right now, even if you delete them after. Nothing identifying at all.
This has just been so stressful and humiliating, but I am sorry for snapping. Again, that was shitty.

Lily: stop apologizing
mr canadian
save your breath is okay, i promise i am not bleeding out or whatever the fuck
i get it. stressful, huh?

Jane: Like you wouldn’t believe.
I don’t know. The worst week of my life, maybe. It’s been awful.
And you’re right, anyway. People are so fucking stupid.

Lily: stupid, and mean

Jane: Yeah, I guess.
And mean.

Lily: what happens to the girl now? is she in jail or whatever?

Jane: Oh, no.
I mean, we are pressing charges, but she’s not in jail.

Lily: why the fuck not? fuck her

Jane: I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s complicated and I’m honestly not letting myself think about it - my mom and the lawyers are dealing with that for me. I just can’t think about that side of things. It’s all so complicated.

Lily: any word from league? you missed a game but espn speculated it was not a call from higher ups or something?

Jane: No, got benched by the GM because of the noise - just two games, though, I’ll be back on Monday. I guess there was some discussion of whether I violated the image clause in my contract, but my mom shut that shit down. But if this goes to court, I mean, that’ll be a nightmare to deal with during the season.

Lily: hire people to deal with it for you - you remember you are a millionaire, yes?

Jane: Ugh. It’s just all such a fucking distraction.
I just want to play hockey.

Ilya lightly traced the edge of his thumbnail over the words, chewing on his lip.

Lily: montreal needs you
they lost both games without you
does your offense line know they need to put the puck in the net, not shoot it straight into the glass over and over again?

Jane: Yeah, even I can't justify that.
Honestly, don’t tell anyone, but I’m a little relieved. Not for our season standing, but, I don’t know, I hope management will help brush things under the rug faster to get me back on the ice. I was worried they would do well and then management would delay my return or something.
Oh god, is that awful? Please don’t tell anyone I said that

Lily: relaxxxxx
montreal is very stupid but not stupid enough to sack their star player over this

Jane: Ugh. Don’t even say that, oh god!

Lily: remember that other guy? in florida? two years ago also had that whole photoshoot of dick pics and he is still playing, and he got only i think twelve points last season
you, shane hollander-rocket-ross-calder-smythe, are fucking fine

Jane: Ew. Dylans, Miami. Everyone’s comparing me to him, but he literally sent a carousel of dick pics to a prostitute. I obviously didn’t do that.

Lily: obviously
but the comparison is good, maybe - good example of exactly what you did not do, right?

Jane: I don’t know, maybe, I guess. It’s just all gross.
I fucking wish nobody was thinking about me like that. It’s fucking invasive and it’s humiliating.
My parents saw the fucking pictures. ALL of them. People were TAGGING my MOM

Ilya winced. He wanted to point out that none of the pictures were inherently humiliating, but that made him sound no better than the weirdos on the internet, so he refrained. Now wasn’t the time for radical sex positivity, probably.

Lily: ah.
not good.

Jane: Nope.
Please delete all of this.
Also, I might get a new number or something. I’m paranoid as hell that she’s going to leak something else.
But thank you for reaching out, I guess. Sorry again for snapping at you.

Lily: no more apologies. can talk whenever you want.
i am apparently the only person ever who is not surprised that superstar athlete millionaire underwear model has sex sometimes, so i understand if you ever need a breath of fresh air from stupidity

Jane: Hah.
Thanks.

Lily: send new number if you get it.
i can talk whenever, if you need it.

Five minutes later, Shane sent him a thumbs-up.

Ilya didn’t manage to complete the level that night. He kept dying, and the zombies were more than happy to tear his skull open and eat his brain because of it. He was distracted.

Two weeks, he thought, until their next game.

+++

Ilya knew he was supposed to hate it on principle, but of all the cities they traveled to for hockey, Montreal was secretly one of his favorites. Or, if nothing else, he suspected that it would have been if he ever had a proper opportunity to explore it. Montreal was bright, old and new, and full of young people who chattered in proud, obnoxious French so that Ilya didn’t feel as isolated by the language barrier while surrounded by his mostly non-Francophone teammates. Montreal had a thriving, energetic nightlife, endless clubs, and the strip clubs permitted full nudity. Bars didn’t close until 3:00 am, and for his first two seasons in the NHL, Montreal was one of the few cities where Ilya wouldn’t have had to sneak in with a fake ID.

He had discovered Montreal when he was nineteen, and spent most of his time there in hotel rooms and a strange empty apartment building.

Their draft pick order, ultimately, had been a matter of who fit where, not really who was the better player. Ilya was loud, aggressive on the ice and off it, the type of player who fit right in with the Bears. The Voyageurs liked their players to emulate the values of good sportsmanship and chivalrous behavior; they liked Canadians, and they liked French-speakers, and they wanted to appear scandal-free. If Montreal had won the lottery in 2009, Shane would have gone first. Ilya was sure that Hollander was intellectually aware of that, but Ilya sometimes wondered if Shane believed it.

Ilya wondered if there was another universe where another team got first pick and snagged up the teenage phenom golden boy Shane Hollander, and Ilya went to Montreal instead of Boston. He didn’t like any of the current players very much (other than the captain, of course), but he thought he would have enjoyed living in Montreal.

In this universe, he didn’t know the city very well, because whenever he visited, he ducked out of bars early so that he could see Shane for a few precious hours.

Their plane landed in Montreal the morning before their first game of the season, after an exhausting flight from Vancouver (whoever in the NHL had started the Bears’ season with three games on the West Coast deserved to rot in hell). The team went straight from the airport to their hotel. Ilya lingered outside the front doors, claiming he needed a smoke break, and pulled out his phone to text Jane.

Lily: landed, at the hotel, have some time before team dinner
soooooo am i seeing you before or after the game ;)
maybe both if you are very lucky

He finished his cigarette and lit a second. They didn’t have a practice before their game, so fuck it. His lungs would have more than enough time to recover, or he would deal with it. He’d played games after smoking his way through half a pack. He had scored with his lungs tight and aching, heaving for breath on the bench until a medic asked if he needed oxygen. He’d turned them down, of course.

Hollander responded. They hadn't texted since their first and only conversation after the leak, and his answer was short and blunt.

Jane: Neither, Rozanov.

Ilya frowned around his cigarette.

Lily: thought you said no names :(

Jane: Ah fuck, you’re right. I deleted it, sorry about that.
But seriously, stop distracting me. We have a game tonight.

Lily: uh, yes, i am aware, that is why i am texting
we have a game tonight and after i am going to drive out to your serial killer house and fuck you over the back of the couch, yes?

Jane: No.

Ilya blinked. No? Just that? He had been waiting two weeks for this opportunity to see Shane in person, hoping to finally get a real sense of how he had been dealing with all the additional pressure and the massive invasion of privacy. Ilya had been waiting, patiently and unobtrusively, so what the hell did Hollander mean, No?

Lily: no?

Jane: We can’t do that anymore.
I’m selling my condo. The market’s good right now and the renovations are done. I changed my mind, I don’t want to run it as a landlord, so I'm getting rid of it.

Ilya was shocked. It would have been slightly less shocking if lightning had struck him instead, despite the clear cerulean sky above him. Shane was selling his psychotic sex condo? What the fuck? Could this—was this—was Shane Hollander breaking up with him?

No. Of course not. Because they weren’t together.

The cigarette was barely half smoked, most of the ash hanging off the end like he was fucking Shelley Duval in that movie with the abusive husband. He dropped it to the asphalt between his feet without a thought, struggling to weave together a coherent sentence that wouldn’t sound desperate or pathetic. He latched on to the fact that Shane was still responding to him. He hadn’t been ghosted yet and he wasn't going to scare Hollander off if he could help it.

Lily: the fuck???
your beautiful sex condo!!!!
what did it ever do to you to deserve this treatment???

What did I do?

Ilya quickly squashed that thought, typing over Shane's texting ellipses.

Lily: your beautiful sex condo!!!! DDDD:

Jane: Please shut up

Lily: the memories!
all our wonderful memories!
how could you sell?? why???

Jane: Oh my god! Shut up! It wasn’t a sex condo! It was an investment property and I’m cashing in!

It was definitely a good sign that Hollander was still answering his messages. Probably. Ilya chewed hard at a hangnail. Was it weird that his heart was beating faster than normal? On the other hand, Hollander hadn’t answered his actual question, or not honestly, at least.

He pushed his back into the wall, feeling the rough texture and the chilled stone.

Lily: why are you selling?
why really?
don’t give me bullshit answer.

Jane: It’s not bullshit.

Lily: hollander

Jane: No names!

Lily: HOLLANDER

Typing bubbles appeared and disappeared, as almost always happened when he was texting Shane. Ilya stared at them as if he could decode the symbology before the message appeared on screen, just from the frequency of those ugly bouncing dots.

Jane: It was just a stupid idea in the first place. Way too risky. I don’t know what I was thinking.
The property deed is public information and it has my name on it. I don’t want people asking questions or tracking it down or whatever. It was just stupid, so I’m getting rid of it.
And don’t tell me you told me so, okay? I get it. You were right and it was a dumb purchase.

Usually Ilya loved to be told he was correct, but for some reason it didn’t feel very good today.

Lily: you are worried someone will find it?

Jane: Yes.

Lily: because of the pictures?

Jane: No, this is unrelated.

Lily: hollander.

Jane: Shut up. No. I mean, there’s a lot of attention on me right now and I don’t need to give anyone a reason to look even closer at my life, but no. No, I’m selling it because it was a stupid purchase in the first place.
I should never have bought it.

Ilya swallowed. His mouth was dry and his tongue tasted terrible, and he was reasonably certain that it had nothing to do with the cigarettes.

Hollander was just pointing out the obvious, wasn’t he? It was only fair. How many times had Ilya made fun of him for the stupid sex condo, and now he was selling it, so what? Why should it matter to Ilya?

None of this should matter. That was the obvious conclusion. None of this could ever mean anything, and it didn’t matter if he had gone temporarily insane when some fucking bitch posted stolen, intimate photos of Shane all over the internet and imagined that—what? That Ilya had any right to Shane's time and attention? He knew better than that. Ilya was a piece of shit, sure, but he wasn’t a monster. Of course, he had been concerned for Shane. Of course, he had been worried. Ilya knew Hollander, and he knew how personally he would take the scandal, so he had been concerned and worried like he would be for any friend, but it had all gone to his head. He had convinced himself that this was something more, but of course it wasn't.

“Fuck,” Ilya spat, pulling out his pack. He stared at it. God, he really couldn’t smoke a third cigarette on a game day. He was still trying to quit.

He was always trying to quit.

This thing with Hollander was impossible. It meant nothing, couldn’t ever mean anything. There was no future in it—fuck, Ilya shouldn’t even be thinking the word future. That was only asking for pain, and Ilya had sculpted most of his life around the avoidance of any unnecessary pain.

If Hollander had been spooked by this, that was a good thing. He should go. He should run away as fast as his feet would take him, sooner rather than later, and leave Ilya far, far behind. It was for the best, because Ilya was on a knife’s edge and about to overbalance. He knew himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t have been able to hold out forever. Better for Hollander to run away now, before Ilya had the chance to chase him off.

His phone buzzed. Ilya had been holding it tight enough to cut off the circulation in his fingertips, so he hadn't felt several additional messages come through. A wall of texts greeted him when he unlocked the screen.

Jane: It had a nice view, though.
The condo.
Not of the city, you couldn't really see the city, but over the river.
From the bedroom, not the living room, I mean. You know what I mean? Those big windows across from the bed, with the trees in the foreground? It was a nice view, especially at night, the way that the lights reflected off the water.

Jane: A really nice view.

Ilya stared at the texts. Oh yes, he knew what Shane meant. He could picture it perfectly. The river across from the bed. He had dreamed of that view, once or twice.

His phone buzzed again.

Jane: Never mind.
I just think my apartment has better security and there would be fewer questions about it, I guess. If that makes sense?

Fuck. Ilya’s heart leapt straight into his throat. He hoped Hollander was implying what he thought. He typed slowly and prayed that he wasn’t making a fool of himself.

Lily: so am i seeing your apartment tonight?
your real apartment?

Another long period of typing bubbles floated past him—far too long for the short texts that popped up.

Jane: No. Not tonight.
Is that okay?

Ilya stared at it. Well, there wasn’t really any way to argue with that.

Ok, he typed slowly, swallowing down his own disappointment until it mingled in his stomach with the other unpleasant emotions percolating there. Chiefly, he was anxious on Hollander's behalf, which Ilya probably didn’t have a right to feel, but of course felt keenly, regardless.

Ilya stared at the blinking cursor on his unsent message.

He deleted the two lonely letters.

Lily: of course, no worries
i hope you know that that girl is a bitch and a very strange loser, but most people in the world would not treat you like that

He wanted to say, I would not treat you like that, but that probably wasn’t what Hollander needed to hear. Of course Ilya wouldn’t leak Shane’s nudes if he ever got lucky enough to be the recipient of them.

But that probably wouldn’t ever happen now. Ilya wasn’t stupid. The thought of it wasn’t even that appealing, despite the dozens of jerk-off fantasies Ilya’d had over the years about receiving nudes from Shane. The fantasy was now inseparable from the reality of what had happened.

Shane’s typical typing bubbles appeared and disappeared.

Ilya ignored them.

Lily: i hope you have a good night without me - maybe now you can celebrate with your team instead, huh? you should treat yourself, since i cannot do it for you tonight, yes?

He got a much quicker response to that, a simple, Fuck you, Rozanov, that was so easy to read in Shane’s voice it made Ilya smile automatically.

Ilya sent back an emoji crying a single tear.

Lily: yes, i will have to fuck myself all alone tonight. my bed, so lonely. you should also fuck off, hollander - i think you’ve earned that too

He finished it up with a tongue-out emoji.

Shane sent the rolling eyes emoji.

Ilya sent the fist and the water droplets.

Jane: You’re gross.

Lily: *your

Jane: What? No. It’s definitely “you’re.” It’s a contraction of “you are” - “you are gross.”

Lily: hmm, no, i don’t think so

Jane: Yes, it is. I think I would know.

Ilya pressed a hand over his mouth, snickering into his palm.

Lily: oh, now you are correcting my english? what, you hate immigrants hollander?

Jane: You were literally the one correcting my English! Incorrectly!

Lily: not a denial. #ShaneHollanderisOverParty

Jane: No. I have enough hashtags already.

Ilya sobered a little.

Lily: yes, okay, fair. i will not tell the press that secretly you hate bilingual people. it is perfect blackmail, but i will be respectful

Jane: I’m literally bilingual. And you were just fucking with me, I get it. I was playing along with the joke.

Ilya sent back a paragraph of crying-laughing emojis.

Jane: Fuck off.

Lily: okay.
goodnight, hollander

Jane: Goodnight, Rozanov. (And please delete the texts with my name or identifying information. And thank you.)

Ilya let his head fall back against the brick wall behind him, closing his eyes.

It would be weird to play tonight knowing that he wouldn’t see Hollander after. There had only been a few games in their careers where they hadn’t found the time to meet up before or after for a hook-up, no matter how brief. And now, what? Would he actually have to hang out with his team tonight? Find a club or a bar, somewhere chic, where he could get drunk and find a brunette who would look at him with dark eyes and a shy smile?

Suddenly, Ilya had no interest in exploring Montreal.

There were three months until the next Boston-Montreal game. They wouldn’t meet again until late December, just after Christmas, a few weeks before that year’s All-Stars game.

The time between seemed interminable.

But it would pass, Ilya knew.

Okay. He could wait for Shane. He would wait. For as long as it took.

Chapter End Notes

This will probably be the heaviest texting chapter (i literally wasted hours testing different ways of coding it before i decided i didn't like it). Hoping chapter 2 will be up next weekend! Title and summary are subject to change bc i couldn’t come up with anything better—if you’ve got suggestions, feel free to let me know! thanks for reading :)

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

I impulsively split this chapter in two/reordered some scenes, so the chapter count has gone up (doesn’t it always? Egg on my face for thinking I had it planned out this time). It was twelve thousand words though. The word count got away from me while they were fucking, idk

I’ve already written three versions of tuna melt fix its so despite what anyone tells you, this chapter is NOT a tuna melt fix it (i promise)

In retrospect, Ilya was aware that he had lost his mind.

But that happened sometimes when he knew he would be seeing Hollander after a long time away. The thing with Hollander, itself, was insanity. It was also irresistible, and Ilya was a very weak man.

Circumstances kept them apart for three months, and Ilya diligently spent that time piecing his sanity back together by trying to forget that Shane Hollander existed. Sveta and Marly were his biggest assistants, though they didn’t know it.

After the October Montreal-Boston game (final score 4-2, Montreal, but one of those goals was Pike on the empty net, which was basically the only time Pike ever scored according to Ilya), Ilya deleted Twitter off his phone. He kept Instagram but forced himself to stop scrolling; he followed too many hockey accounts, and where there was hockey, there was Shane Hollander, and where there was Shane Hollander, there were the fucking pictures.

Ilya was detoxing. He put it out of his mind.

He went dancing with Sveta, high on edibles. He went bar-hopping with Marly and stayed out until sunrise. On roadies, in every city they went to, Ilya left bars with women hanging off his arms, his teammates cheering him on. He fucked those girls well and hard, and he left before curfew with a wink, and he never left his number.

It was three months of good music, good alcohol, good fun. Across an ocean, his father’s memory got worse every passing month, so he started paying Alexei the wages of a full-time employee to watch their ailing father, to take him to doctor's appointments and make sure he took his meds, and Ilya was sure that Alexei wasn’t doing it, but what else could he do? What else could Ilya do?

He dripped sweat in nightclubs, beds, gyms, and on the ice. He stayed near the top of the scoring race and kept his eye on the conference standings even though they weren’t even halfway through the season. He ordered Russian copies of Invitation to a Beheading and The Brothers Karamazov, reading novels in Cyrillic for the first time in years, and both books made him grow strangely teary-eyed at random points. He gave speeches before games and consoled his teammates after bad ones, and he threw parties at the expensive glass house he had purchased over the summer, and he relapsed on his smoking completely and then had to quit again. When he wanted a cigarette, he ordered McDonald’s instead, and that actually worked out pretty well.

He watched game tape.

Watching Hollander with his helmet on and his skates laced wasn’t the same. Ilya could watch him as closely as he wanted and it didn’t break his streak of good days. That was just hockey.

Three months of bars and hockey. Ilya returned to his baseline.

He slept around and got papped, but no one cared that Ilya Rozanov had been caught dancing with some Singaporean heiress turned model when they could speculate about the ongoing case of Shane Hollander and that girl who leaked his nudes. Ilya got high with Saint Vic and his wife and stood on the balcony of their apartment on a night when a heavy wind was wafting in from the sea, and the smell of weed was replaced with the scent of salt.

He spent Christmas Eve at the Marlow family home in Weston and bought gifts for all of Marlow’s thirteen assorted nieces and nephews, and Christmas Day with Svetlana and her mother in downtown Boston, and Boxing Day alone, which was fine. Ilya liked to spend some time alone. It helped him reset, and that was his ultimate goal.

