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Ilya knows that the only things that truly belong to a person in this life are the thoughts in their head. Everything else can be taken away: home, family, money, even the body. But the thoughts in people’s heads cannot be taken. They can only be given away.
There are exactly two thoughts Ilya holds dear, that he will never give away.
The first is that sometimes he still feels sorry for himself. Like he does tonight, crunching through the slushy sidewalks of his neighborhood at 11pm on a Tuesday, whiny R&B piping through the one earbud still dangling from his left ear. He sees his own reflection in the dark glass front of a closed-up wine bar and thinks oh, look at this sad little man with a mama who killed herself and nobody left who loves him.
Ilya would love to go home. He’s freezing his balls off. The only restaurant still open is that Chinese place, and he can’t go back there after already loitering at a corner table for an hour and a half. But Captain Jamie Butler hadn’t texted him yet. He was presumably still fucking his side piece all up and down Ilya’s apartment.
Ilya doesn’t really understand how this arrangement has gone on for so long. Butler was the big dog on the team when Ilya joined - captain, over thirty, with a championship ring on his finger. During Ilya’s rookie season, they’d gone out to celebrate a home win over Montreal. Ilya was technically still too young to buy drinks in America, but Butler supplied him tequila shots and bottles of good champagne with the self-satisfied munificence of a mafia don.
At some point during the night it was just the two of them up at the bar, Ilya waiting on a drink and Butler studying his phone intently, face glowing blue with the light.
“I can tell you’re a trustworthy kid, Roz,” Butler had said.
“Yes,” Ilya said, because what else were you supposed to say to that? He prayed his captain wasn’t about to ask him to score anything illegal. Ilya didn’t have anyone he trusted for that in Boston yet.
Butler locked his phone. “You live by yourself?”
“Yes,” Ilya said.
“Nearby?” Butler said.
“Yes,” Ilya said. Now he just hoped Butler wasn’t trying to fuck him.
“If I were to ask to borrow your place for like an hour,” Butler had said. “Could I do that? I have a guest that I can’t entertain at home. If you catch my drift.”
Ilya did catch his drift. Butler was married with a wife and two kids. The idea of Butler’s jizz all over his sofa or bedsheets wasn’t super appealing, but at least Butler wasn’t trying to fuck Ilya himself, and the bartender was coming back with his drink (top shelf Don Julio), so Ilya figured he did owe the man something.
“Sure,” Ilya had said. “I will text code.”
And this is how Ilya wound up here, two years later, waiting for permission to go back to his own apartment. He used to find women to fuck whenever Butler used his place, just to have someone else’s bed to wait in, but Ilya lost his taste for that over time. He doesn’t like fucking at the same time Butler fucks. Fucking on Butler’s schedule. It’s even more undignified.
Ilya knows he’s really only one step removed from fucking the captain for favors. He’s always been able to count on fewer drills, later curfews, that sort of thing, especially if Butler had the apartment the night before.
When Ilya finally gets the all-clear to go home (to his own house!), he finds a note taped to his door from his neighbor, Esther. She’s some kind of doctor and works weird hours, and she’s passive-agressively requesting that his “frequent overnight guests” not slam the door. Ilya crumples the note in his fist and stalks inside. He’s being victimized by the entire universe. When he flops onto the couch with extra drama, something hard digs into his ass cheek.
“Motherfucker,” he says, and reaches underneath himself to pull out a bracelet of dark wood beads with an oddly fragrant smell. Maybe cedar. He drops it next to his keys so he can give it back to Butler tomorrow and wonders how much longer he can stand doing cleanup for a grown ass man.
Unfortunately, this has gone on too long for Ilya to be able to go tattle to HR. No, he’s in this until Butler retires. Which is ideally soon.
Ilya’s second secret thought is that he wants Shane Hollander. Competitively, emotionally, sexually - any way he can possibly get him.
When they met at 18, Shane Hollander had a shiny pink mouth like a girl and parents that probably tucked him into bed at night. Ilya had thought that he could, if he wanted, crush Shane in his hand like a glass ornament. At that age, Ilya already knew a lot of things: how to fuck, how to drink, how to act like he didn’t care. Shane Hollander only knew how to play hockey.
Ilya almost got him in the showers, that one time. Shane’s eyes had flicked low, dangerously low, and Ilya had thought with triumph, there you are, now I have you. But then virgin boy scout Shane Hollander had turned around and faced the wall for the rest of his shower, as if he really believed the moldy tile grout was more interesting than Ilya’s dick.
So Ilya never got to fuck Hollander. But he got to play hockey with Hollander. When Shane hit the ice, it was like the snap of a bowstring, all that prudish tension releasing and sending him through the defense like an arrow slicing across a battlefield. It was beautiful, and unfortunately for Ilya, very sexy. If he jerked it once or twice to replays of himself smashing Hollander into the boards, that was nobody’s business but his own.
Next practice, he tosses the bracelet at Butler, as casual as can be. Butler catches it out of the air and stares at it for a moment, baffled.
