Summary:

Every Boston Raider knows that although their captain has a girl in every port, he’s got a soft spot for the one in Montreal. Dr. Shane Hollander knows it’s better to have a semi-regular source of casual sex than try to make a relationship work during residency. Ilya Rozanov knows that the doctor he’s fucking in Montreal is unaware that he plays hockey, and in fact probably thinks he’s Bratva. A week before training camp begins, one of the front office people—a generally mild- mannered older woman who prefers to be called Miss Sheila—calls Ilya in for a meeting with the coaching staff that turns out to be an ambush. While they can’t technically force him to house a rookie, which has allowed him to put it off for years with increasingly stupid excuses, time appears to have finally run out. “You can’t pick and choose which parts of the captaincy you want to take on,” LeClaire says. “You have the C, so fucking act like it.” “No one else speaks Russian,” Miss Sheila adds, like that’s Ilya’s fault and not a decision that’s been actively made by management for the last eight years. You can’t throw a fucking rock in Madison Square Garden without hitting five Slavs. “I live in an apartment,” Ilya says. “No room for rookie.” “You live in a four-bedroom condo,” Miss Sheila says. “Three bathrooms and in-unit laundry. I looked it up on Zillow.” “My condo is on Zillow?” Ilya says. Miss Sheila ignores this egregious violation of Ilya’s privacy to continue, “Do you have any roommates sleeping in one of those three other bedrooms?” “Roommates, no. Guests, yes.” Ilya tries to leer at her, but Miss Sheila is made of stern stuff. “You can still have guests,” she says. “No one expects you to be a monk, Mr. Rozanov. We all know better. But that poor child doesn’t know a lick of English.” Ilya’s seen tape of the new kid—straight out of a fucking Siberian mining town, about twelve feet tall, with chin scruff he probably had to start shaving at age seven—and his nasty slapshot hadn’t exactly filled Ilya’s heart with pity. “I think about it?” he tries. Miss Sheila slides a stapled stack of paper across her desk. “Think while you’re signing these,” she says. “Initial in the yellow boxes.” As he’s leaving Miss Sheila’s office, his phone buzzes in the pocket of his athletic shorts. One vibration, so it’s WhatsApp. Obviously Ilya is a cool fucking customer who would never do anything as stupid as fumble for his phone just because of a fucking WhatsApp notification, but his phone almost slips through his fingers as he quickly digs it out. Jane: I’m going to be in Boston next month. Oct 4-9. Meet up? Shane’s in Boston every October. The North American Society of Something Extremely Boring’s Annual Meeting. Fucking CME, Shane had complained to Ilya once, a little awkwardly. He never seemed to realize that when he lied (which embarrassed him, because he was a good Canadian boy who had been raised right) the subsequent flush would make his freckles stand out. So whatever this Boston conference is, it has nothing to do with CME, whatever the fuck that is. But it is a excuse for Shane to fly to Boston every October and Ilya’s hardly going to give that gift horse a fucking dental exam. After a careful, deliberate pause–he counts a hundred seconds–Ilya sends back a thumbs up emoji. ~ Three years before, on a chilly November evening, Ilya had been irritably sucking down on the cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger in front of a pair of automatic doors that had claimed to lead to the MUHC emergency department. He’d barely heard the hiss of the doors sliding open behind him, he’d been so annoyed. “Here is a thought,” he had said to Marleau, darkly. “The next time that cocksucker thinks he can fuck up one of my guys, I send the pieces of him back home to his mother in a tiny box.” “Probably it’d be a big box,” Marleau had replied. “Like. Realistically.” “Fine,” Ilya had said, punctuating his statement with a deep drag on his cigarette. “Next time, I send him home to his mother in a medium-sized box. Overnight shipping.” “Uh,” someone had said, “you’re not supposed to be smoking here.” When Ilya had twisted to shoot an annoyed glare over his shoulder, a man in bright green scrubs had been standing behind him. He was wearing a grey knitted sweater that was unzipped and laying open across his broad chest and a lanyard with plastic-encased cards looped around his muscled neck. His pretty face looked annoyed the way a very fluffy kitten might look annoyed after being scruffed. Without quite meaning to, Ilya had let his eyes trace the wing of his dark hair, long enough to be pushed back from his forehead and behind his ears. “Da?” Ilya had said, exaggerating his accent. The guy’s mouth had flattened and he’d jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the automatic doors, which were plastered with a number of large stickers that explained in both English and French that neither loitering nor smoking ought to be occurring in their vicinity. “No English,” Ilya had said. The guy had rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he’d said. “Who cares if you compromise the care of the critically ill patients inside this building, eh?” This had gotten to Marleau, predictably; he’d elbowed Ilya in the side and whispered, “Maybe—?” Ilya had sucked pointedly on his cigarette and ignored Marleau. He had felt something zip up his spine, not dissimilar to the sensation he got in the milliseconds before a face off, when he knew that because he was faster and smarter and meaner he was going to win. He had casually strolled towards the disgruntled Canadian in his bright green scrubs, exaggerating his steps. He’d wanted the man to notice Ilya’s big frame in its expensive suit, the handmade leather dress shoes that were never scuffed because Ilya only ever wore them on game days, the diamond-encrusted tie pin that he’d bought himself to celebrate when he’d won the Calder.