Boston rarely had white Christmases. The Western holiday movies Ilya had grown up watching had lied to them all; the heavier snows rarely arrived before January and February on the East Coast, so Christmas was usually just cold and a little gray, but almost never white. His house, glass and beautiful and serene, and his, which was what had mattered most to him, was unfortunately a little drafty in the coldest months. Ilya cranked up the heat, not giving a shit about his bill, and tugged on Bears-branded sweatpants and a hoodie. He wandered around in thick socks, dressed all in black, with his phone in his hand. He checked that week’s game schedule.

He blinked and came back to himself, and three months had passed.

Ilya double-checked the schedule, just to make sure.

On December 30, the Voyageurs were coming to Boston. Last year, when the Voyageurs were first in the league for a solid two weeks straight, some fans had burned an effigy of Shane in the spring, an eight-foot-tall scarecrow wearing a #24 jersey in an alley near TD Garden. Ilya had arrived at the arena after the fire trucks had already put it out and cleared the area, and three men (all in their forties and fifties) had been arrested, but the smell of burning plastic and hay lingered.

They had done the same thing to Ilya in Montreal, but it had felt worse to smell the awful stink knowing it was Shane.

Shane would be back in Boston soon. It felt good to have things back on his home turf. Things hadn’t worked out in Montreal in October, but that was understandable. Shane’s reputation had taken a wild left turn, but things had settled over the ensuing months, even if the story and the jokes would probably never fade. But right now, with the upcoming game, things could be different. They could see each other again.

Ilya wanted….

He sat down in his kitchen, pulling the front of his hoodie up over his nose so that his breath could warm the frozen tip.

What did Ilya want?

He wanted things to go back to how they had been.

2015 was a good year for them.

Shane had been a little distant over the summer after Vegas, but as always, his irritation was easily soothed. When Ilya flew to Montreal for a preseason game, testing his chemistry with the AHLers to replace a retired linemate, Shane hadn’t even played but still sent Ilya the sex condo’s address, as if Ilya didn’t have it memorized. They had fucked, twice, and when they realized how late it was, Shane had raced Ilya across the city in his very practical car so that Ilya could make it back to his hotel room before curfew. Ilya kissed him quickly in thanks before jumping out of the Jeep, and Shane hadn’t reacted at all. It had been dark, and the windows were tinted.

Ilya was an affectionate lover. He didn’t enforce stupid “no kissing” rules with any of his hook-ups, but Shane was the only partner he started kissing goodbye.

Their first game of the regular season, Ilya had fought through the exhaustion of a recent roadie and back-to-back games to make it to Hollander’s hotel room. In November, they played an afternoon game and then disappeared back to the sex condo with takeout and spent an entire afternoon fucking and pressing on bruises and sore spots until the other laughed. In January, they faced off at All-Stars. Shane set another record at the All-Stars shot-accuracy competition, and then Ilya set a personal PR for the number of orgasms he wrung out of Shane. They played two more games in the spring, both rushed encounters as they worked around the late-season schedule, but Ilya bent Shane over a couch and sucked his dick to the root in the shower afterward. Shane won the Cup and the Conn Smythe, they were both nominated for the Hart regular-season MVP award, they both flew to LA, and Ilya had discovered a freckle he had never seen before behind Shane's left ear.

It was a really good year. Ilya had every intention of recreating it the following season. He had set a goal of locating at least three new freckles.

Now it was late December, and Ilya hadn’t seen Shane off the ice in six months.

He was determined to change that, but he didn’t exactly have a plan.

It was the last day of the NHL Christmas break. Ilya had one week to convince Shane to meet up with him again.

Three months had passed in a fog and a blur, but Ilya was back. And he was going to get Shane back.

+++

He started his campaign with a text. Ilya and Shane had texted a handful of times over the past three months. Twice, it had been about hockey, both conversations initiated by Shane, once during a brutal fight between Kent and Korogyi that had mystically produced no game misconducts, and after Ilya’s five-point game in November. Shane had earnestly congratulated him. The only other limited exchange was when Ilya drunkenly sexted Shane from a nightclub in Boston. Shane hadn’t even responded to the four typo-filled texts he sent, but Ilya counted it.

Ilya thought long and hard about what he needed to send now to convince Shane to come back to him.

Lily: been lonely in boston lately… know anybody who could help a girl out?

For good luck, he placed his mother’s cross between his front teeth.

Sometimes, Ilya got a peculiar thrill from texting Shane as a girl. There was probably some perverted, Freudian reason for it, but Ilya didn’t give a fuck. He especially liked the idea of Shane’s teammates seeing the texts and the contact name and ribbing Shane about his regular Boston girl. Ilya liked to imagine Shane getting flustered and defensive, and his teammates thinking it was because he was shy. Ilya, famously, liked trouble. He enjoyed the subtle ways they could flaunt their relationship.

Montreal Jane and Boston Lily had been a stroke of genius on his part. Ilya would have to pat himself on the back for that again.

Shane responded.

Jane: You? Lonely? Sure.

Ilya grinned.

Lily: :o are you slutshaming me?????

Jane: I’m slutacknowledging you

Ilya laughed out loud.

Lily: HOLLANDER
WHAT THE HELL
you are funny?????

Jane: And you’re annoying. And no one is surprised.

Ilya smiled, then steeled himself.

Lily: you are hurting my feelings, insulting me like this :’(
you will have to make it up to me, i think

Jane: How?

Lily: could start by sending me your hotel room number next time you are in boston

Ilya waited. He held his breath.

Jane: I don’t know.
I mean, I want to.
But I don’t think it’s a good idea, sorry.
I know Boston is less intense than Montreal, but I’ve been having some issues with paparazzi and hotel staff because of, you know.
And there are always cameras and stuff, so even if we went to a different hotel from the team, I just think it’s too risky.

Jane: I don’t think so. I’m sorry.

The metal cross slid from between his teeth.

Maybe it was the immediate and sharp disappointment that spurred him on.

Ilya did something impulsive.

He hit the call button and pressed his phone to the side of his face, listening to the ringing and waiting for Shane to turn down the call.

But he didn’t. Shane answered, but he didn’t speak immediately. Ilya heard him breathe in quickly, sounding almost surprised.

Still leaning into the strange impulsiveness of the moment, Ilya filled the silence quickly; “If you are worried about the hotel, Hollander, you should come to my house instead.”

And he heard Shane’s sharp inhale.

Okay, maybe the request wasn't all that impulsive after all. Ever since he bought his new place, Ilya had been imagining Shane in his space. Mr. Real Estate, Mr. Landlord—he knew Shane would appreciate the clean lines, the muted jewel tones, the mixture of wood and stone that felt masculine and modern but, bathed in dappled sunlight filtered through the leaves outside his windows, not harsh. Open and bright, Ilya loved his new home because it balanced the privacy he craved with the openness he rarely felt privileged to.

He thought Shane would understand that.

So he had been imagining inviting Shane over ever since he bought the place—picturing him slumped on the couch, or sitting at the counter, or sprawled across Ilya’s bed. All good options, certainly. Ilya had also had much more embarrassing fantasies about what brand of blender Shane used to make his smoothies and where in the house would have the calmest lighting for Shane to lay out his yoga mat (preferably somewhere with seating nearby, so Ilya could have a good view). But Ilya would never admit that to anyone. Never.

He had imagined it but never planned to invite Shane over. Ilya had been holding out against that impulse for as long as humanly possible, but he was pretty sure this counted as inhumane circumstances. He hadn’t seen Shane since fucking June.

The NHL Awards for the 2014-2015 season had been held in Los Angeles last summer. They had reunited plenty of times since their intense hook-up after Ilya won the Cup, but to Ilya, the Awards still felt like a do-over for that night in Vegas, when things had felt so wrong between them.

Shane had just won his own Cup, and the Conn Smythe to boot. Winning made Shane horny. Ilya knew that well. (Losing made Shane annoyed, which also made him horny, so there really wasn’t a downside when they played against each other).

In LA, with Shane and Ilya on equal footing once again in their neck-and-neck career trajectories, they’d shared a glass of wine instead of vodka. Shane had strutted around the immaculate hotel room completely naked and perfectly happy, on top of the fucking world from his Cup win and as unselfconscious as Ilya had ever seen him. His smile was wide. His body was powerful and wanting. He had taken what he wanted, and even before the sex actually started, his swagger had made Ilya hard so fast his vision swam.

Ilya had loved seeing that confidence on Shane. In the bedroom, Shane usually moved with instinct, his body intuitively knowing what it wanted, but always at war with Shane’s reason. That night, Shane had walked and fucked like a winner. Like a champion. Like he’d really known who he was for the first time. He was Shane fucking Hollander.

Six months later, Shane had lost that.

It made Ilya gnash his teeth.

So he said, “Come to my house,” even though they had never done that before, in all their years of hooking up.

In Boston, they hooked up in hotels (and in Toronto, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York on a handful of occasions, Quebec City the one time they had played a Winter Classic there against each other). In Montreal, they went to Shane’s weird serial killer sex condo.

Shane had never been to his house or the apartment he’d owned before. Ilya had never been to any of Shane’s other properties, though sometimes, between hook-ups, Shane liked to ramble about things like renovation costs or the color of his grout. It was a line they had never crossed, no matter how often Ilya had dreamed about it.

Things were different now. But maybe here, in Ilya’s house behind hedges and tall suburban trees, far away from his teammates and nosy hotel staff and cellphones—maybe Shane could be comfortable again.

It was worth the risk, at least.

“What?” Shane asked. Ilya figured he was giving Ilya an opportunity to retract the offer, or to restart their phone call on a normal footing (hi, hello, how are you, what have you been up to since the internet got ahold of your nonconsensual dick pics), but he refused to be normal. Shane had never responded well to normal. Shane was pretty fucking crazy too.

“I am inviting you to my house since you are worried about the hotel,” Ilya repeated. This must have been the emotional equivalent of jerking off at Shane in a public shower, but somehow he felt much more exposed this time around.

“Your house?” Shane asked slowly. Ilya heard his throat click when he swallowed.

“It’s in the suburbs,” Ilya explained. “I bought it for privacy, got tired of living in an apartment building, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” Shane murmured. “I own all the adjacent units in my place, so it's pretty private. I’m thinking about expanding them into a larger unit, but they’re empty for now.”

Ilya smiled. “Wow,” he drawled. “So interesting.”

“Shut up.”

“No, no, keep going, Hollander. Mr. Home Owner. Mr. Housing Crisis.”

“Oh my god, shut up!”

“Does talking real estate get you horny?” Ilya said, snickering but trying to sound seductive. He wasn’t sure it worked out, though.

“No! I just like it!”

“I can tell,” Ilya laughed. “Hockey and houses. The only things you ever talk about. Your only hobbies, probably.”

Shane snorted. “Yeah, I guess. Why, what else do you like besides hockey?”

“Drinking, dancing, fucking,” Ilya drawled.

“Well, I like fucking, too,” Shane pointed out.

Ilya seized the opportunity. “Come to my house and I will fuck you, then. Two of your favorite things: real estate and my dick. Kind of hockey, too, since it's my dick.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” Shane said firmly. Ilya smiled.

“Yes?” he asked, teasing. “Yes, you will come to my house, is what you meant? No nosy neighbors, no shared walls, no traffic cameras.”

“No cameras?” Shane repeated, so quickly that it sounded involuntary.

Ilya nodded firmly to himself. “No cameras.”

Shane was quiet for a moment. Ilya held his breath. “Okay,” he said. “Yes. Sure. That—you’re right, that sounds more private. Definitely less risky than a hotel. Okay. Um, good idea. Thank you for the invitation.”

Ilya hoped Shane couldn’t hear the sigh of relief that left him. “You are so polite,” he cooed. “Will you still be polite when I am fucking you through my mattress, do you think? Should we bet on it? Make it a game, for after I beat you in the real game?”

“Shut up,” Shane complained. “You know I’m going to beat you, right? I’m five points ahead of you, and you’ve played three more games than I have this season! Fuck off!”

“I had a five-point game,” Ilya bragged.

He could practically hear Shane rolling his eyes and bit into the fabric of his hoodie in a fit, needing to sink his teeth into something. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Shane sighed, loud and gusty, as he often did when he was gearing up to end a conversation. “Okay. Next Sunday, before the game. What time should I get there?”

This was the risky part. “When do you get into town?”

Shane paused, presumably checking his schedule. “Um, we’re sleeping in New York, and our flight is scheduled for eight in the morning—ugh, the guys are going to be so annoying about that—anyway, we’ll probably be checked in at the hotel by… ten at the latest? Should I come after you eat lunch, or after dinner, or something? Curfew before an afternoon game is always 11:00.”

“You could come here right away if you want,” Ilya said without beating around the bush. “I promise I will feed you. You can leave whenever I wear you out, or when you get sick of me, but I don’t have practice that day, no obligations, nothing to look forward to except your leaky cock and wet mouth. I could take my time with you. Rare opportunity, no?”

And again, Ilya was holding his breath.

He was surprised when Shane didn’t make him wait long. "Okay. I mean—okay. That makes sense.”

“Good. One week. You come over here, I put you through the mattress, then the next day I put you through the ice. Sounds like a perfect weekend.”

Shane scoffed. “You wish, Rozanov.”

Yes. He did.

“I’ll see you then,” Shane said.

“Yes,” Ilya agreed. “Goodbye, Shane.”

Another quick breath, quieter this time, but he still heard it. “Bye.”

The call ended. Ilya dropped his phone carelessly onto the counter and propped his chin on his fist for a moment, thoughts swimming without taking shape. 

This silent meditation was interrupted when a strong breeze kicked up outside, rustling the bare tree branches and sneaking in through the drafty window frames. Ilya shivered, hard enough that his teeth clacked once, the movement completely involuntary and surprising. Ilya glanced around his living room and at the brisk day outside. It was twenty-five degrees in Boston, and a light flurry of snow had just begun to fall.

He shivered again and finally realized how fucking cold his house was.

Fuck. He needed to get his heating issues fixed before Hollander came over.

+++

Shane showed up at Ilya’s door wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. Literally.

Ilya’s heart did something weird in his chest.

“Sorry,” Shane said, already wincing as he stepped quickly through the door Ilya held open for him, glancing nervously over his shoulder. There was a light, powdery snow on the front lawn, shoveled off the path leading to his front door. Ilya was shirtless, in contrast to Shane’s enormous puffy coat, and his nipples pebbled almost painfully as a breeze rushed into his (thankfully properly sealed and appropriately cozy) home. Shane already looked distracted, unfortunately not by his nipples, as he looked over Ilya’s shoulder. “Didn’t want to get recognized at the airport… wow, this place is beautiful. I love—is that a fireplace? Gas, I guess? That’s gorgeous.”

Ilya snorted. Shane let his arms be moved like a doll’s as Ilya pulled off his coat, shoving it into the closet by the door. As he did so, Shane wandered toward the main, open living space, thumbs hooked awkwardly into the front pockets of his joggers.

“Did you have this place built yourself? Who did the landscaping?”

“Hello, Shane Hollander, yes, how are you?” Ilya drawled, prowling after him. “Yes, I am doing well, thank you for asking. Yes, can you believe, six months since we last saw each other! Time flies, I think. Yes, I can take your coat, no, leave your shoes on, it is fine, no worries, welcome to my humble abode.”

Shane turned around, face flushed either from the cold or embarrassment. “Sorry,” he said. “I mean—hi.”

“Hi,” Ilya agreed, backing Shane into the nearest wall. Ilya had jerked off once that morning, wanting to take the edge off while leaving at least a couple of orgasms for Hollander, and as a result, his dick was already just a little interested in his sweatpants. Pressed up against Shane’s joggers, he could feel that the interest was returned. “Miss me?”

“Um,” Shane said, but he was already grinding back against Ilya, his anatomy quickly taking an interest in the proceedings. Ilya grinned triumphantly and tried to dart in for a kiss, only to have the brim of Shane’s stupid white Voyageurs cap bonk him in the middle of his forehead. “Sorry!”

Ilya rolled his eyes and reached for Shane’s face, plucking the sunglasses off his nose. He dropped them onto a side table, and Shane didn’t object. Carefully, Ilya reached up and spun the white baseball cap backward, so the brim no longer shadowed Shane’s face, and he leaned in and kissed him properly.

Shane kissed back for the first time in six months.

Ilya put his hand on Shane’s face, fingers spread across his cheek and his thumb gently holding his chin in place, and he kissed him. Shane’s tongue met his, warm and wet and soft, and Ilya flattened him against the wall. He had to. He was worried that if he didn’t, Shane would immediately sink to his knees to suck his cock. Ilya wouldn’t have the strength to deny him that, but he wanted to kiss him first.

So he did, pressing their pelvises together as Shane groaned, high and immediately insistent into his mouth, and rutted against him just to feel the slow building pleasure, and to remember (he had never forgotten) how Shane felt against him.

It was a good kiss. Probably top five ever. In human history. Ilya put his other hand on Shane’s chest and groped his tit, thumb landing on his nipple and pressing the cotton fabric to it. Shane’s breath hitched. Ilya swallowed his tongue.

His body had spent six months missing Shane.

He slid his hand through the short, coarse hair above the nape of Shane’s neck. Ilya’s fingers brushed against the baseball cap, making him groan headily. He wanted to fuck Shane while he was wearing that cap—actually, better yet, he wanted to give Shane a Bears cap and convince him to ride Ilya while wearing nothing else. Maybe they could bet on it. Bets were so much fun, and nothing incentivized Ilya better than the urge to beat Shane.

He squeezed his leg between Shane’s, and Shane hitched his right leg up, partially draping it around Ilya’s thigh, and the angle was instantly better. They rutted like inexperienced virgins, although by that point, they were anything but inexperienced with each other’s bodies.

“Fuck,” Shane said, eyelids fluttering as he broke the kiss to throw his head back, awkwardly knocking Ilya’s knuckles on the brim of his hat into the wall so that it came loose. Ilya was enraptured. He could feel how hard Shane was already, the eager, unstoppable little rolls of his hips, and the look of disoriented arousal on his face was more addicting than any cigarette. “Er,” Shane muttered, reaching up to finally knock the cap off his head. His skull thunked against the wall as he threw it back, grinding against Ilya.

Ilya grinned. “Better? More comfortable, princess?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Shane said, but the movement never halted. His hair was matted and mussed by the cap, and his mouth was still red from the cold and now from the friction of their kisses.

Time apart never dulled the ache Ilya always felt around Hollander. It also didn’t necessarily increase it. He always felt crazy around Hollander.

Ilya started thinking about moving them (to the counter, to the couch, to the bed, he didn’t really care), but Shane didn’t seem to share the urge, his hips gaining speed as their tongues wrapped around each other. Ilya licked as deep as he could, feeling Shane’s molars and wondering if he still had his wisdom teeth. Shane groaned and thrust forward hard enough that Ilya nearly unbalanced. To compensate, he planted his hands hard against the wall on either side of Shane’s head and shoved back.