“Clean up after yourself,” Ilya says. “Please,” he adds, and smiles with every single one of his teeth.
“Oh,” Butler says. “Right.” He tucks it into his pocket.
Ilya and Shane’s stupid little awards show skit is the most fun Ilya’s had in ages. He gets to stand there shoulder to shoulder with Hollander in front of God and the entire MHL with no hockey pads, so when their elbows bump, he feels body heat. Meanwhile Hollander seethes quietly next to him, like an angry little chihuahua forced to wear a sweater for pictures. He smells clean, like shampoo but no cologne, even though Ilya knows for a fact he’s sponsored by Armani.
After, when Ilya ducks into the dingy backstage bathroom to pat the shine off his forehead, he finds Shane has beaten him there.
“Hollander,” he says, pleased that they are alone together.
“Fuck off, Rozanov,” Shane snarls. He’s hunched over the sink.
Ilya’s dreams of a nice conversation burst like bubblegum.
“Very rude, Hollander.”
“Why are you here? Get the fuck out.”
“This is a public bathroom. I need to pee.”
This seems to snap Shane out of it. His base Canadian instincts kick in. “Oh. Right. Sorry. I’ll just…”
Hollander scrubs at his face in a pathetic attempt to hide his red eyes.
“Something is not okay?” Ilya says.
“What do you care?”
“Believe it or not, I am a person sometimes,” Ilya says, bone dry.
He chances a step closer. Even under the flickering light of the old fluorescent bulbs with dead gnats trapped under the glass, Shane is so pretty.
“Right. Sorry, I just. Personal stuff.”
“Personal stuff,” Ilya repeats.
Shane nods jerkily. He’s locked up tight as a clam. Ilya studies his face. Shane studiously avoids eye contact, his sight line resting somewhere around Ilya’s nose.
“You should save your tears for when I beat you and win MVP.”
“Fuck off.” Shane’s eyes snap up to meet Ilya’s. “What if I get it?”
“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Ilya says, a little singsong.
The tiniest hint of a smile tugs at the corner of Shane’s mouth. Now that he knows he can make Shane smile tonight, Ilya wants more. He needs more.
“Listen. These award shows are boring, Shane Hollander, so so boring,” Ilya says. He leans in. “Please, I need you to help me.”
“Help you?”
“Yes, help make it not boring. I will make you a bet.”
“Yeah?” Hollander crosses his arms over his chest and actually continues to look Ilya in the eye.
“If I win, you go out tonight with me. You buy my drinks. We do what I want.”
“And what exactly do you want?” Shane says, frowning.
“When I win, then you find out, yes? That is the fun.”
“And what if I win?”
Ilya shrugs. “Then we do what you want. But first, you must win.”
“It says the pool is closed.”
Ilya looks over his shoulder to see Shane still hovering anxiously by the unlocked gate.
“Do I look like I care? Get over here.”
Ilya’s already scrunching his pants up his legs, getting ready to dip his feet in the pool water. Shane groans but obeys.
“Give,” Ilya says, stretching out his hand, and Shane passes him the full bottle of vodka he had hidden under his suit jacket.
“Now you sit, too, like this,” Ilya says. He pats the concrete next to him and kicks up a little splash in the water.
Shane bends to roll up the cuffs of his pants with knife straight folds. Ilya shamelessly stares at Shane’s ass as he does it. He cracks open the liquor bottle and takes a swig of vodka so strong it burns his throat clean.
“Ah,” he says. “Good stuff.”
Shane takes a careful seat next to Ilya, who hands him the bottle. Shane sips and makes a face.
“Ugh.”
“You Canadians. Terrible taste, even worse than Americans.”
“Did you just want me here with you so you can insult me?”
“Yes.”
A dry hot desert breeze ruffles Shane’s hair. In his eyes the entire Vegas skyline reflects back at Ilya, starry and rainbow.
“Is this all you wanted?” Shane says.
Yes.
“No,” Ilya says. He feels around in his pocket, pulls out a joint and a lighter. He puts the joint between his lips and holds the lighter out to Hollander, who stares at him stupidly.
“What?”
Ilya shakes the lighter. “You do for me. The MVP should not have to light his own joint.”
Shane rolls his eyes but takes the lighter.
“Your eyes will be stuck like that, one day,” Ilya says.
“Fuck off. It’ll be your fault,” Shane says.
Shane leans in, flicks the lighter on and holds it to the joint in Ilya’s mouth. It’s maybe the closest they’ve ever been without hitting each other. The flame catches and Ilya exhales smoke into the night sky. He turns to Shane and offers the joint, fully expecting Shane to splutter and turn it down. Instead, Shane accepts. He takes a delicate puff. Ilya waits to see if Shane will cough. He doesn’t.
“Oh? You’ve done this before?”
Shane passes the joint back. “A guy on my junior’s team made a water bottle bong once. It was so terrible. And he made us do the thing where you exhale into, like, a toilet paper tube with a dryer sheet over it, so his mom wouldn’t smell it.”