Shane groaned again.

“So fucking desperate,” Ilya breathed, pulling back just to force Shane to chase his lips. “Are you desperate for me?”

“Yes,” Shane admitted, chasing.

“Good,” Ilya said, and lunged back in.

He had meant to talk a little before they jumped right into things, but he was only a man, and a weak one at that. Ilya couldn’t resist Hollander. No one should expect him to.

He hummed as Shane’s breathing picked up, removing the hand from his tit to hoist Shane’s leg around his waist and hold it there, massaging the thick, powerful muscles in his thigh. Shane whined, contorting his body like he was trying to plant himself on Ilya’s vertical lap, Ilya’s hips slipping beneath Shane’s so that he was rutting up into Shane’s crotch, over his balls and a little farther back, which made Shane’s breath hitch delightfully. Ilya’s own sweatpants were loose and thin, but the fabric of Shane’s were a little less stretchy, more firm-fitting, and Ilya couldn’t actually get his cock between Shane’s ass cheeks like this, but fuck, he was going to try.

He thrust hard. Shane’s thick, long cock, tenting the fabric of his pants deliciously, stabbed into Ilya’s abs, making him shudder, letting out a strangled noise that was half-swallowed by Ilya’s mouth as he attempted to devour him. Shane shook in his arms, leg nearly slipping off his waist until Ilya pushed him harder against the wall, pinning him beneath his full weight as Shane went limp, only uttering tiny little whines.

It took until Shane started moving again, squirming and making awkward, bitten-off noises while pushing weakly at Ilya’s shoulder, for Ilya to come back to himself enough to pull back and realize what had just happened.

Shane Hollander just came in his fucking pants in less then ten minutes of grinding and making out.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Ilya definitely spent way too long staring between their bodies, at the noticeably deflating bulge. His mouth was completely dry. His voice cracked around a groan. “Fuck,” he said, pressing his forehead to Shane’s shoulder so that he could stare at the patch. “Fuck, that is so hot, Hollander. Fuck. I make you fucking come in your pants?’

Shane scoffed, but he helpfully shifted his thighs into a better position as Ilya slowly resumed grinding against his leg. “Fuck off,” he said, hands rising to scratch through Ilya’s hair.

“You fuck off,” Ilya said, glancing up with a smirk, “again, now. Maybe we can get to three times tonight, huh? Early start.”

Shane tipped his head back. It hit the plaster with a soft thunk. Ilya had an incredible view of his throat contracting as he swallowed. “Maybe.”

Ilya ground a little harder. “Four times?” he asked, because he would fucking love to break their record. His hips jerked, eager, when he remembered that this time, they had all day to try.

Shane swallowed again. He nodded. Ilya could feel his cock, never gone completely limp, stirring already, and he grinned. “Maybe.”

“You are pent up,” Ilya cooed, building a steady rhythm. “You need it. You need me. You are that desperate for me?”

Shane turned his head to the side. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he said, despite how he started moving his hips in time with Ilya so soon after his first orgasm. “It’s not just you.”

Ilya’s lips twitched, his rhythm faltering. “Oh,” he said sarcastically, voice grating to his own ears. “You come fast for all your lovers then?”

Shane’s gaze shot back to him, suddenly fiery. “Fuck off,” he snapped. At least he didn’t shove Ilya away. “No, that’s not—there are no other lovers, you jackass.” His nose wrinkled. “And that’s a gross word, anyway.”

Ilya stopped grinding. “No others?” he asked, surprise and curiosity pushing through his internal filter. He’d had his suspicions about how Shane had been doing since the leak, but that was months ago. Months.

Shane just shrugged. “Not since this summer,” he said, mouth twisting.

Ilya’s brows furrowed. It wasn’t exactly surprising, but the part of him that was always envious of Shane’s time and attention was warring with the empathy he felt for what Shane was going through. “Okay… but what, so you have also forgotten how to jerk yourself off?” he joked, hoping to lighten the tension settling thick around them. “Need a demonstration, Hollander?”

But Shane looked away, his jaw working furiously. “I-” He shook his head harshly, as though there was water stuck deep in his ear canal. “It’s just been a while. The start of the season, I guess. I’ve been—I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I can go again, though, so it’s not a big deal or whatever.”

Too busy to jerk off? Ilya thought with bulging eyes. He probably jerked off twice a day most days, sometimes more. He had, for a long time, suspected that Shane’s blood didn’t run as hot as his, that as eager as Shane was for his cock when they met up, general horniness didn’t randomly assail him as often as it did Ilya.

Shane had always been a pretty quick shot, to be fair, but even during their first hookup, he hadn’t come in his fucking pants.

Ilya kept those thoughts to himself, though. “It’s hot,” he said, pressing his mouth to Shane’s. “So hot,” he said into his tongue, feeling the pull of their lips as he spoke against him, where skin, made tacky with spit, caught and held. “You want me? You’re desperate for me?”

Shane groaned, “Only-” and cut himself off.

Ilya’s thoughts froze, but his body kept moving. Gradually, Shane began to meet him touch for touch, lips and tongue moving again, hips meeting Ilya’s.

The thing Ilya loved most about sex with Shane, which was different from all the sex he’d had before (and all the sex that he expected to follow), was the natural, instinctual way they touched each other. It had been there from the very first time in Toronto. He could describe it in a thousand metaphors—moths to flame, magnets, gravity, electrons, a string somewhere under his left rib, knotted tightly—and nothing could quite catch the gentle insistence with which Shane’s hands landed on his shoulders or biceps and stayed there, even if just connected by the tips of his fingers pressing into Ilya. Their mouths were the same. The softest part of Shane, warm, the easiest way inside his body, open to Ilya. Ilya loved kissing, loved making out with anyone willing, but kissing Shane was different. Their noses touched and the cartilage bent, and their feet turned circles like a dance as they caged each other in, and Shane wanted him, and Ilya had all the proof in the world. Shane Hollander wanted him. Ilya had him.

Only.

It was hard to stop kissing Shane, but Ilya eventually scrounged up the will needed to maneuver both of them to his bedroom (because if it had been more than three months since Shane had sex, he deserved a bed at least). The sheets were fresh and, on a whim, after depositing Shane on the duvet, Ilya turned and drew the curtains tightly over the window. He didn’t turn around fast enough to catch whatever expression flickered across Hollander’s features, and his face was carefully neutral by the time Ilya looked. But his body was soft, and he let Ilya press him down and climb on top of him. Shane initiated the next kiss, ducking his head to catch Ilya’s mouth when he tried to brush it over his Adam’s apple, and gentle suction pulled Ilya’s tongue into Shane’s mouth. Ilya felt the vibration of Shane’s groan and the slight graze of Shane’s teeth over his papillae made him shudder.

Ilya went slow. Shane kept trying to speed him up, but Ilya resisted. It had been more than three months, and Shane deserved a partner who would take his time. They had gone for longer before, when the schedule broke their games up unevenly throughout the season, or they missed each other during playoffs. Only two seasons ago, Ilya had ghosted Shane for half a year, from the Olympics until the NHL Awards, and he certainly had not been slow or gentle when they reunited back then. Shane had been desperate and wanting, and so had Ilya, but he’d hidden it better.

It was one of the hottest nights of his life, and Ilya hated thinking about it.

Shane had been sockless then, too-

But Ilya put that thought out of his head.

“I’m not made of glass!” Shane huffed, full of three fingers and becoming bratty because of it. “Hurry the fuck up, Rozanov!”

His legs wrapped around Ilya’s waist and his arms locked tight behind his shoulders. Ilya’s arm was at an uncomfortable angle, and his fingers were cramping, but he just pressed a firm kiss to Shane’s temple. “No,” he said happily as he bit the lobe of Shane’s ear.

Shane groaned.

Ilya had shoved his phone into a drawer the second he saw the security alert announcing Shane’s presence at his gate, and it was forgotten now.

Sometimes Ilya wondered if Shane slept with other men. If he had ever slept with other men. It must have been on his mind recently, with the pictures. It was insane, and categorically unfair, that Shane had already endured one sex scandal knowing that the guillotine blade was still hanging precariously over his neck.

Ilya fucked him as slowly as he could make himself. He watched Shane’s face very closely. “Still okay?” he asked, because Shane was tight, maybe tighter than he’d ever been. Maybe it was stress, or maybe Shane, if he hadn’t even been jerking off often, hadn’t used his thing in months either. Such weird, intimate, sad thoughts to have while buried inside him, but Ilya’s mind was racing, frantically chasing one thought around another, even as he kept his body locked still.

Shane’s knees were close to his ears, his face twisted in bliss, his eyes open through sheer force of will so that he could glare at Ilya. “Fucking move.”

Ilya moved.

He was insane. He had been driven insane. Ilya had suspected this for some time now, but today was total confirmation. He was insane, and it was all Shane Hollander’s fault.

Ilya had to make that sacrifice worth it, so he kept kissing him, and into his mouth he whispered, shuddering, “Shane,” as he came.

The fingers locked tightly in his hair flexed and pulled. Ilya wondered dazedly if it was a punishment until Shane murmured, “Ilya,” into his ear and came with him.

Ilya cleaned him up diligently, stretched his legs out to lie flat against the bed while Shane rolled his eyes and bitched at him but didn’t object, and then Ilya flopped onto the bed next to him.

They lay side by side, completely naked, Ilya’s hands awkwardly folded on top of his stomach, and he suddenly remembered that they had also done this the very first time they hooked up. Seeing each other fully naked had felt awkward, even though Shane had already had Ilya’s cock and fingers in his mouth, and Ilya had felt stupid because he was supposed to be the experienced one. For a moment, they had just laid there, staring awkwardly at the ugly popcorn ceiling of that hotel in Toronto for a few seconds.

The silence was just as awkward now, six years and dozens of orgasms later. Ilya was comforted that Shane didn’t pull the sheet over himself.

“That was nice,” Shane said.

Ilya laughed at him.

Shane sat up with a huff, swinging his feet over the side of the bed as though he were going to storm out of the room, so Ilya caught him around the waist and wrestled him back down. It turned competitive in a moment, Shane rolling with the movement and ruthlessly digging his elbow into Ilya’s thigh. Ilya yelped like a dog, which made Shane start laughing too, so Ilya pinned him to the bed. And kissed him. Of course. “It was nice,” he agreed. “You are always nice for me.”

“You’re nice to me too,” Shane said. He squirmed. “Sorry if I was… weird.”

Ilya shrugged. “I like you weird.”

Shane shoved hard and toppled Ilya over, claiming the higher ground. “Fuck. You,” he enunciated. Ilya grinned. If he hadn’t just orgasmed his brain out of his dick, he might have gotten hard again. Shane didn’t often ride him, but when he did, it was an experience. Shane sat up, hands placed a little awkwardly on Ilya’s stomach like he was covertly trying to hide his softened cock. He shifted, eyes flitting around the room. “I’m also sorry I turned you down last time. In October. I was… I’ve been in a weird headspace.”

“Don't apologize.” Ilya put his hands on Shane’s hips. He liked how he could feel skin, muscle, fat, and bone all in one spot, from the heels of his palms to his fingertips. “Despite what maybe they say, I go out dancing a lot of the time, and even I get rejected sometimes, Hollander. I can take it like a big boy.”

Shane rolled his eyes but smiled. “I know. I’m just… I guess I regretted it. That night. I wished that I had—we don’t get to see each other often, you know?” he finished quickly.

Ilya tightened his grip. No, they didn’t. “We have twelve hours today,” he suggested, his heart beating faster than it rightfully should. “We should make the most of it, maybe?”

Shane’s laugh was raspy. “Yeah. We’re good at that, I guess.”

“We can always make up for lost time,” Ilya agreed. “Make the waiting worth it.”

Shane curled down. “Okay.”

+++

There was ginger ale in Ilya’s fridge. Canada Dry. Shane stared at the can as Ilya silently passed it to him, but he didn’t ask why Ilya had them. Ilya was grateful. He didn’t want to explain, or know how to.

“Chicken or salmon?” Ilya asked, turning his back to Hollander to avoid his heavy gaze. He pulled two containers of prepped meals out of his fridge. Maybe he should have cooked something himself—he had thought about it—but it seemed… weird? Too friendly, maybe? Or maybe they were actually friends, and that’s what this was. Fuck, Ilya didn’t know, but he would hold on to the trappings of this being casual for as long as he could.

“Uh,” Shane said. (Fuck. Ilya definitely should cooked. Fuck.) “Whichever is fine.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. He rattled the containers enticingly.

Shane smiled. “Okay, salmon. Are they from your team’s nutritionist or something?”

“Yes,” Ilya said, popping the first container into the microwave, “so you are not allowed to inspect. No stealing important diet secrets from the Bears, Hollander, that would be collusion.”

“Would it?” Shane asked. “Or should I be suspicious that you’ve laced my food? Gonna make me fail my next blood panel, Rozanov?”

Ilya raised a finger, grinning. “Ah, but that is why I give you options. If you picked the steroid rice, that’s on you. I have nothing to do with it.”

Shane laughed. Ilya felt so ridiculously triumphant it was like he could hear trumpets blaring. “Not if you put it on the salmon, you knew I would want that one! You were setting me up! This is—is—entrapment!” Shane snapped his fingers when he found the word.

Ilya leaned his elbows on the counter, rolling his shoulders in a way he knew looked attractive. When Hollander’s eyes followed the motion, he preened. “What is entrapment?”

Shane blanched. “Oh god, I don’t think I know the definition.” He scratched his temple. “Uh, it’s like when a cop convinces a person to commit a crime and then arrests them for it? I don’t think it’s really legally allowed, maybe?”

Ilya raised his eyebrows. “There is a word for this in English? In Russia, police call that ‘doing their job.’”

“Really?” Shane asked, shuffling. “It’s, like, corrupt over there and stuff?”

Ilya smiled a little, both fond and sad. “Ah, yes. Corrupt and stuff.”

“That must be weird,” Hollander said blankly. “I'm sorry."

The microwave beeped, saving them both. Ilya stood and switched out the containers, sliding the steaming dish of salmon, quinoa, and broccoli across the counter to Shane, then handing him a fork. “Here you go. I promise it is not entrapped.”

“Thanks,” Hollander said, fiddling with his fork. He didn’t start eating, eyes lingering on the microwave and Ilya’s meal.

The fondness overtook Ilya. “Eat,” he instructed.

Hollander glared and pointedly set his fork down. “I’ll wait for you.”

Ilya laughed.

They had not shared meals all that often. A few times at All-Stars, when they didn’t have curfews or roommates and could order room service without being noticed, but that was really it. There was something so quintessentially domestic about Shane waiting for him to eat.

It was nice, but it also reminded Ilya of family dinners as a child. Grigori would come to the dinner table at his own leisure, without care for anyone else’s time or the meal Irina had worked over for hours growing cold or stale. Alexei would whine and complain to their mother but never in front of their father. Ilya would sit silently at his mother’s side, stomach grumbling after a long day of hockey practice. He never complained. Irina never gave any impression of how she felt about it either. She had been good at hiding those emotions.

Hollander waited until Ilya had his food and a Coke from the fridge before he started eating. “Thank you,” Shane said after the first bite.

Ilya swallowed. “You are welcome.”

They had a natural rhythm together in bed that made things easy. Over the past few years, that ease had gradually extended into their text conversations, faceless and always on a time delay, where they could banter, tease, or flirt without it feeling awkward.

They weren’t quite easy around each other in person yet.

“You have been playing well,” Ilya said. When all else failed, they could always talk about hockey.

Shane nodded, eyes suddenly determined and staring into the middle distance. “Yeah. It’s been a good distraction from everything.” He cleared his throat. “I want another Cup.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. “A repeat?” He whistled. “Lofty ambitions, Hollander. There hasn’t been a repeat since the nineties.”

Hollander shrugged, unconcerned and proud like he never was in front of a camera. “You said it yourself. I’ve been playing well.” He took a long drink of his ginger ale. Ilya imagined the bubbles sliding down his throat and settling deep inside him. “I want another Cup. I think I can get it.” He still reached over to knock on Ilya’s wooden cutting board, but the gesture was rote. Shane wasn’t worried about jinxing himself.

Confidence looked good on him, as always. “Your goalies are good,” he said. “Your defense is, eh. Good first pairing. Offense? It’s just you. Not much depth, Hollander.” He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

Shane’s nose twitched. “I was good enough last year.”

Yes, he was. Ilya opened the Coke bottle with the center of his palm, feeling the bite of the metal and the faint spray of mist as the carbonation escaped.

“It’s been nice,” Shane continued softly, “to… well, it’s been nice to have a distraction. From the whole, you know.” He waved a hand around his head as if he were swatting off a mosquito, even though it was the dead of winter and the grass outside Ilya’s glass doors was dusted with snow. “The pictures and everything. It feels good to prove that I’m not distracted.”

Ah. So they were going to talk about it. Ilya hadn’t been sure what the protocol was in this situation.

He took a long swig of his Coke. “People are still being stupid,” he acknowledged. Obviously, the story had died down, and Shane’s legal team was still periodically wiping the internet of the pictures. They still existed, of course, but whenever they were posted on popular social media sites, they were quickly and ruthlessly removed. The news cycle had moved on, though without another NHL scandal to replace it, it had lingered in the public consciousness.

It had certainly lingered in locker rooms. Ilya still heard other benches talking about the photos as if they were the funniest thing that had ever happened. He wondered how Hollander’s locker room had reacted. He wanted to ask.

“Yeah.” Shane scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s just dumb, you know? Like this is fucking stupid. Of all the-” He cut himself off and clicked his tongue, looking away. Ilya watched the contracting muscles in his jaw as he worked it, literally chewing on his words. “It just feels incredibly stupid that I have a real secret, something that could actually ruin our lives if it got out, and something so random and dumb happens instead.”

Ilya wasn’t sure what to say. They ate a few more bites in silence, finishing their meals as Ilya turned over his words. He brushed his nose with the back of his hand, sniffing, and took another sip of his Coke. “Random and stupid things happen all the time,” he said after a moment. “Keeps life interesting.”

Shane scoffed. “I don’t need life to be interesting.” Shane looked at him. There was something wary and gauging in his eyes before he spoke. “I hooked up with another guy this summer.”

Ilya twitched. “Oh.” Hollander’s searching expression lingered. Ilya wished he knew what he was searching for.

“Yeah. This summer. I went to Mexico with Hayden and JJ and a few other guys from the team. Got away from the group at one point, hooked up with this dude who I was sure didn’t recognize me, and it was… you know, it was fine, it was whatever. When the news broke, obviously at first I thought it was about him. Then I realized it was Jessica and—the feeling of relief I felt, it was just so fucking dumb. Then it felt dumb to be devastated when I knew it could’ve been worse. Ugh. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” He pushed off against the counter and covered his face with his hands, then scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “And I couldn’t talk about it, you know? With… anyone.”

“Yes,” Ilya murmured. He was blinking quickly, so he looked down into his glass, watching the way bubbles bumped against ice cubes and slithered up to the surface. “I haven’t either. And I thought the same thing when I saw the news. I thought it must be about us.”

Shane huffed, unamused. “Could you imagine? All this fucking chatter about a dick pic. Imagine if it was—well, us.”

Ilya bobbed his head. “Did you sell the condo?”

He hadn’t meant to ask that. He wished he were drinking a rum and Coke instead of this stupid non-alcoholic soda. A couple shots of vodka would do in a pinch.

Shane looked down. He scratched his thumb at the raised design on the side of his can. Under his breath, he admitted, “Not yet.”

Good enough for now, Ilya thought. He rounded the counter. Shane must have known what was coming, because he stood up and let Ilya press him flat over the kitchen island, knocking the empty container aside. “I am going to fuck you right here,” Ilya said, one hand on the back of Shane’s neck, pressing his cheek to the cool marble surface, the other rucking up Shane’s shirt. Winter was the worst time of the year, and the worst time to find new freckles. His search would have to be thorough.

“That’s unsanitary, Ilya,” Shane told him, not moving.

“Okay,” Ilya said, and did it anyway.

Chapter End Notes

Obviously like everyone else I’m fascinated by the time jumps in book and show canon. So much of Hollanov’s relationship is indicated by their sex life and the kind of sex they have, and canonically the tuna meltdown is the first time they plan on spending a full day together, but to me, there had to be so many more small changing points over the years as their intimacy developed in order to get from tunamelt to tampa to the cottage—they did not fall in love at either all-stars or the cottage, so when did it happen? Love fan fiction because there are endless explorations of what those little moments of developing intimacy looked like during the situationship years, it's FUN <3

Chapter 3: Interlude: Montage

Chapter Summary

Ilya thinks about Irina a bit in this chapter (nothing really triggering) and it did inspire me to go off on a little midweek side tangent, so if you recognize the crossovers, this chapter did actually come first

Chapter Notes

Ilya thinks about Irina a bit in this chapter (nothing really triggering), it did inspire me to go off on a little midweek side tangent, so if you recognize the crossovers, this chapter did actually come first.

(Sorry for any mistakes, I was editing this in bits and pieces all week so something might have slipped through!)

Twelve hours in Ilya's home included showering together after lunch and Ilya fingering Shane’s loosened hole under the guise of cleaning him up, even though neither of them got hard. Ilya made Shane lunch and they ate it on his couch, booing a Toronto-Dallas game on the television and talking shit about the recent WJC tournament during commercial breaks; they both agreed that it had been a disgrace for Canada and Russia alike and that the only promising player was a Czech forward who was all of 5’7 but a fucking demon on the ice. Ilya pulled out the air hockey table he had bought for team party nights; they nearly decapitated each other with flimsy plastic disks, and Shane actually snarled when Ilya scored the winning point, and Ilya graciously celebrated by jumping on top of his kitchen island and whipping his shirt around his head like a groupie. Then they fucked over the counter. They ordered dinner, and Ilya pushed another can of ginger ale into Shane’s palm. Shane told Ilya to shut up when he pulled a toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag to brush his teeth after dinner, even though they both knew his schedule meant there was no way Shane could spend the night at Ilya's.

Ilya almost caved and asked if he could spend the night at Shane’s hotel instead.

He bit back the request because he did have some self-respect left. Maybe.

Ilya didn’t want Hollander to leave. Twelve hours with Hollander, and all the good work of three months spent detoxing meant nothing.

They said goodbye at the door. Ilya turned off the light in the foyer as soon as the door closed and hoped Shane couldn’t see him through the window. Ilya watched Shane walk down the front path into the dark night, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Twelve hours with Shane Hollander would never be enough. Ilya wanted to sleep with him, he realized, more than anything. Just to sleep. Ilya wanted to feel Shane Hollander’s arms wrapped around his waist, holding him tightly until they had both sweated so much from the body heat that they woke up dehydrated and delirious. He wanted to see Shane first thing in the morning, to see what his freckles looked like at dawn.

Twelve hours was like the first line of cocaine that started the addiction. Ilya couldn’t take it back. He would have murdered anyone who tried to take it from him, so the addict metaphor was probably fitting.

He barely remembered anything about the game the next afternoon. Montreal won, but no one was really surprised; they were the reigning Cup champions and gunning for the Presidents' Trophy. Ilya was only disappointed because he and Shane didn't get another chance to speak, and because the Voyageurs' plane flew out right after the game ended.

Ilya was back at home that evening, morosely picking through his dinner, when he received a new text from Jane.

His heart jumped. Ilya stared at it for a long moment, unsure how to respond.

Jane: Landed safely.

Lily: ?

Jane: What?

Lily: why are you telling me?

Jane: Whatever.
You told me you landed safely last time you were in Montreal. I don’t know, I just thought I’d do the same.

Lily: ok

Jane: Whatever.
Never mind.

Lily: ok fine
stop pouting
youre flight was safe, that is good. comfortable too?

Jane: I know we’re spoiled by always flying private, but I've never really liked planes. As comfortable as possible, I guess.

Lily: ah but probably extra hard for you to be comfortable now ;)
still sore?

Jane: Asshole.
Yes.
Wait shut up don’t say it

Lily: yes, i know it’s your asshole that’s sore is why i was asking
too slow hollander

Jane: I texted before you!
Shut up

Lily: ugh i fuck you so good you come four times and still you are RUDE to me
ungrateful
who raised you in a barn?

Jane: Not a barn, a cottage.

Lily: ah, yes, i saw on your instagram
i hate to tell you hollander, but your glass mansion is not a cottage or a barn

Jane: You look at my instagram?

Lily: had insomnia, needed help sleeping.
very helpful thank you :D

Jane: Whatever.
“Cottage” is just how Canadians refer to, like, rural vacation homes by the way. Not log cabins exclusively or whatever.
And my cottage is a new construction, I wasn’t raised there. I was talking about my parents cottage which is basically a normal, smallish house - they didn’t build it.

Lily: ah, we have word for this in russian too
“dacha” is called
not always in wilderness, just out of city

Jane: Oh, cool!
Did you have one growing up? Or now?

Lily: my family had one but i did not go much. i was always in moscow before america, and now i am not in russia enough to need one for myself
never lived anywhere but moscow and boston

Jane: Oh, so you’re a city boy. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

Ilya smiled to himself. He placed his cross between his teeth, feeling the click of enamel on metal, and snuggled deeper into his couch.

Ilya spent the next two hours texting Shane, and it was almost as good as having him there with him.

+++

They kept texting for the rest of January, intermittently but often for hours at a time. They talked shop about hockey, gossiping viciously about other players, sharing tips on their favorite restaurants and spots in the cities they traveled to for games, and resolutely not talking about the leak, or Shane coming in his pants after ten minutes of frottage, or the precious half a day they had spent together. Shane shut down the first and only attempt Ilya made at sexting him, and Ilya was ashamed of himself when he realized why. Shane moved past it without acknowledgement, and Ilya was grateful.

They didn’t talk about personal things, or about whatever the hell they were doing together. But they still talked. That was something. It was a lot. It was almost everything Ilya needed.

Ilya did not tell Shane about his father or his complicated feelings about Russia. That still felt too big, like the words wouldn’t fit properly in his mouth if he tried to speak them in English. But he started hinting at the edges, mentioning vaguely how he didn’t enjoy summer vacations in Russia, that he wasn’t close with his brother, that his father was old and ailing. He did tell Shane that his mother was dead, when Shane asked.

It took a long time for Shane to respond, his bubbles bouncing merrily in the meantime.

Jane: I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry.

Lily: it was a long time ago

Jane: That’s kind of worse.
Wait sorry that sounds insensitive
I just meant - you were a kid?

Lily: yes, twelve

Jane: That’s awful. I really am sorry.
Do you want to talk about her?

Ilya was surprised to learn that he did, and surprised when Shane answered his call. Shane didn’t ask him how she died, and Ilya didn’t offer the details, but he talked about his mother and his memories of her. Random things. She was a reckless driver, never formally taught and prone to road rage that expressed emotions she refused to show anywhere else, screaming and honking furiously at other drivers in gridlocked Moscow traffic. Despite that, she loved driving; when they had a day off, usually when Grigori was out of town, she would take Alexei and Ilya out for long drives out of the city and spend all day on the open roads, speeding and swerving around other cars to make them laugh and shout—their private version of a roller coaster. She could always talk herself out of a ticket.

“That makes sense,” Shane said. “You got your love of reckless driving from her.”

Somehow, that had never occurred to Ilya before. “Yes.”

Irina had curls like Ilya, and moles like his. Sometimes she had been stuck in bed for days on end, but when she felt better, she woke up all at once, springing out of bed at 4:00 am for Ilya’s peewee hockey games as if she had been awake for hours. Shane said, “I’m like that, too.”

Ilya's heart squeezed.

+++

At the end of January, Ilya's plane touched down on the tarmac in Nashville for the upcoming All-Stars weekend. It was always a little strange to alternate between flying private with the team and flying luxuriously in first class, and this year, Ilya had flown alone from Boston early in the morning after the final game before the bye-week.

Shane was also the only Voyageur playing at All-Stars that year. They were playing on opposing teams, but still. It was a rare opportunity. Shane had few friends across the league, and though Ilya was more sociable than Shane, if he disappeared early from a club, no one would question it, probably assuming he had found a woman to take home for the night.

No one was going to pay attention to them.

It was the 28th of January, though the skill competition and team practice weren’t for another two days. Ilya wouldn’t leave Nashville until February 2nd, though he had a morning practice and an evening game on the 3rd. He had purposefully scheduled this trip as tightly around his game schedule as possible, just in case. It was worth risking spending a boring week in Nashville with nothing to do.

Ilya landed, stood up, and wrestled his carry-on from the overhead compartment. He was shuffling down the line as he flicked his phone off airplane mode.

Shane had texted Ilya an hour ago. He must have taken the first flight out of Montreal.

Jane: I’m in Nashville early. The Four Seasons? I didn’t want to get a room in the same hotel as the rest of the players, so I booked a suite. I have a brand commitment, so it was convenient. Let me know when you fly in.

Ilya couldn’t help his grin. He didn’t think anyone on the plane had recognized him, so he hoped no one would catch a picture of the besotted expression on his face.

Lily: great minds, Hollander
just landed
i'm here until the second, you?

Jane: Oh. Same.
1520

Lily: i’ll bring bells

Jane: ?

Lily: english phrase? means be very quick i think

Jane: Oh, “I’ll be there with bells on,” and before you ask, no I don’t know where it comes from or what it means.
It’s not a very popular phrase, I don’t think.
It sounds kind of old-fashioned.

Lily: ew never mind
would not want my sexy slutty lover to think i am old dinosaur
how about instead i say i will come as quick as you?

Jane: Ugh, gross. Don’t make me change my mind.

Lily: you would never

Jane: Whatever.

Jane: Bring the bells, asshole.

+++

Five days with Hollander in a sprawling, private suite in a hotel they weren’t sharing with any other stinky hockey players. In Tennessee, of all places.

Heaven, actually.

Their time together was not uninterrupted, which was probably a good thing. It would have been weird to jump straight into a full week of quality time after half a decade of covert hookups. They had to leave for team dinners, one optional practice, and grating press events, and Hollander did, in fact, have a work thing, which had surprised Ilya. He was a new ambassador for a company that sold workout equipment (Ilya made a joke about stationary bikes and treadmills, and Shane rolled his eyes). Shane came back after a day of filming himself doing various exercises covered in body oil, his muscles rippling from a day of hard work.

They fucked about it. Obviously.

They fucked a lot, almost nonstop, and Ilya had never been more grateful that even Shane Hollander didn’t take All-Stars too seriously, because he never would have let Ilya bend him over the back of a couch and ream him so furiously right before a regular-season game. But apparently Shane had signed up for the shot-accuracy competition this year, not the fastest skater, so he told Ilya to go harder. Faster. Deeper.

Ilya did as he was told. Eagerly.

Shane was somehow even more eager for him in return.

Without asking, Ilya could tell that Hollander hadn’t been with anyone else in the interim, but three weeks was a lot less concerning than three months. Any other season, and Ilya wouldn’t have noticed. At one point, Shane admitted that he regularly went days without even thinking about jerking himself off. Ilya wasn’t sure if that had anything to do with Hollander’s obvious discomfort with his sexuality, or if it was just how he was wired. Regardless, this year was different. Hollander was choosing not to have sex with anyone else because it made him feel unsafe.

That made Ilya furious. A very different sort of fury than the jealousy that fueled him whenever he thought about anyone else touching Hollander’s perfect body. It was beyond confusing to be actually concerned that he was Hollander’s only sexual partner, and still absolutely fuming at the thought of another person getting this. Being let in like this. No one else had earned it, and no one else could be trusted with something so precious.

Ilya channeled that confusing and deep well of emotions into fucking Shane until he came untouched, barely staving off his own orgasm for long enough by cruelly digging his teeth into the soft flesh of his tongue. Around Hollander, Ilya felt like he was on a hair trigger, ready to come almost as soon as he buried himself inside Shane.

(It had also, by pure coincidence, been three weeks since Ilya had fucked anyone else. He forgot to mention that to Hollander, though.)

They played hockey against each other in a fan-drafted round-robin tournament. Shane was Captain Canada, and Ilya lost the extremely unimportant captaincy to a Finnish guy who would almost certainly retire at the end of the season, but they were both the first-line centers. They knocked their sticks together and smiled through their visors and around clunky mouthguards.

In the locker room, Ilya boasted about having a regular girl in Nashville who was letting him crash at her place. No one, for even a second, doubted the veracity of this claim, and it got him out of an invitation to go clubbing. Ilya didn’t know for sure what Hollander had told his teammates, but Shane's reputation was different.

Very different.

“Should’ve been you, Roz,” the Finnish captain proclaimed in the locker room, unashamedly naked, when the subject of Hollander inevitably came up. “Can’t believe you’ve kept your nudes secret for longer than that fucking prude.” It wasn't even the first time that weekend that someone had mentioned or joked about the pictures. Ilya was going to wear his teeth smooth from how hard he was grinding them.

“If I have to hear about Hollander’s dick one more fucking time,” Carter Vaughn shouted in response, “I’m gonna start throwing pucks. Leave the guy alone!”

Scott Hunter muttered in agreement, and the Russian guys on the team rolled their eyes and nudged Ilya, seeking solidarity for their jokes. Ilya roundly ignored them.

Ilya was still on good terms with Ryan Price, who had been traded after Boston’s Cup win, so they were sitting in adjacent stalls. “It’s gross,” Price murmured. “I would hate people looking at my body like that.” He glanced at Ilya. “I mean, maybe you feel differently, but it must suck for Hollander, right?”

Ilya shucked off a skate. “Yes,” he agreed. “I would not mind in the same way, but Hollander isn’t me. Gross is the right word for it.” The Russian players scoffed and backed off. Ilya heard the unflattering things they were muttering, but at least now the insults were directed at him instead of Shane.

“Is he doing okay?” Ryan asked.

“Hmm?” Ilya frowned.

“Hollander. Is he doing okay with… all this? The photos? All the gossip?”

Ilya stared at him. “Why would I know?”

“Oh.” Ryan looked surprised. “Oh, well, I guess I thought you were friends?” Ilya didn’t respond. “You guys always look like you’re having fun when you’re playing. Especially Hollander. I thought the rivalry was just… media? Sorry.”

Ilya tilted his head. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. He realized suddenly that other ears in the room were turned toward them, the general din having quieted by several degrees. He didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. “You’re right, I guess. Rivalry is fucking stupid—of course we are rivals, we both want to win. But Hollander is too good to hate. Sorry. Every time we play, it is fun. He is more fun to talk to than you would think.” He nudged Ryan. “You are very perceptive, Mr. Price.”

“Oh, well.” He was flushed beneath his unkempt beard. “It just seemed obvious?”

Ilya laughed. Someone else muttered, “Obvious?” disbelievingly, and Scott Hunter gave Ilya a fierce stink-eye across the locker room. Ilya winked back.

There. That would give the NHL All-Stars something fresh to gossip about. Let them leak it to their girlfriends, who would then leak it to the press. Let it spread and fester—Ilya could take whatever they threw at him.

He redressed, straightened his tie, and went home to Shane.

+++

Shane was asleep. Ilya was not.

Whatever. It was All-Stars. He could afford to spend a couple of hours lying awake, and it wasn’t exactly unpleasant with Shane’s furnace-hot body tucked hard against his side, freckled cheek pillowed on Ilya’s upper arm. With his head propped up awkwardly on a pillow, Ilya could see his face easily, and he admired the pinkness of Shane's mouth with his lips parted slightly, and the adorably scrunched look of his springy dark hair.

Shane’s chest rose and fell very slowly. In sleep, his heart rate dropped precipitously low, so Ilya kept an eye on him. He felt like a guard dog, standing watch in front of something precious.

An apt metaphor fit for the classics of Russian literature. He always thought they were too depressing, and far too sentimental. Well, here was his proof. Ilya was a product of the country that raised him.

Ilya turned his eyes up to the ceiling.

It was a good thing that Hollander’s nudes hadn’t been leaked by a man. If this was the reaction the world had to finding out that Shane Hollander, a Canadian hockey player, occasionally had safe sex with blonde women, the reveal that he also liked to fuck blond men would have been catastrophic. Nuclear. Chernobyl was child’s play compared to the vested interest people took in Shane Hollander’s dick and the interesting things he potentially did with it.

He glanced back at Shane, asleep beneath his arm, and compared the relaxed expression on his face to the embarrassed, nervous strain that lingered whenever they stepped out of their hotel room.

It was very clear that Shane had endured a few rough months.

Slowly, gears started turning in Ilya’s brain. A plan was starting to form. A reckless, very strange plan that, the more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself made perfect sense.

While the broader world had mostly moved past the very attractive athlete and Calvin Klein model whose nudes had leaked, the hockey world had not. It was so fundamentally contradictory to Shane's classic, irreproachable image. For years, he had been held up as the figurehead that all others should aspire to in behavior, and people delighted at his undeserved fall from grace. More than that, jokes about Shane’s hockey robot status, his dislike of partying and hooking up, and his alleged (though never really believed) virginity had circulated locker rooms for years. There was endless fodder in comparing those false assumptions to the present reality.

Finally, it lingered in their minds because the pictures were phenomenal. The girl who leaked them was still caught up in the legal battle with the Hollanders, and Ilya detested her, hated her with a fervor that shouldn’t have been possible with a total stranger, but she did have an eye for lighting. Shane looked beautiful and golden in each shot, his body so much more wonderful in those quiet, real moments than it ever could have been on a sanitized film set. People deluded themselves by thinking that as long as they were praising his appearance, their commentary about the images was somehow not completely reprehensible. It wasn’t an insult to say that Shane Hollander had an enormous cock or a fat ass—it was a fact.

It was also cruel.

So many jokes at his expense. So many eyes watching him with eager attention, waiting for the next scandal now that the first had mostly blown over. And that damn meme of Shane petting that stupid cat. It was obviously very hard on Shane, who had never enjoyed the celebrity subculture of hockey as much as Ilya. Shane had spent his entire life, or at least the past six years, fearing nothing more than having the details of his sex life revealed to the public, and that fear had come true, though not in the way he had imagined.

Ilya, as a white man in a locker room with mostly other white men, also wasn’t unaware of the racist undertones to the entire clusterfuck. He had always been baffled by how sexless Shane appeared to others, because yes, he was awkward, but he was also one of the most beautiful men in the world, and a wildly popular model and athlete on top of that. It made no sense to assume that he wasn’t able to have as much sex as he could possibly want when men like fucking Gilbert Comeau, who looked like the least flattering versions of the Batman villain Clayface, and Dallas Kent, who was less virulently ugly but had a personality so vile he had allegedly been banned from no less than four nightclubs in Toronto, were touted as “womanizers” and “playboys” within the league. Did people really believe that they were more viable sex partners than Shane fucking Hollander?

Maybe a part of Shane was secretly relieved to have had a public sex scandal with a woman to counteract rumors about his sexuality or perceived sexlessness. Shane had implied before that he was somewhat jealous of the public cover that Ilya’s many girlfriends provided. Despite that, Ilya was reasonably sure that Shane did not enjoy sleeping with women as much as he enjoyed men, or perhaps not at all. That thought made Ilya very unhappy because he didn’t know how to tell Shane to just stop: that bad sex wasn’t worth having if it wasn’t desired, and that he could be careful and secretive and safe and yes, still satisfied. Hadn’t Ilya proved that to him already?

Regardless, the conclusion was the same. Shane was sad and isolated. He was alone in the spotlight and utterly miserable.

And that, to Ilya, was absolutely unacceptable.

Someone needed to do something about that. Ilya was certainly the man for the job.

The final pieces of his plan clicked into place.

If this was what got him committed to an institution, then so be it. Ilya Rozanov had already accepted that he lost his mind long ago, and he wasn’t getting it back anytime soon.

+++

“I have an idea,” Ilya told Svetlana at the beginning of March, a month before the final Boston-Montreal regular-season game. It had been four weeks since he saw Shane at All-Stars, though they were texting and calling more than ever before. It didn't quite satisfy the itch Ilya felt under his skin for Shane, though. It was time for drastic action. "No, not an idea. I have a plan."

She did not look up from her Instagram feed. “Don’t do it.”

Ilya whined, “But I want to.”

“Is it stupid?”

Ilya took a long slurp from the McDonald’s McFlurry he was drinking and dug his toes into her thigh until she finally looked at him. (Just to glare, but it still counted). “Yes,” he admitted. “It’s incredibly stupid. It’s also brilliant.”

Svetlana sighed. “If you are determined to do something stupid, then you should know better by now than to get me involved. I will either stop you, or I will join in, and you know that always makes things so much worse for both of us.”

“You could just be supportive of my hobbies and interests,” Ilya suggested.

She snorted derisively. “‘Interests?’ Is that what we’re calling Jane these days?”

Ilya raised an eyebrow, eyeing her sidelong. She didn’t technically know about Shane, but she also wasn’t an idiot. They danced around the topic, never naming names, but he knew she had suspected Jane was a man ever since the aftermath of Sochi. The Russia of it all, and something about how he and Sasha had interacted ever since that gala, had given him away. Ilyusha and Svet had also been friends for so long, through so many periods of their lives, that sometimes it felt like they could communicate telepathically. She understood him. He understood her. They were extremely similar in nature, spiritually linked, but she was much better at pretending to be normal than Ilya was, though she didn’t work as hard to maintain the facade when they were alone.

She knew how he acted when he was interested in other boys. She almost certainly knew Jane was a man. Ilya wondered if she had guessed it was Hollander when the leak happened. Ilya hadn’t been good at controlling his reactions whenever Hollander was mentioned, and Hollander had been everywhere for a few weeks. More than once, she had lingered over the topic in a telling way, almost as though she were quietly inviting Ilya to offer her more information.

He never had, but Ilya was definitely about to destroy whatever remained of her plausible deniability today when he revealed his plan to her.

His silence must have spoken for itself. “If it does have something to do with Jane, then I am sure it will be as stupid as the rest of your ideas when it comes to her.”

She was right. “It’s a terrible idea,” Ilya agreed, “but I think I’m going to do it anyway.”

She threw her phone at his head. He dodged. “Stop being vague! This is so annoying! I will lose interest if you don’t explain in the next five seconds!”

She asked for it. “I think I should leak my nudes.”

Svetlana hit him with a pillow. The McFlurry was a casualty of war, Oreo cookie crumbles spilled across the floorboards. A few minutes later, Ilya finally managed to talk her down from throwing a lamp at his head, but only with great effort on his part.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked for probably the hundredth time, but her tone had gradually shifted from indignant to despairing.

“You know what is wrong!” Ilya said. “You know exactly what is wrong with me!”

She paused, a blanket held between her hands as if she had been planning on throwing it over him like a net. Maybe she would have wrapped him up and kept him in the basement until he came to his senses. It would definitely take dramatic action like that for Ilya to ever get over Shane.

She said what she had probably known all season. “Hollander.”

Ilya nodded. “Hollander.”

“Hollander asked you to leak your nudes?” she asked next, beginning to fold the blanket. Ilya was safe for another day.

Ilya scoffed. “Of course not. I want to do it for him.”

“You’re insane,” she said, “and a moron. Don’t do that.”

Ilya looked straight ahead. She didn’t understand because she didn’t know Shane. There was no point in trying to explain his logic to her, and she obviously wasn’t willing to help him. He would have to find someone else to assist him.

“Okay,” he lied. She sighed immediately, knowing him far too well. “I won’t.”

“I fucking hate you, Ilyusha,” she despaired, slumping back onto the couch. “You could ask Hollander if he thinks it would be helpful, but I think you aren’t smart enough to do that.”

Ilya shook his head firmly, having already considered that option and firmly rejected it. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “They are going to be the best nudes in the world,” he promised. “The hottest nudes ever. No one else will even remember Hollander exists when I am done. Just watch”

“You’re insane,” she told him again.

Ilya shrugged. He didn’t disagree.

Chapter End Notes

hehehe go back and check the first chapter, i've been building to this all along

Chapter 4

Chapter Notes

One thing to know about me: I love a narrative parallel.

In her defense, Svetlana really did try to talk him out of it. Ilya’s incredibly sound arguments and appeals to her humanity didn't sway her for even a minute.

But given enough time, she’d either murder him or talk him out of it, so Ilya needed to move quickly.

Which brought him here, to one of his favorite clubs in the city, the most well-known haunt of Ilya Rozanov, where he could always find someone interested in a bit of casual debauchery. The lights were flashing. The music was loud. Ilya scanned the dance floor, and it felt a little like stretching a muscle he hadn’t used in a while.

Jesus Christ. Had it really been three months since he had slept with someone other than Hollander? It wasn’t even comforting to know that it had been longer for Shane.

Whatever. He was going to break that trend tonight, one way or another.

Ilya had thought a lot about how he was going to do this. He had thought about taking the pictures himself, alone, like he was sending someone nudes, but then decided that might not be scandalous enough to outweigh Hollander’s disastrous affair. To really make the same waves, Ilya thought he needed pictures from a hookup, except he was going to make it look intentional. No weird, perverted side angles or moments with his eyes shut. No, he was going to stare down the camera lens and smile, almost as if he were taunting the person behind the phone to post the salacious pictures, showing off recklessly and facing the consequences of his degeneracy. He didn’t want anyone to pity him.

That meant he needed someone to help him take the pictures, since Svetlana couldn’t be swayed. Ilya had already made a few nondescript burner accounts and planned to leak the images there himself (he didn't need to drag anyone else into this mess), but for the pictures to look authentic, he needed a partner who would think taking naked photos of Ilya as a prelude to sex was just dirty foreplay. Ilya was an auteur like that.

He waded through the crowd for an hour, bouncing between the bars and booths and the dance floor, and eventually found himself dancing with a short, stocky woman with a nose ring and hair dyed so vibrantly it glowed. She was much shorter than him, her head barely at his chest, which made dancing awkward but in a fun way. She seemed amused by it too, and Ilya thought that was a good sign. He needed someone with an adventurous sense of humor.

Luckily, Ilya was very perspicacious when it came to other people. He had always been good at reading desire on other people’s faces, especially when it was aimed at him. Ilya knew how to poke and prod at weak points to get the reactions he wanted, and also how to present himself in the most flattering light, to give everyone exactly what they wanted or expected from him. Dancing with this woman, he believed he sensed a very liberated sexuality, one that wouldn’t be embarrassed or offended at any odd requests he made, and who might be willing to do something risqué and wild if Ilya was the one taking the fall.

(He did not think about what dancing with Shane would have felt like in a similar context. Not like this, certainly. This felt almost like dancing with Svetlana, but Jesus Christ, he hadn’t even slept with Svetlana in months. He couldn't think about that either, though, not here. Not with his plan so close to fruition.)

Instead, Ilya leaned very far down and pressed his mouth to her ear. “Let me get you another drink?” he asked, speaking loudly but keeping a huskiness in his voice that would blow hot air over her sensitive skin.

She shivered and pulled back with a nod. Ilya let himself be towed toward the bar. They leaned against the counter as they ordered, and Ilya gallantly laid down cash for both drinks, with an exuberant tip.

She rolled her eyes playfully and put her hand high on his thigh, unconcerned about the public setting. Ilya really hoped he was reading her correctly. She would probably be fun to hook up with if it came to that, but Ilya didn’t want to do this more than once.

Sex had always been a tool, an activity, and a hobby. Whatever existed between him and Shane had never been exclusive. Ilya shouldn’t feel weird about sleeping with other people.

This was deranged, Ilya reminded himself, keeping his eyes on the woman. The music was too loud to converse, but they finished their drinks with a few seductive licks and swallows and far more visible tongue than necessary. Yes, Ilya thought, hopefully she wouldn’t mind showing him off.

There was a lull between songs and the crowd immediately started booing. Ilya glanced across the club, seeing two DJs swap places in the booth.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, the rhythmic thrum of a phone call. It had probably been buzzing for a while and he hadn’t noticed because of the music vibrating through the soles of his boots. A new song started, causing a scream of cheers as the mob immediately resumed their mating dances, and Ilya fished his phone out and glanced at the screen.

Jane.

Ilya had been expecting Svetlana, Cliff, or even his father.

But Jane.

He stared at the screen for so long that the call ended, showing his home screen with all his notifications piled at the bottom.

(6) Missed Calls from Jane.

The girl with the septum piercing leaned over and Ilya was so shocked that he let her look at his phone. “Who’s Jane?” she yelled with a cocky grin, and Ilya had to read her lips to understand.

His phone buzzed in his hand again, another call starting right after the sixth ended.

Ilya shook his head slowly and straightened.

The woman laughed, the noise completely lost in the cacophony of the club. “I’m losing you!” she called playfully, then raised her glass. “Well, good luck, loverboy!”

Ilya smiled at her before turning on his heel and shoving through the crowd as fast as he could.

Ilya knew the layout of this club very well, as it had been his favorite haunt since he was nineteen and sneaking in with a fake ID, supplied to him by another rookie who was put on waivers not long after. Ilya cut straight across the dance floor, then down a hallway crowded with people waiting for the restrooms, until he reached the end, where a black-clad bouncer was leaning against a metal door with ‘Emergency Exit: Alarm Will Sound!’ written across it.

Ilya made eye contact with the bouncer as he fished a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and nodded at the door, eyebrow quirked. “Do me a favor and let me out? In a hurry.”

The bouncer, clearly recognizing Ilya by his open mouth and wide eyes, nodded. He swiped a keycard fastened to his front pocket against the scanner and the door beeped as the emergency alarm deactivated. Ilya pressed the bill into the bouncer’s palms and called a hasty, “Thank you!” as he spilled out into the cool spring night.

Call seven ended, and call eight began.

This time, Ilya hit accept as the metal door closed behind him with a clang.

“Hello,” he gasped. “Sorry—sorry, did not hear—I, ah, hello. Are you okay?” Seven missed calls from Shane. Ilya’s adrenaline was pumping and he pressed a hand hard over his chest.

Shane didn’t respond for a long moment. “‘Didn’t hear?’ Where are you?”

“At a club,” Ilya responded immediately, glancing up and down. The alley was empty, home only to dumpsters and some graffiti dedicated to Boston’s baseball team, which he sneered at on principle. He shuffled to the side of the handleless door and pressed a shoulder against the wall, hunching a little. “I know you are unfamiliar, but the music is usually very loud. Could not hear phone ringing, but I came outside as soon as I saw.” He felt like he was stuttering, like his English was faltering as it hadn’t done in years. He couldn’t catch his breath.

“A club,” Shane said. “Right. Of course.”

Ilya blinked, confused by the clipped tone. “Yes, I go to them often,” Ilya hedged. “Why did you call? Are you alright? I can go home now if you need me to, it’s not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal,” Shane repeated slowly. “Okay.”

Ilya frowned. He pulled his phone away a little, then pressed it back to his ear. “What is wrong? Why do you sound like this? Why did you call?”

“Why did I call?” Shane repeated, even slower and with more emphasis, and suddenly Ilya realized he was angry. Shane was angry. At him? At Ilya? Why? “You can’t guess? You don’t know?”

“How could I know?” Ilya asked, completely baffled. “You call me out of nowhere seven times! Why are you mad at me?”

“Why am I-”

“Khuy, stop repeating me! What do you want? Why the fuck did you call?”

“Why are you at that club?” Shane shot back immediately. “Tell me why, exactly. And don’t fucking lie to me.”

Ilya’s breath caught again. His frantic thoughts offered a hundred different explanations for why Hollander might be pissed at him for going out to a nightclub (some of the options were more appealing than others). Ilya swallowed. He picked his response carefully. “Why do you want to know?”

“Why won’t you answer me?” Shane shot back.

Ilya started pacing, feeling irritation flare in a defensive response to Shane's overt hostility. “I am not allowed to go out now? Fuck!”

“Ilya.” Shane’s voice was harsh. “Tell me, right now, if you are at that club specifically to find a woman who will be willing to purposefully spread your nudes on the internet in truly the most bizarre and misapplied sense of martyrdom that has literally ever been thought of in the history of humankind.”

Ilya, of course, said nothing.

That only made Shane more irate. “What the fuck were you fucking thinking? Were you thinking at all? What the actual hell, Ilya?”

Ilya stared at the dingy alley ground. His thoughts were no longer spiraling because they had already reached rock bottom. “How did you know?”

Shane sighed. “Your friend—Svetlana?—texted me. Or rather, she texted ‘Jane,’ begging her to intervene before you did something really, really stupid, because apparently your fucking moronic plan was all on Jane’s behalf. But given, you know, everything, I’m pretty sure she knows exactly who the fuck I am. And I was sort of hoping that it was a prank or a bad joke or something, because what the actual fuck were you thinking?”

“Ah,” Ilya said succinctly.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He sounded just like Svetlana. Ilya wasn’t sure if he should introduce them to each other or keep them far, far apart.

Ilya scoffed. “Nothing. Fuck off.”

“No way! I’m not going to fuck off! Not when your best friend whom I've never even met had to steal my number off your phone just to stop you from doing something objectively fucking insane! What the fuck, Ilya!”

Ilya grumbled, “She was out of line.”

Shane made a disbelieving noise. “Normally I’d be the first to fucking agree, but even I can see where she was coming from. Seriously, Ilya, what the fuck? I mean it. What the fuck? Is this—is this—are you just making fun of me now?”

Ilya’s mouth dropped open. He stopped pacing and slumped back like he’d been shoved, shoulders colliding with the dirty brick wall. “What? No. How could you think this?”

“What am I supposed to think, Ilya?” Shane sounded tired. “I don’t—you’re not denying it, which means it’s true, and I don’t—I don’t know what the fuck to do with that. I told you how much… I told you how hard this has been for me. I was really fucking honest about that. So… I don’t get it. I don’t understand why the fuck you would even consider this as an option. Spreading your fucking nudes around after—after I was so humiliated by this whole thing? Why? Just… why?”

“I…” Ilya tried, but he couldn’t get the words out while listening to the devastation in Shane’s voice.

“Is it a rivalry thing?” Shane asked. “Are you, like, trying to one-up me or something? Prove that you’re better or cooler, or...?”

“No,” Ilya snapped. “No, of course not! Well, maybe, sort of-”

“Fuck you, Rozanov, our rivalry can't-”

“I meant to use it,” Ilya continued quickly, and the rest of the words came spilling out. “Like, get the attention off you, back onto me. Everyone should leave you the fuck alone. No one should fucking look at you, should even fucking think about you. No one but me. They don’t deserve you. They shouldn't be talking about something so stupid!”

“Who are you talking about?” Shane shot back immediately, as close to yelling as Ilya had heard in years off the ice. “Ilya, everybody but you and I have moved on from this! It’s been months! No one is seriously talking about those fucking pictures anymore—it’s old news! If you went through with this, it would only make people start talking about them again after they had already moved on!”

“No,” Ilya said stubbornly, because that wasn’t true. He had redownloaded Twitter, and his timeline was full of people talking about the pictures even still—endlessly debating the ethics, the violation, the eroticism, the implications for Shane’s sex life. It was all he saw on the internet these days, or it felt like it was. And—All-Stars! He’d heard a bunch of the guys talking about the leak, enough that Vaughny had shot them down. “They are still talking. People, the guys-”

Shane scoffed. “What, at All-Stars? Yeah, no shit, Ilya! The first time all year guys from different teams get to meet up and debrief with each other? You know that people always dredge up all the dead gossip for one last hurrah—I know it too—but it doesn’t mean anything. Not seriously.” Ilya could hear shuffling down the line. “I’m not stupid enough to think that anyone forgot about it, and I’ll get chirped for it for the rest of my career, but that’s it. Just dumb jokes. Nothing serious. It's over, Ilya. It's done.”

Ilya did know that All-Stars was a delightful opportunity to beat a dead horse with buddies they didn't often see, but this couldn't be as simple as that. “But on the internet—on Twitter-”

“I’ve literally got a management team tracking online perception of me,” Shane interrupted, clipped. “Whatever echo chamber you’re stuck in that has clearly driven you insane, I promise it’s not indicative of the general sentiment.”

That was a lot of big words, and Ilya wasn’t sure he was tracking English very well at the moment. It took him a second to parse “echo chamber,” to realize that it was two words and connect it to the metaphorical meaning. It hadn’t occurred to Ilya that his corner of the internet might be more intimately obsessed with Shane Hollander than the rest. “I…” but he trailed off again.

“Ilya.” Shane was quieter again. “Just… I don’t know. I don’t understand this at all. Just tell me what you were thinking.”

He tilted his head back, flattening his curls against the bricks. “I don’t know. Maybe I have finally lost my mind and gone fucking insane. For you. You make me crazy. Can you blame me?”

Shane didn’t respond right away. “Ilya….”

“You make me fucking crazy,” Ilya repeated, covering his eyes with his hand as if he could hide from his own vulnerability. “All I do is crazy things for you. Every day, I wake up knowing that I would risk fucking everything for you. You get that, yes?”

“Yes. I do. Now.”

“Good,” Ilya said forcefully. “Good, then you should understand. Of course I would do this insane thing for you, because I am insane for you-” Shane’s name almost slipped out, but Ilya bit it back, glancing around again. The alley was still empty. “You make me lose my mind. This should not be surprising.”

Shane’s breath hitched. “I don’t ever want to be the reason you get hurt, Ilya.”

Ilya laughed at that. “You are not the reason. I am the reason. I could never be normal about you. I’m fucking crazy.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Tonight proves it, I think.”

“Yeah,” Shane said slowly, “I still really don’t understand your plan, if I’m being honest.”

“It’s a stupid plan,” Ilya agreed. “You are too smart to understand it. That is why it is genius.”

Shane barked a laugh, breaking some of the tension in his voice, and Ilya smiled to hear it. “That also makes no sense, just to be clear. Come on. Explain it to me, for real. Please, I just… I’m sorry I yelled at you, but I just want to understand because I do not get what the hell you were thinking.”

“I was thinking,” Ilya said, glancing up, “that… you got hurt. You have been so upset. I had to—to help fix things, yes?”

“And explain again how leaking your own nudes fixes the fact that someone posted revenge porn about me after taking the pictures without my consent?” Shane asked dryly.

“Well, when you say it like that,” Ilya drawled, just to hear Shane laugh again. “I wanted….” He tried to get his thoughts in order. “I wanted to take the attention off you,” he said again. “To make the conversation about me instead of you. To make people insult me, and criticize me, and stop talking about you. I was going to make it very obvious that I knew what was going on, you know, flexing and showing off, so people would know that I did it on purpose, for attention—see, okay, I know it is crazy and stupid, but that was the point! People can call me crazy, if it means they aren’t being mean to you.”

Shane’s breathing was louder than the noise of the city at night. The cars honking and the drunk girls scream-laughing were all drowned out.

“People would have only compared us more,” Shane said, still sounding gentle, as though he were trying to softly reason Ilya back to a logical mindset. “It would have extended the shelf life of this story right after the news cycle had moved away. You get that, right?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya said. “I don’t think so. I guess I will accept that I am overestimating the number of people still talking, but still—I think if people compared us, they would only be saying that you were good, and I was stupid. Maybe some people would even guess that I did it on purpose to show you up, and then they would think I was just some asshole, like you thought.”

“Ilya. I didn’t think….”

Ilya shrugged. “You did. At the start of the call, you did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ugh, stop apologizing. This is my grand gesture to you! You are the one who is angry about it!”

“This is not a grand gesture I want anything to do with,” Shane snapped, “and you don’t owe me an apology, either. Ilya.” Ilya liked that Shane kept repeating his name. He wished he wasn’t in public so that he could say Shane’s name in return, but he wouldn’t risk it. “That girl… I went home with her because my teammates wouldn’t stop talking about how I hadn’t picked up in months, and it wasn’t like I could tell them I was waiting until I would see you again, so…. They wouldn’t shut up, and the jokes were getting really, I don’t know, weird, like they’re my friends, but I just wanted to shut them up, you know? And she was there, and she clearly really wanted to go home, and everyone was egging me on, and it was just supposed to be easy.” Shane's voice was turning tight and frantic. Ilya hummed down the line, hoping to distract him, and Shane took a deep breath. “It sucked, but it didn’t have anything to do with you. You obviously don't have to do anything to make up for it. I don't want grand gestures.”

Ilya cleared his throat. “You say they are your friends, but they sound like assholes.” His voice was still gravelly, despite his effort.

“I mean, sometimes,” Shane murmured. “Not really, though. They’re great guys. They just don’t understand, obviously. How could they?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya admitted.

“Do you believe me?” Shane asked.

Ilya swallowed. “Maybe.”

“Good,” Shane said. “Because you literally don’t have to do anything for me. I mean—what you’ve already been doing is more than enough.” He swallowed. “You’ve… been nice to me. Normal. You didn't stop sleeping with me, or treated me like I was weird or fragile. You were… you never made fun of me in a way that just sucked, and I’ve appreciated it so fucking much, so don’t get weird about it now, for god’s sake. You… make me feel normal.” He cleared his throat. Ilya’s heart squeezed tightly. “So please promise me that you aren’t going to leak your own nudes in some bizarre, self-sacrificing act of martyrdom for literally no reason.”

Ilya laughed, long and bright. “Oh my fucking god,” he said aloud, only just realizing he was speaking as the words slipped from his mouth, “I fucking love you.”

He spoke in Russian, thank god. The words echoed, coming back to him—Ya tebya lyublyu—and again, Ilya thought of Russia, or Moscow, a country that would never say those words back to him after this.

“What?” Shane asked. “What does that mean?”

Ilya blinked.

“It means ‘I promise,’” Ilya said, swallowing. “It’s like… an oath. I swear it to you. I will do as you say.”

Shane breathed out slowly. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Hopefully, we can work on getting you a shard of self-preservation so I don’t have to call you in the middle of the night to save your ass from your own stupid schemes.”

“But I like when you call me at midnight,” Ilya whined. “I like when you save me.”

“Oh. Really?”

Ilya smiled. Shane was so clueless, so completely oblivious, and at this point, the language barrier had nothing to do with it. “Yes, really. I especially like it when you drag me out of nightclubs so that I can stand in some fucking alley that smells like cat piss and beer for twenty minutes while you lecture me.”

“You deserved the lecture. Frankly, for what you were planning, you deserve to smell like cat piss, too.”

“So mean to me.”

“You like it.”

“I do.”

They breathed down the line, a faint crackle of static almost burying Shane’s quiet breaths.

“It’s late for you,” Ilya said after a minute.

“A little,” Shane admitted. “I have a game tomorrow.”

“Oh, then you definitely need your beauty sleep. I will let you go.” He didn’t want to. He wanted to hold on. There were still two weeks until the next Montreal game.

“Okay. Goodnight, Ilya.”

“Goodnight, Jane,” Ilya murmured into the phone. He pulled it away from his face, staring at the screen.

It took Shane another twelve seconds of silence to hang up, and when he did, Ilya clutched his phone to his chest.

“Fuck,” he muttered, again speaking in Russian. “Fuck, I am so fucking fucked.”

Then he shoved his phone in his pocket and finally stalked out of the alley, heart beating in his chest, mind lit ablaze, stomping over trash and puddles.

He loved Shane Hollander, apparently. It was a fact of the universe. He would simply do anything for him.

+++

The morning after Ilya failed to enact his really quite brilliant but perhaps misinformed plan, Jane sent Ilya a ‘Good morning’ text at 5:30 am.

When Ilya woke up and saw it three hours later, he was at first flabbergasted, then delighted. By then, Shane had apparently finished his morning run and yoga routine, so he responded immediately when Ilya sent back a string of kissy faces. And he picked up when Ilya called him.

They ate breakfast together over FaceTime.

Ilya spent the rest of the day floating on air, and he scored a hat trick the next night during Boston’s game against Buffalo.

Shane texted him a congratulations, and they FaceTimed again the next morning. And the one after that.

Svetlana and Ilya didn’t talk about it, but she was clearly smug as all hell. “Aren’t you lucky, Ilyusha?” she said the first time he saw her after his failed club outing, and Ilya didn’t want to agree, but she was right. She smirked when his phone buzzed and Ilya nearly dropped it in his rush to check who had texted him.

Texts, calls, FaceTimes, and the looming, mutual awareness of their next game, the next time they would be in the same city, the next time, and the next. Ilya wouldn’t give it up for anything.

It was the middle of March (“The ides,” that one really weird rookie goalie from Nova Scotia ominously intoned from his shadowed corner of the room, and was uncomfortably ignored as usual), and the Bears had just lost a home game against the Phoenix Hyenas. Ilya had scored two points, though, keeping him in a neck-and-neck scoring race with Shane, so he wasn’t feeling too bad about it. Shane was probably still on a plane back from the West Coast, and Ilya was already giddily thinking about how tonight, when they FaceTimed, he would get to see Shane against the backdrop of his navy linen sheets. Shane’s shoulders would be fully relaxed, tucked away at home. He would probably be comfortable enough to take off his shirt and let Ilya study the constellations of freckles across his collarbone.

Americans called this feeling “Cloud Nine,” Ilya was pretty sure. Maybe Canadians, too. He could ask Shane to double-check—Ilya had a sneaking suspicion that Shane liked helping Ilya find the right words and translations in English, and Ilya was more than happy to indulge him. Shane had never been judgmental about his accent, and he wasn’t annoying like some people were, frequently correcting every minor mistake Ilya made. Shane had never struggled to understand him either, not even on the ice with their mouth guards in and a million distractions around them. Ilya had also never failed to understand Shane, even when he stuttered or clamped his lips shut, refusing to say how he felt or what he wanted.

They understood each other. It was… nice.

The new routine of texts and calls was even nicer. Ilya had decided that he wasn’t going to think about whatever the fuck they were doing until the season ended. The Voyageurs had basically already clinched a playoff spot, and unless they crashed and burned, the Bears would join them. Their seasons might go well into the summer, which Ilya always liked because it meant he had to spend less time in Russia.

Ilya fiddled with his phone in the locker room after the game, already showered and redressed. Shane, as usual, had texted him ‘Good morning’ at an ungodly hour. Ilya wondered what it would be like to receive those texts at noon, Moscow time, instead of waking up to them.

Ilya was beginning to question whether he wanted to go back to Russia at all.

“Whoa,” Ilya heard someone breathe. Ilya glanced up to see their Finnish defenseman across the room, staring at his phone gobsmacked, and snorted. Probably the girlfriend he wouldn’t shut up about had texted him something salacious. Ilya looked back at his own phone, wondering if he could DM Shane over Instagram and hope he was using the plane Wi-Fi, or if he would be murdered for moving to a less secure app. Shane would never send Ilya something salacious over Instagram. Probably. Might not hurt to ask, though….

“Wait, what the fuck?” It was Connors this time, and he was staring over Saint Vic’s shoulder—a difficult task for him, since he was at least six inches shorter than Vic. His mouth was hanging open, but that didn’t mean much, because Connor was easily shocked. “Is that—wait, what is that?”

Ilya rolled his eyes at his drama queen teammates, thumbs drumming against his screen as he began mentally crafting the perfect text to send, which Hollander would see as soon as he stepped off the plane, and which would hopefully encourage him to have phone sex that night. They hadn’t tried that yet, despite all their calls, but Shane had hinted at it a few times, and Ilya certainly wanted to encourage that. He figured Shane would prefer a phone call to FaceTime, but Ilya had no complaints about that. He was desperate for him. It was weeks until their next game, and Ilya didn’t want to wait.

Ilya was focused on his phone and completely missed the increasing number of players huddling over phone screens around the room, and he missed the astonished looks they were giving him.

Dear Jane, Ilya typed, smiling. War is over.

“Holy fucking shit!” Ilya glanced up again, because Marly’s booming voice was completely unignorable, and whatever made him hoot like that would probably be entertaining enough. His alternate captain was looking straight back at Ilya already, an ear-splitting grin on his face as he waved his phone through the air. “Holy fucking shit, brother! Is this fucking real?”

“Is what real?” Ilya asked, irritated. He had a text to send and very little patience, even for his best friend on the team.

Between his palms, his phone buzzed. Ilya glanced at it, hoping against hope that it was from Shane, but it was an email from his agent. Ilya immediately swiped it away.

“No way it’s real,” Johansson scoffed. He was shoulder-to-shoulder with Oregan, their goalie, and they were both holding the same phone. “Someone deepfaked you, Cap. Camera quality’s shit—that’s how you can tell—and it makes no fucking sense ‘cause they probably clipped together a bunch of random stuff from interviews.”

Ilya felt the first thrum of anxiety. “Deepfake?”

“I don’t know,” Oregan said warily, scratching at his chin. “It looks pretty, like, fluid. Aren’t those things choppy as hell?”

“Wait, did you see-” one of the rookies murmured to another.

“Yeah, the translation-” the other whispered.

“No way, right?”

“No fucking way it’s Cap!”

“Yeah, no fucking way.”

Ilya stared around the room, curling his fingers tighter around his phone. “What the fuck is going on?”

Marly clomped across the room and shoved his phone into Ilya’s face, far too close for him to make out the image. “This shit is all over Twitter, brother,” he said. “Some video of you in an alley, talking to Jane?” His wide, toothy grin could only be described as shit-eating. “I thought things weren’t serious between you and Ms. Montreal, Rozy?”

Ilya snatched Marly’s phone out of his hands and pressed his palm to the center of his face, shoving Marly away. “What the fuck?” he asked, staring at the screen without comprehension. It took a moment for his brain to process what he was looking at.

It was a paused video of him. Ilya was lucky that he had no bad angles, because the camera was mounted high on the wall, above the back entrance door he had escaped through that night at the club. The quality was terrible, filmed on a grainy night-vision camera and then refilmed on a vertical iPhone trained on a security monitor in the back of the club, but the audio was annoyingly crisp (what security camera even had audio?). Ilya was easily identifiable, his face clear enough and his voice extremely distinct. Ilya suddenly remembered the bouncer he had paid to open the door for and wondered if the man had immediately run to the back room to eavesdrop. If he had, he certainly struck a goldmine.

He ignored his teammates’ increasing questions and speculation as he clicked play.

The video began early in the conversation, the phone already trained on the screen to record: “-wrong? Why do you sound like this? Why did you call?” A pause as Shane responded, and there was just enough clarity to see the way Ilya’s expression turned from concerned to surprised. “How could I know? You call me out of nowhere seven times! Why are you mad at me?”

Then on it went, for an alarming ten fucking minutes of confusing, circuitous, one-sided conversation. It was utterly bizarre, even for Ilya, to listen to such a jumbled mess of statements, questions, and accusations, which he remembered clearly but not in such perfect detail. It began with a fight. Then, the first confession came: “All I do is crazy things for you.” Then an apology. Then.

Then.

A second confession. Caught on camera, recorded through an iPhone, and posted to Twitter. The Russian words that his teammates hadn’t understood yet. That Shane was not supposed to understand either.

It was on the internet now, so it was only a matter of time before someone translated it, and before Shane heard the translation.

Despair and fury threatened to crush Ilya.

But first things first.

Still sitting half in his cubby, Ilya stubbornly ignored his teammates, telling Marly to fuck off when he asked for his phone back, and started the video over, re-listening to the entire conversation with more focus.

Ilya had never said Hollander’s first or last name, which had been intentional, a bare teaspoon of self-preservation because he was outside. Ilya also didn’t think there were any allusions to him being a man—for once, the conversation had nothing to do with their queerness, and speaking in direct address, all gender had dropped. There was just that one teasing Jane at the end, which was nothing, even lucky in a way. It gave people something tangible to latch on to, something they believed was real.

It also gave the public access to something Ilya had kept secret and safe for five years. Shane Hollander, after all, belonged to the world, but Jane had always belonged to Ilya.

But there were no references to Montreal. No references to hockey, their games, or teammates from Ilya. Just a really confusing one-sided ramble, filled with long pauses as someone tried to talk Ilya out of a stupid, reckless plan he made, seemingly to draw critical media attention off someone else and onto himself? That part was less than ideal. The vagueness would only increase speculation. People loved a mystery to solve. But whatever conclusions they drew, it would almost certainly have nothing to do with Shane Hollander.

All the internet had to go off on was the name. Jane.

Jane, and Ilya’s intentionally mistranslated love confession.

‘It means I promise’ HOLY SHIT GUYS NO IT DOES NOT HE SAID “YA TEBYA LYUBLYU/я тебя люблю” THAT MEANS I LOVE YOU HOLLY SHITTTTT ILYA ROZANOV IS IN LOVE???

this is fucking absurd, oh my godddddd ilya rozanov is in unrequited love???? he’s lying about being in love to his gf???? what the fuck happened to the timeline??????

something so romantic and so fucking sad about the ‘it means i promise’ like ugh, roz, you’re fucking killing me why is that the sweetest thing i’ve ever heard?

#itmeansipromise #itslikeanoath #iswearittoyou okay rozanov in his russian romantic tragedy era i see you king

lolololol my name is jane and i did in fact sleep with rozzy a few years ago so this is like the perfect y/n self-insert fanfic of my freaking DREAMMMMMSSS

If you had told me three months ago that Shane Hollander was going to get his nudes leaked, and Ilya Rozanov was going to get caught secretly confessing his love on camera, obviously I would have calmly asked if you meant the other way around, and then when you said no i would have punched you in the face

Sobbing faced emojis and the text, repeated everywhere—It’s like an oath. I swear it to you.

That was easily the worst part.

Ilya thumbed out of Twitter, uncaring about the twenty other hockey players in the room staring at the top of his head, and opened his chat thread with Jane. Shane had sent his typical morning greeting before setting off on his jog. Ilya had responded when he woke up, returning the greeting.

Shane hadn’t said anything back.

Ilya hadn’t thought anything of it. They were both busy. Ilya had a game. Shane was flying back from California.

Maybe, Ilya hoped, Shane was already on the plane when the video was posted. Maybe he hadn’t seen it yet.

“Rozanov.”

Ilya flicked his eyes up without lifting his head. LeClaire and Reilly, Boston’s head coach and an assistant coach, stood in the locker room doorway with Wendy, the head of the Bears’ communications department, and Cara, head of the social media department (different jobs, apparently. Ilya didn’t know much about either). The rest of the Bears had cleared the center of the locker room, parting like the fucking Red Sea so they could stare Ilya down.

Ilya sighed, sliding his phone into his pocket, and stood up. “Alright,” he said, striding out of the locker room without delay. “Let’s get this thing over with, okay?”

+++

Talking to upper management was always a fucking pain. Sometimes Ilya had meetings with the coaching staff that were more interesting and productive—conversations about the room, his ideas about drills and practices, sharing insider knowledge about how the rookies were fitting in or whether any of the vets were about to tank because they were going through another divorce—but anyone else on the more managerial side of things rarely had interesting things to say to Ilya. He was pretty sure the General Manager thought he was about as smart as a bag of sea glass (or, you know, Marly), and at least half of the ownership and executive staff were ancient white men who still privately believed in McCarthyism and disdained Ilya whenever he wasn’t actively scoring points or selling jerseys.

Ilya rarely had to interact directly with those guys, and to be fair, most of the Bears’ coaching staff and operations team were much better. Still, it was never fun to be called into the communications office to deal with whatever random scandal had erupted around him.

Though, admittedly, this was definitely the weirdest scandal Ilya had ever been embroiled in.

He crossed his legs and folded his hands politely in his lap, sitting in front of Wendy’s desk. Cara had her face buried in a tablet resting in the crook of her arm like a baby, Reilly was pacing behind Ilya, and LeClaire was leaning against the back wall, a fierce expression on his face.

Wendy was staring Ilya down, wholly unimpressed. “Explain,” she ordered.

Ilya shrugged. “I did not know there was a camera.”

“Obviously,” she said slowly, “or I would hope, obviously.”

“I didn’t,” Ilya muttered, crossing his arms and feeling like a petulant middle-schooler called to the vice principal’s office.

“There’s theories online that you were planning on starting a fight in that club,” Cara piped up. “It sure sounds like you were planning to get yourself some bad press for whatever reason. Honestly, the theories might be worse than whatever you were actually planning.”

“I wasn’t going to fight anyone!” Ilya protested.

“Public indecency?” Cara asked, raising a threaded eyebrow.

Ilya had to ponder that for a moment too long, so Wendy had already thrown her hands into the air and shouted, “Oh, come on!” by the time Ilya confidently said, “No, I don’t think so.”

“What the hell is going on, kid?” LeClaire barked. “Seriously,” he said when everyone turned to look at him. “What the hell was that? It’s gotta be the most confusing one-sided conversation I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing. Basically impossible to make out whatever the fuck you were going on about—except at the end.” He shook his head, staring at Ilya as if he had never seen him before, even though LeClaire had been his coach since his first day in the NHL. “You’re in love? With some supermodel with some bad press or something?”

Again, Ilya thought about it. “Yes,” he admitted, because yeah, that was true.

“Who?” Cara asked immediately, eyes lighting up.

“What did she do?” Wendy asked at the same time.

“Not telling,” Ilya told them both, crossing his legs with a flourish and a little bounce of his ankle. “We are not in a relationship. Not committed or whatever. Just seeing each other sometimes and… there have been bad things said about her recently.” That was enough honesty for now, so he decided to start lying. “Is not a very big story, but she is, ah, up-and-coming model, so one of her ex-friends blabs about her to the tabloids—some bullshit about them partying together, nothing bad, but she is very upset. I thought, okay, I can maybe show her how easy it is to bait paparazzi and shit with stupid stories, so I was going to get drunk, maybe take off my shirt, dance, and that would be it. Dumb story gets written by someone, maybe a picture where it looks like I’m wearing even less, she sees how stupid the whole industry is.” He spread his hands. “I am altruistic,” he said proudly. “But she talked me out of it, obviously. So, no worries!”

Ilya was a very good liar (a product of his upbringing) and he thought his story sounded reasonable, at least for him, but no one in the office looked like they believed him.

“Are you insane?” Reilly asked.

“Maybe,” Ilya agreed.

“How famous is she?” Cara asked. “Have you been pictured together before?”

Ilya had been pictured with dozens of models over the years, and even more Instagram influencers who fashioned themselves as such, so he nodded. The pool of potentials wouldn't get narrowed down anytime soon. “Yes, but I haven't seen anyone guess we are together. It would be… we are keeping it private.” That was definitely too honest. Wendy’s eyebrows were slowly rising, higher and higher, threatening to disappear beneath the sharp line of her severe bangs.

“You love this girl.”

That was LeClaire. Ilya glanced at his coach. “I did not mean to say it,” he said after a moment. “She does not know. Did not know. Ugh.” He ran his hands roughly down his face. “She has probably already seen the video. Today is… not a good day for me.” At least that admission, also far, far too honest, seemed to warm the room toward him. “I wouldn’t have done anything bad,” he told Wendy, mostly telling the truth. He had been planning on leaking his own nudes, and wasn’t that his God-given right? He’d been doing it for purely unselfish reasons, too, but probably no one would believe him about that. “I can put out a statement, maybe try to stop the theories. Say exactly what I’ve said to you.” He shrugged. “This is… silly. But I was trying to help.”

Reilly sighed explosively. “What a fucking mess, kid.”

“In love,” LeClaire muttered from his corner. “Ilya Rozanov, in love.”

“It’s better than not saying anything,” Wendy said. “But we are writing the statement, Rozanov, not you. Cara’s taking over your socials for the next week—you, sir, are barred.” Ilya whined but didn’t object. He knew better. “Are you willing to confirm this girl’s identity?”

“No,” he said firmly. “Not at all.”

“Are you planning on revealing that you are in a committed relationship? Normally we wouldn’t ask for a disclosure like that, but I’ll need to know for the statement.

Ilya opened his mouth and closed it. “We are not together,” he said, “right now.”

Wendy nodded. “I’ll keep it vague.”

“Thanks.”

“A mess,” Reilly repeated.

“Rozanov,” LeClaire said, sternly raising an eyebrow. “This is all over the internet right now. Hell, it’s probably a bigger story than when Hollander’s dick pic got leaked.” Ilya kept a straight face. Well, yes, he thought. That was sort of the point. Failing into success. “Your girl,” LeClaire continued, “whether or not you are together, has definitely seen this shit.” Yes, Ilya thought, definitely. Shane’s plane had almost certainly landed already, and even if it hadn’t, someone on his team was probably scrolling on the airplane Wi-Fi. It had been a few hours since the video was posted. Shane had seen it by now, and if he had seen it, then he had also almost certainly seen the translation. The confession. Not meant for his ears—not yet, at least. LeClaire raised an eyebrow. “Are you ready to deal with that?”

Ilya shrugged. “Probably not really.”

“Is it going to affect your game?”

Nothing would make Shane reject him faster, so, “No. No, it will not.” He’d been honest enough tonight, anyway, so he added, “She is a very big hockey fan. She would be even more pissed at me if I give myself the yips over this. Not the way to grovel with her.”

LeClaire barked a laugh, and Cara hid a smile behind her tablet. “Fucking hell, kid,” Reilly groused. “You keep us on our fucking toes.”

Ilya stood up, feeling like the meeting was probably concluded. “Yes. I do.”

+++

Ilya slid into the front seat of his McLaren and pulled out his phone.

He had a million messages, a few news alerts, and some pissed-off emails from his manager and agent (but they were always fucking pissed at him for one reason or another, so it wasn’t anything to take too seriously). Svetlana, who had probably never double-texted before in her life, had sent him a veritable wall of evocative emojis, mostly screaming, some crying, a few throwing up. Despite the worry sitting heavy in his stomach, his lips twitched into a smile.

But still nothing from Shane. Maybe he should have expected that.

He checked Shane’s flight information and saw that Shane’s plane had landed two hours ago, just as the story had started growing exponentially online. Shane was notoriously logged off, but he would have heard about it before his team parted ways.

It was weird, but Shane and Ilya were linked together in the public consciousness. They always had been. They weren’t ever talked about without the other being mentioned eventually. They were a linked, breathing, symbiotic hockey creature, two sides of the same coin (or puck). How many times had Rozanov been brought up in the conversation about Shane’s nudes? How many times would Hollander be mentioned when people discussed Ilya’s love confession?

In a way, it was satisfying to know that his plan probably would have worked, despite all his naysayers. It was working right now, sort of. The dichotomy was too appealing, but Ilya knew it was having the opposite effect from what he had intended.

He’d wanted to show off more salacious, boastful pictures than Shane had, so that in comparison, Shane would appear humble and taken advantage of. He had wanted to involve himself directly in the conversation, and now he had, but instead, people were talking about the role reversal of “boy next door Hollander” and “sex pest playboy Rozanov,” and that wasn’t what he’d wanted.

Ilya tipped his head back and groaned. “Fuck.” He cast his phone carefully into the passenger seat and did not imagine Shane sitting there instead, grumbling about the lack of legroom, no, not at all.

Ilya drove home. He mechanically performed his post-game routine, stretching out his body and treating any bruises and strains he had acquired over the last few weeks, before taking a second, much more thorough shower, then eating an extraordinarily large dinner just before midnight.

He responded to Sveta’s texts with only emojis (white man shrugging, the cat with its hands over its eyes, and a skull), muted the Bears’ chat after telling them all to fuck off again, and responded briefly to his agent and manager. The Bears would probably put out a statement about privacy the next day. It would probably look a lot like the one Hollander’s team wrote him at the beginning of the season.

It’s like an oath.

The words haunted him.

He opened his messages with Jane, rereading the texts they had sent each other that morning and wondering what the next ones could possibly look like. Would he start the conversation, or Shane? Would Shane be angry, screaming ‘I told you so’s, or apologetic, particularly inclined to be sympathetic toward a major breach in privacy? Or would Shane say it ba-

No.

Ilya did not silence his phone.

He crawled into his bed, remembering when he’d had Shane spread out on the same sheets. He plugged his phone in on the nightstand and stared at it, lit only by moonlight, and waited to fall asleep.

+++

Ilya slept poorly. He woke twice within an hour, jolting out of sleep at the smallest noises outside, and he dreamed blearily. He was standing in the alley again, but this time it was snowing, and he had been standing in the same place for so long that it was piling up on the toes of his boots. LeClaire, Reilly, Wendy, Marly, the girl with the septum piercing, the bouncer who’d sold him out, and half of the Bears leaned against the wall opposite him, listening as he poured his heart out to Shane across the line. Shane’s voice crackled. The line kept dropping. Probably because of the snowstorm.

Ilya woke up again at 3:30 in the morning and cursed, throwing an arm across his eyes.

Then he sat straight up.

His nightstand was buzzing, and Ilya lunged, knocking a lamp to the floor as he snatched up his phone, ripping it off the charging cable.

His heart leapt into his mouth and he blinked at the screen, wondering if this was part of the dream too.

Shane was calling. Shane was calling him.

Jane.

Ilya answered. “Hollander.”

“Ilya. Hi.”

Ilya waited. Nothing else came, the line silent for several seconds. “Okay? Hi, hello? Did you need something?”

Shane immediately scoffed. “Oh, fuck off! Would you shut up?”

Ilya spluttered indignantly. “It is not like you were saying anything!”

“I was going to!”

“Then you better get to it because I am already bored,” Ilya lied, because he was too baffled to be truly bored. Shane had called him. He must have seen the video, and he had called Ilya. Shane couldn't be too mad if he had called him, right?

Shane took a deep breath, let it out, and took another. Ilya waited impatiently. In a rush, Shane blurted, “I’m in Manchester.”

Ilya blinked. “England? You are in England? Hollander, what the fuck? At three in the fucking morning? We are still in the middle of the season, what the fuck are you doing in England-”

“No, no.” Shane laughed breathlessly. “No, you moron! Manchester, New Hampshire.”

Ilya paused. “Am I supposed to know where the fuck that is?”

Shane made a noise of offense. “You don’t know where New Hampshire is? Ilya, you’ve lived in Massachusetts for five years! It’s literally a neighboring state!”

“No, I mean, I kind of know where New Hampshire is-”

“Kind of?”

“We drive through it sometimes, I think.” Ilya wasn’t sure, actually. He knew for a fact that New Hampshire didn’t have an NHL team, though, so he was mildly surprised that Hollander expected him to know anything about it. Maybe they had a team in the AHL or the ECHL, which were both below Ilya’s notice, but Hollander could probably name every player on their rosters. “But I mean—Manchester. Where the fuck is Manchester? Why the fuck are you in Manchester in the middle of the night? Are you being kidnapped or stalked?”

“No, you fucker!” Shane spat out. “I drove here! In my own damn car! Do you seriously think we’d be having this conversation if I was kidnapped right now?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know what people talk about when they are kidnapped?”

“Just—ugh, you are so annoying!”

Ilya was really affronted now. “You called me,” he reminded Shane, and he felt a sudden flush of ice down his spine when he also remembered why that had been so surprising. The video was all over Twitter, and, as Ilya had sort of planned, although definitely not like this, everyone was comparing it to Shane’s own recent leak. Which meant that Shane must have seen or heard about it by now. It means I promise. “Why did you call me?” he asked, quieter. “Not to tell me about New Hampshire.”

“No,” Shane agreed, just as soft now. “No. Um. Manchester is, like, forty or fifty minutes away from your house. So.”

Ilya’s mouth went dry. “Shane.”

“I was just going to show up at your house,” Shane hurried to explain. “You know, just knock on your door or whatever. But then I was worried that you might not be home, or you might have company—not that I think, I mean, your teammates, or something, and I’m sure you’ve had meetings, and even if you were there you might be exhausted or just not want to see me right now, which I would completely understand because I realized that I wasn’t sure if I would appreciate you showing up on my doorstep like this, and also, you know, it’s just generally pretty rude to drop in completely unannounced, and I realized that driving across five states and provinces without texting you was fucking stupid, so I pulled over and I was going to just ask if you were free, but then that seemed rude, so I thought I should call-”

Ilya’s heart was quite full.

As athletes, they trained so much, honed their bodies into extremely efficient tools, and their resting heart rates slowed to a crawl.

But right now, Ilya’s pulse sped up to a gallop in his chest.

“Shane,” he whispered again. “Shane.”

Shane cut himself off, finally. “Ilya.”

“You are coming here? Coming to me?”

And Shane replied, “I love you, too. I wanted to say it in person, but I think I kind of blew that plan.”

“Shane.”

“Can I still come?”

“Always.” And fuck, but he meant it, too.

“Okay.” They breathed across the line. Ilya thought he could hear traffic, and his heart thumped again at the mental image of Shane pulled over on the side of a road, desperate to call after four straight hours of indecisive driving. If he was forty minutes outside Boston, he must have left Montreal late at night, maybe right after his plane landed. He had driven four hours without turning around or changing his mind. And when the fear finally took over, instead of bolting, he called Ilya.

Ilya cleared his throat. “Step on the pedal. Lead foot, please.”

“I’m not going to speed,” Shane said sternly, and Ilya whined.

“You torture me.”

“I don’t know,” Shane murmured. “Doesn’t the anticipation make it better in the end?”

They both knew the answer to that.

+++

Forty or fifty minutes later, Shane was in his arms, two weeks ahead of schedule.

Fuck it, Ilya thought, crushing him against his chest as tightly as he could manage, murmuring the same three words over and over in Russian and English and hearing them reciprocated. Then, he corrected himself. Worth it.

Chapter End Notes

I am sorry for everyone who actually wanted to see Ilya leak his nudes and how that would play out lmao. In another universe or timeline, perhaps…

I literally wrote that Manchester joke six weeks ago (and I still think it’s funny). My writing process is always non-linear but I have literally never written anything as backward as this. I wrote the first scene (Ilya’s meltdown over the leak) and then immediately went and wrote almost all of both Shane and Ilya’s phonecalls in this chapter. Then I wrote the entire epilogue start to finish, and then finally went back and filled in all the spaces. It was very weird and hopefully it didn’t feel like there were any huge tonal shifts or major continuity errors because of it, but the only reason I decided to actually see this fic concept through to the end was because I freaking lovedddddd the twist that Ilya’s love confession gets leaked instead of his nudes. Hope you enjoyed it too :) Just one more chapter left!

(Also, I did end up completely separating Ilya's side of the conversation just to check that he hadn't let anything identifying slip (I caught an unintentional "Shane" mere moments before publishing the chap, lmk if i missed anything plssss!) and it really is so weird and confusing, I feel bad for the hockey conspiracy theorists of this universe lmoa)

Chapter 5: Epilogue: Aperture

Chapter Notes

Boston was knocked out of the playoffs in the seventh game of Round One. Not how Ilya wanted to end the year, but since Oregan’s retirement, they had struggled to fill the net with anyone competent. It was a testament to their d-core that they made it to the playoffs, but Ilya didn’t have high expectations for the postseason run.

Montreal won the first round in five games—they had won the Presidents’ Trophy, first in the league, and faced the lesser wildcard, so their victory was expected. Ilya had watched the games of round two in between his own brutal series, and Sveta watched with him when Montreal beat Toronto in a second gentleman’s sweep. “You chose well, Ilyusha,” she had said. “You could learn something from him.” Ilya pretended to be offended, but he was fighting off a smile.

Shane was playing even better than he had in the 2015 playoffs, and in just ten games, he had already outscored every other player in the postseason. Every game or highlight reel Ilya caught, Shane moved like orchestrated lightning.

Already, it felt like Montreal’s year. Again.

Shane’s year.

It was Ilya’s turn to make the five-hour drive.

He packed up and closed down his house in Boston, thinking fondly of the last day he and Shane had spent there, shyly dancing around their brand-new intimacy after Ilya said that he loved Shane, and the whole world heard it, and Shane decided to say it back.

They didn’t know what would come after that, but they had chosen to take the first steps. They were going to try to figure it out this summer, alone in the cottage Shane had built after his first Cup win. There were still so many unanswered questions for them, but they were setting aside time to answer them. They were going to talk about it, and Ilya was really going to try being honest.

It felt… hopeful, actually. And incredibly scary, and a little exhilarating, and Ilya pressed his foot to the gas pedal and soared above the speed limit just to expel a smidgen of the adrenaline racing uselessly through his nervous system as he drove.

Their first night together, and the morning that followed, Shane had confessed a little more about what had been happening in Montreal. He talked about feeling guilty that he liked having a better excuse not to hook up with girls, because his teammates accepted why Shane would be so careful now. “It’s a good cover for me, actually.”

Ilya made a disgusted noise. “You shouldn’t need cover. It’s sex. Do it or don’t. Your teammates are assholes.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. How different would it really be anywhere else in the league?” Ilya couldn’t answer that. The Bears weren’t perfect either.

Lying side by side in bed, Ilya had just pulled Shane back into his arms.

“I did everything right,” Shane murmured into the crook of his neck. “I went to a bar, I found a girl, I flirted with her, I had sex with her, and then I was humiliated by the league and got benched, and I’m probably going to lose a couple of sponsorships when my contracts end. Nothing big,” he rushed to assure Ilya, as if Ilya gave a single shit about whether Rolex or Reebok was dropping him. “But my mom thinks City Seltzer was spooked by the whole thing, and this event got cancelled that-”

“Shane,” Ilya interrupted. “I am sorry about your sponsorships. But I don’t think that’s what you wanted to talk about?”

“Right. Sorry.” Shane sighed. “I just mean, like, I did the right things, I did the normal things, I tried to be a normal fucking hockey player, and it’s just… all the same consequences happened, anyway. It would have been worse if it was us, or me with another guy, but… It wasn’t paparazzi, it wasn’t someone hacking our phones, it wasn’t a crazy fan stalking us, it wasn’t hotel security camera footage or whatever—it was someone I knew posting something on the internet of their own free will because they fucking suck. It’s not like that makes all the other stuff impossible, but….” Shane looked at Ilya with his bright eyes glimmering in the low lamplight. “You wouldn’t ever do that to me. For a million reasons, obviously, but… I trust you. I know that I’m right to trust you. I realized that, and it was like… there’s no one else I trust as much as I trust you, so what’s even the point of trying with anyone else? I just want you.”

In a way, that almost felt better than the first ‘I love you’—I trust you, I want you, and the courage to admit it. Ilya held him tighter and didn’t let go until he made Shane breakfast the next morning.

Shane had unfortunately needed to drive back the very next day (he had skipped an optional practice to make the drive, and if that wasn’t a proof of love, then Ilya didn’t know what was) and they had both fallen into planning mode. By the time they met in person again for the final game of the regular season, and Ilya got to see Shane’s actual apartment, with his navy blue sheets and his alphabetized kitchen, they had a plan:

The Bears publicity office released a brief statement denouncing the rumors that Ilya had planned to start a bar fight for media attention, and a few weeks later Ilya implied on his Instagram that he was officially off the market. The bottle girls of Boston went into mourning.

People were still trying to figure out who Ilya was talking to on the phone (and who had presumably locked him down), mostly guessing models Ilya had been pictured with in the past year, but no one had been singled out, and none were named Jane. Ilya imagined that there was probably a corner of the internet obsessed with solving the mystery of his love life, but he was trying to stay offline these days. It was easier when he could just text Shane whenever he wanted.

Ilya told his teammates the same story he gave management: that Ilya was officially dating Montreal Jane (Marly had spread that story too far and wide for Ilya to put that cat back in the hat). He told the Bears they were trying long-distance, and that Ilya loved her. He had refused to tell them who she was, and he was sure unflattering rumors were going around about him—he’d heard the rookies speculating that Jane was probably married—but Ilya could deal with that. He stuck to the story he’d told about the leak, saying that Jane was famous and they didn’t want any additional speculation about them.

Ilya didn’t know how long that story would hold. Hockey players weren’t renowned for their patience, and several of his teammates were clearly baffled that Ilya Rozanov had abruptly committed himself to long-distance monogamy. Eventually, they would get annoyed or suspicious about his secrecy, and the rumors would mutate and spread, but Ilya would deal with that as it came. If they had learned one thing from this year, it was that they couldn’t prepare for every eventuality. They just had to do their best with the circumstances handed to them, and so far, that seemed to be working out.

Ilya drove to Montreal after the second round wrapped up, settling his commitments in Boston and closing the house for the summer. He drove to Montreal with everything he would need for three months packed into his car.

Ilya wasn’t going back to Russia. Not this summer, at least.

Ilya didn’t think that he would never go back—he didn’t want to think that. Yes, Russia had so many bad memories and people, but it was the country of his birth, his homeland, and Moscow had shaped him into the man he was, for better and for worse.

He needed a break, though. The regular season was not enough. Ilya would spend a year, maybe two, away from Russia, and when or if he ever returned, things would have to be different. Or that would be it, and he would be done for good.

He had spoken with Alexei once after the phone call went semi-viral. Alexei immediately began mocking Ilya for being pathetic and made a crude joke about whether he’d already knocked up Jane—and Ilya had hung up. He turned his phone off when Alexei tried to call back. He stopped answering, which felt good despite the lingering guilt.

He was not sending Alexei money anymore, though he had reestablished a quiet, discreet email correspondence with Dasha, Alexei’s wife, occasionally sending her small sums for his niece, buying her nice clothing and paying for school supplies and the like. They didn't really talk outside of that.

Ilya had hired a full-time nursing staff to live with his ailing father. It was expensive, but not significantly worse than the ludicrous sum he had been paying Alexei, which made Ilya feel more like an idiot than ever. The nursing staff also didn’t refuse to take Grigori to doctor’s appointments inconveniently far from home, or forget (or sell) his medication. Ilya had searched for a reputable company, and he trusted the people now looking after for his father, and believed that Grigori was receiving much better care. He still accepted his father’s phone calls. They were mostly confused these days, rarely angry. Ilya had worried that the strangers in his father’s home would be too emotionally distressing for him, or that Grigori would rain virulent abuse on them, calling them thieves or liars, but instead, Grigori frequently talked about Alexsander, Sophia, and Mariya puttering about the house—the names of Grigori’s former coworker and a maid and cook who had been employed in the house during Ilya’s youth. None of them had been in contact with Grigori or any of the Rozanovs for years. Mariya was dead. Ilya never corrected his father. The memory wouldn’t hold even if he tried, and Ilya was honestly relieved.

Grigori Rozanov was a cruel, old, sick man. He was dying, and he was nothing like the commanding officer from Ilya’s childhood. Yes, he was still crass, still demanding, but he was also confused and scared all the time. He remembered Ilya better than he remembered Alexei. He depended on Ilya, which evoked such a complicated well of emotions in Ilya that he couldn’t think about it for long. Grigori was very lost, and there was no point in punishing him anymore. At this point, Ilya wouldn’t feel better by cutting off his father. He resented him, and it still gave him peace to know that he was being taken care of.

Alexei… Ilya was ready to leave him behind. Ilya was one of the only people in the world who remembered Alexei as he had once been—a child, not always kind, rarely polite, often upset and bitter about the favoritism directed at Ilya once his skill on the ice redirected all their father’s attention toward him—but as innocent as any other child. And Svetlana and Alexei were the only people who remembered Ilya as he had once been, also a child, before childhood had ended with the death of their mother. Brotherhood was a hard thing to give up.

Ilya thought about his family the entire drive from Boston to Montreal, and by the time he arrived at Shane’s apartment, he had exhausted the topic so thoroughly that he was able to put it out of his head entirely. For now, it was done. Things were settled and would stay as they were until Alexei had an abrupt change of heart, or Grigori died. That was it. Ilya wouldn’t waste any more time waiting.

Shane had two parking spots in his building. He’d told Ilya exactly where to go, his instructions precise. Ilya slid out of his car, grabbing two bags from the backseat as he looked between his orange McLaren and Shane’s black Jeep, a smile playing on his lips at the contrast. Strangely, they looked good together—or maybe Ilya had been conditioned to think so.

While Shane’s car was all practicality, and Ilya’s all flash and flamboyance, there were still similarities. These were expensive, high-performance vehicles, built for power, precision, and strength. They were clean and well-maintained, in perfect working order, without rust or dents. Ultimately, both cars would get them where they needed to go.

Ilya had a fob to get into the garage, and he had a code for the elevator, and a code and backup key for Shane's front door. One by one, he let himself in, getting a little thrill every time. This was so much better than waiting in the cold outside the sex condo.

Shane hadn’t sold the sex condo in the end. He’d muttered something about it still being an appreciating asset and that he had changed his mind. Ilya felt giddy, but he hadn’t pressed. It wasn’t empty anymore, the rooms finally being rented out. At the beginning of the season, when Shane first impulsively stated he was selling it, Ilya had felt like his world was falling apart, but this time, even though they were technically still losing access to the apartment they had met in so many times, Ilya was ambivalent. The sex condo had housed some of the formative moments in their relationship, but it was also a physical embodiment of how much pressure they were under to hide themselves. Going to Shane’s real apartment instead, being given access to the garage and a new key, felt like something far more precious. It was worth protecting.

Ilya was already grinning to himself when he opened the door. “Honey! I am home!”

“Ilya?” Shane called from deeper in the apartment, surprise infusing his tone but not displeasure. “You’re early!”

Ilya toed off his shoes in the foyer, calling back, “Yes.”

Shane appeared in the hallway, rapidly scrubbing his damp hands with a towel, a flustered look on his face. “You said you wouldn't be here until dinner! It’s barely noon! You must have left before dawn!”

“A little bit after,” Ilya admitted, setting down his bags.

Shane shook his head, brows furrowing. “Why?”

“You are a siren,” Ilya said. Now free from his weights, he strode down the hall and caught Shane around the waist, squeezing him. Shane gasped a little. The towel fluttered to the floor, unheeded by either of them. “I could not resist you.”

Shane immediately pouted, so Ilya grinned harder. “I’m not a siren.”

Ilya shrugged. “Close enough.” He kissed him. One of Shane’s arms wrapped around Ilya’s waist, instinctively kneading muscle and fat, and the other looped around his shoulders until the crook of his elbow settled behind Ilya’s neck and he could pull him harder into the kiss.

It was a long kiss. They hadn’t seen each other since the playoffs started. Ilya had never allowed himself to count down the days until he would see Shane again, but he realized that was going to be so much harder next year.

Ilya was distracted from his maudlin thoughts when something warm and moving grazed the bare skin of his ankle with a feather-light touch.

He did not yelp, because Russians famously didn’t do things like that, and he also didn’t leap into the air, and certainly not into his sturdy boyfriend’s chest. Said sturdy boyfriend was already laughing at him, so he definitely wasn’t a good candidate for emotional or physical support at the moment.

“The fuck-” Ilya hissed, looking at his feet for whatever had caused the strange brushing sensation against the sensitive skin of his ankle bone.

A well-groomed tuxedo cat was sitting on the floor between Shane and Ilya’s feet, unbothered by Ilya’s (purported) jumping and hollering. Her tail flopped back and forth slowly, as if she were dusting the floor, and Ilya watched as the tip brushed his toes. She was licking her white paw, a content expression on her condensed face.

“You have cat,” Ilya blanked.

Shane nodded. They were still pressed close together, so Ilya could feel the motion just as well as he could see it. “Yes. I have cat. I was going to tell you—she’s a recent addition.” He paused. “You’re not allergic, are you? I have Benadryl if you need it.”

“No,” Ilya said. He removed himself from Shane and crouched, offering his fingers to the little lady. She sniffed it curiously. Ilya expected her to push into his palm like a dog, but she just kept on sniffing, her little black nose twitching. “Why do you have a cat, Hollander?”

“Well.” Shane shuffled a little. The cat turned away from Ilya and walked up to him, bumping her head against Shane’s shin, then sliding her body around his calf. “I have her because I adopted her.”

Ilya stared at the animal, now purring, and finally recognized her. His mind blanked, refusing to conjure any thoughts but a mental image of the final photograph from the nudes leak, the one that was not technically a nude and had, unfortunately, become a league-wide hockey meme. He’s so good at stroking my—Ilya shook his head violently, straightening up in the hopes that it would help him regain some equilibrium. “Wait. Wait a minute. She is—I know this cat. I recognize her.”

Shane looked sheepish. Good. He should be embarrassed about this. “Um, yeah. Yeah, you do.”

Ilya stared at him. “You adopted the cat of the girl who leaked your nudes? The cat who was in your leaked nudes?”

Shane scooped up the cat as he nodded. It was a fluid motion. Ilya would have assumed Hollander was awkward around animals, but as the cat laid both white-socked paws on his shoulder and tucked her head beside his neck, Shane shifted naturally, clearly accustomed to the wriggling. “The cat didn’t leak my nudes,” he said dryly. “And technically, the only picture of me and her isn’t a nude. I’m probably never going to post her on Instagram or anything, because people would probably be able to guess that she’s the same cat in the photo. I think people would be weird about it, you know?”

Ilya slowly shook his head. “So your ex-hookup makes a weird pussy joke about you and this specific cat, and your first thought is ‘I should own this animal’?”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. The cat was purring now. “Of course it wasn’t my first thought,” he said, shifting again and angling the cat away from Ilya, which actually kind of offended him. “I wasn’t thinking about it at all. It’s just… what ended up happening.”

“What happened,” Ilya repeated blankly, but Shane nodded and treated it like a question.

“Yeah. Right before playoffs started, I got an update from my lawyer saying that Jessica was willing to… it’s complicated and I’ve been distracted, but basically we’re settling the case outside of court. She’s been mentally unwell for a long time, and she was doing better when she moved to Montreal, but then she went off her medication or something—anyway, she’s agreed to move back in with her parents. In Vancouver. And I have a restraining order. There’s more than that going on, but there isn’t really a point in suing for damages or anything, and I’d much rather just bury this as much as possible. It seems like her parents are really happy that she’s not, you know, in prison. I don’t know. I think she was really not in a good place. It just isn’t worth it.”

Shane was very sweet, sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes he was a total bitch, and that was just as charming. But he looked adorable with a cat in his arms. “The parents don’t want the cat?”

Shane shook his head. “They have four dogs,” he explained. “I spoke with them, actually. Jessica had no friends in Montreal, apparently, and they weren’t sure what to do with the cat—they were going to surrender her to a shelter instead of hauling her all the way across the country just to shelter her there instead. And… I don’t know.” Shane looked at the top of the cat’s head, the little white diamond of fur on her otherwise black skull. “It’s not the cat’s fault, you know? Obviously, it’s not my fault either, but I just felt… like… she’s such a sweet cat. Apparently it was a bad year for cat rescues in the area—a lot of kittens—so most of the shelters are overwhelmed right now. She’s four years old. She doesn’t like other cats. I was worried—I was worried no one would want her.” he shifted again. “Except I realized I wanted her, so I took her.”

Ilya smiled softly. “She is very pretty,” he murmured, stretching out his fingers. She sniffed again and finally butted her nose against the tips.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “It was impulsive. But I’m glad I did it. She’s settled in really well.”

“You don’t think it will… remind you of bad things?”

Shane huffed. “That’s what my parents said. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll need her to remind me—it’s all kind of hard to forget.”

“What will you do during the season?” Ilya asked curiously. He’d wanted a pet for years, but it had always seemed impossible. Trust Shane to accomplish the impossible, though.

“My mom stayed with me for the first round of playoffs and looked after her, and my downstairs neighbor agreed to look after her whenever I’m away,” Shane said. “On overnight trips, she’ll just stay in my apartment with my neighbor looking in unless we need to adjust, but she seems pretty independent. For road trips, the cat’s going to stay in her apartment—she has a dog, but the cat doesn’t seem to mind dogs, just other cats.”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. The cat was currently curled under Shane’s chin, purring like Ilya’s Lambo motor. He didn’t point that out, though. “Good,” he said. “I have always wanted a dog. They will probably get along if she is already used to them.”

Shane smiled. “A dog and a cat,” he mused, swaying gently. “Unlikely friends. That’d be nice.”

God, he was such a dork. Ilya kissed him. “You keep calling her the cat,” Ilya pointed out. “She doesn’t have a name?”

Shane flushed again, and the cat began to squirm, so he let her out of his arms, and she flopped onto the floor with a quiet double-thump, first her front, then her rear paws hitting the hardwood. She wiggled, sniffed Ilya’s socks, and walked imperiously out of the room. “Jessica was, uh, calling her Holly?” Shane winced. “But obviously that’s weird.” Ilya pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly. Shane rolled his eyes. “Shut up, I know, okay? It’s super fucking weird, and obviously I’m not calling her that. I looked it up, and people say renaming a cat doesn’t really matter—some cats do know their names and stuff, but most won’t respond to them anyway. I haven’t come up with a good name.”

“It cannot be hockey-related,” Ilya told him. “She is a good, pretty girl, and she deserves a nice sweet name that suits her. Look at her tuxedo, she is so fancy. Do not name her after a smelly hockey player, Hollander.”

Shane’s lips twitched. “Do you want the honor?” he asked, sliding his arms around Ilya now that he was free of cat. “I’ve been racking my brain. I can’t think of anything good.”

Ilya hummed. The cat had already disappeared. “Jane,” he suggested.

Shane gave him a deadpan look.

Ilya laughed. “Lily,” he said instead, and then, “or Liliya. Good name. Should have put my name in your phone like that, but maybe would be too obvious.”

“Yeah, I think Jane and Lily is obvious enough as it is,” Shane said. He shook his head. “Hayden and some of the guys, uh, they know—well, they don’t know, but… they know I text someone named Lily. It would be pretty weird if I adopted a cat that my stalker named after me, and then renamed the cat after the girl they think I see, like, three times a year.”

It made Ilya strangely happy to know the Voyageurs knew Shane had a Lily in Boston, in the same way the Bears knew Ilya had a Jane in Montreal. It probably wouldn’t be good if their teammates ever had a reason to discuss their captain’s hookups with each other (Ilya suddenly had a hilarious vision of Hayden Pike and Marly exchanging their woes in a bar over drinks, and was comforted by the knowledge that they were both too stupid to ever put two and two together and get oh my fucking god, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander are fucking on the downlow).

“Ekaterina,” Ilya suggested, smiling.

“Wouldn’t it be weird to give my cat a Russian name?”

“Katya for short, then. Is Western enough, right? I think it is a good suggestion, because then you can keep calling her ‘Cat’ but look less stupid on vet forms or whatever. It is very boring, good name for a fancy cat.”

Shane smiled, shaking his head ruefully. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Katya the cat. Why not?”

Ilya kissed him again.

It was the middle of playoffs and it was probably far too risky for Ilya to be in Shane Hollander’s apartment, waiting every day for him to come back from his games or his flights to Florida, and then to Houston or Minnesota for the Finals (because Ilya, though he wouldn’t jinx Shane, already knew that the Voyageurs were going to the Finals). It was stupid. But this thing between them, which they had stumbled into in the dumbest way possible, was so recent, so fresh and precious and scarce, that it was worth the risk.

Ilya wanted to feed Shane when he got back from games. He wanted to feed his cat, too. He wanted to be able to take Shane’s phone whenever the internet got too much for him to handle, and let him know if any important messages came through while screening him from all the bad stuff. He wanted to continue sleeping in a bed with Shane Hollander, even though they probably wouldn’t be fucking much unless Shane had a long break between the third and final round.

He wanted Shane Hollander to win his second Stanley Cup in two years and come right back to Ilya, a legend in the flesh.

“I can look after Katya while you are gone,” Ilya said.

“Oh, right.” Shane looked a little dazed from the kiss. Well. Maybe Ilya would get lucky today. He’d been having a year of highs and lows, so it was just as likely as not. “That makes sense. That’s good. Thank you, I would appreciate it.”

Ilya loved him. He remembered that Shane already knew he loved him, (that, unfortunately, the entire internet already knew that he loved someone), so he went ahead and said, “You are perfect.”

“I’m perfect?”

“Perfect and boring and mine. Did you know?”

“Yeah. I did know.” Shane grinned. This mess had been a comedy of errors, and the world didn’t know that Shane Hollander was in love, but it didn’t stop him from telling Ilya as often as he wanted. “I’m yours.”

“Yes. The internet might have your nudes, but is okay, because I am the only one who gets the real th-”

Shane swept his feet out from under him, a brutal move that sent Ilya sprawling to the floor, and as his vision blurred and his ass immediately started to ache, Ilya still smiled, because Shane was laughing. That was all he had wanted in the first place.

+++

Montreal won the Stanley Cup. Shane Hollander came home to Ilya Rozanov and an awkwardly acquired cat. The three of them drove to the cottage Shane had constructed in the Ottawa wilderness, on the edge of a placid lake, home to a large, extended family of disruptive waterbirds. The building was so recently completed that the entire house still smelled like fresh-cut cedar and wood stain. Katya found so many patches of sunlight to sleep in.

The view outside the window of their bedroom was serene and perfect. They could hear birds chirping and crickets buzzing through the glass. Dawn light sparkled off the water.

Chapter End Notes

and then once again they buy a house in Vermont because Hollanov could have been commuting for at least some of that long-distance, and it’s another investment in the portfolio for Mr. Real Estate. I really want to write the Vermont house fic one of these days, but my muse keeps leading me elsewhere. Has anyone else written one?

I was so excited to write about Shane getting a fucking cat in the weirdest distribution system imaginable. I hope it’s not tooooo weird but we are so far out from Anya’s existence in this universe and they needed a pet, god damn it. I hope you enjoyed! I feel like this story really got so much life breathed into it from a sort of cracky starting point, and I’m actually so much happier with how it turned out than I expected when I was like halfway through writing it!! Always a good feeling <3333