Ilya laughs, delighted at the mental picture of young Shane Hollander holding the shitty water bottle bong with his nose scrunched up in judgment.
“But you liked it?”
“It’s not so bad, honestly. Doesn’t make you burp or nauseous like alcohol.”
They pass the joint back and forth in peaceable silence.
“I really thought you were gonna make me buy you bottle service at a club or something,” Shane says eventually.
“I can go to the club and have bottle service any time I want,” Ilya says. “But Shane Hollander breaking rules, that is a treat.”
Shane flushes.
At that moment, the scrape of heavy doors swinging open and the jingle of keys.
“Ah, shit.”
Shane looks at Ilya, eyes wide. Then he seizes the joint from Ilya and tosses it in the pool just as the security guard rounds the corner.
“Good evening, officer,” Ilya says, throwing a salute at the security guard.
The security guard nods at them and continues on his way. Shane sits rigid and motionless next to Ilya until they hear the slam of the doors at the other side of the roof.
“Fuck me,” Shane says with deep feeling.
The half spent joint slowly sinks to the bottom of the pool. Ilya begins to shake with repressed laughter.
“You don’t worry about getting in trouble?”
“Is just weed, Hollander,” Ilya says.
“I know. But aren’t you like, on a visa? From Russia?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, and the reality of his family life re-manifests itself in his stomach with the weight of a stone.
“Do you miss Russia?”
“No,” Ilya says, sharper than he means to.
Hollander flinches.
“Sometimes the food,” Ilya adds lamely. “Nobody likes Russian food in America.”
“Oh,” Shane says. “I miss good Japanese food sometimes. In Montreal.”
“And they have good Japanese food in Ottawa?”
“They do at my mom’s house,” Shane says. “In Montreal I guess they have sushi restaurants. But it’s not…real food. Home food.”
“Mmm. I get it.”
The next season, Ilya’s getting on the plane to an away game in Montreal when he receives a text from an unknown number.
What hotel are you staying at in Montreal?
After another minute:
This is Shane Hollander.
Ilya can’t stop the grin that spreads from ear to ear as he types: why? u looking for a fun time?
For another minute, the grey typing dots appear and disappear.
Fuck off.
Just give me the address, please?
Ilya sends Shane the address and saves his number under “Holly 🍑🔥🥵”
That night, after the game, a delivery driver knocks on the door of his hotel room with an order from a local restaurant. Ilya opens the bag to find a carton full of pelmeni, still glossy and steaming, and a container of velvety dark soup.
“You have plans on Thursday night after the game, Roz?”
They’re in the locker room. Butler is standing too close to him, shirtless and annoying.
“Maybe. Why?”
“Look, I know this is really short notice, but can I borrow the place again?”
Ilya considers lying and saying he finally got a steady girlfriend, not that anyone would believe him.
“I can make it up to you,” Butler says. Ilya hates his stupid white veneers. “You know that Japanese place in town? The little grandma and grandpa joint where the waitlist takes forever?”
“Yes?”
Ilya has seen it. Homey, mom and pop, not omakase anything fancy like that.
“Yeah, they just got on the Michelin guide,” Butler says, evidently feeling encouraged by Ilya’s expression. “I have a reservation for two I could give you for that night.”
Ilya thinks of Shane at that Vegas rooftop pool, tentative and wistful.
“Okay.”
“Fuck yeah. You’re the man, Roz. I’ll forward it to you”
Ilya makes a face behind Butler’s back, but inside, he’s doing backflips.
When he gets to his car, he spends ten minutes in the front seat gnawing on his fingernails before opening up his texts. He drops a link to the restaurant’s Yelp page, then types: thursday night dinner? after game?
He immediately locks his phone and throws it face-down on the passenger seat, vowing not to check again for at least an hour, but when it buzzes again hardly a moment later he snatches it up.
Holly 🍑🔥🥵: Oh wow that looks amazing. Yes.
Ilya cranks his car stereo to max volume and scream-sings along with his “gym beast mode” playlist all the way home.
Ilya doesn’t get nervous before a game that’s anything less than a semifinal. This, he thinks, is his special gift, even more than actual hockey skills. Other guys have superstitions, meditations, songs, rigid warm up routines. He knew a guy once who paid a witch for an energy cleansing. Ilya doesn’t need any of those things. He just gets out there and plays.
Thursday morning, however, slaps him in the face. He’s fucking nervous.
Is anyone going to notice him and Shane together? If they do, is it going to look weird, maybe spark rumors? Or can they pass it off as simple sportsmanship? Will Shane care that he can’t pronounce anything right in Japanese? Does Shane think this is a date? Does Shane not think this is a date? Shit; what should Ilya wear? Probably not sportswear, but casual? Something that makes him look hot? Or something that makes him look approachable?
In the end it turns out not to matter, because when he gets to practice, there’s a message sitting in his phone.
Holly 🍑🔥🥵: I’m sorry but I can’t make it anymore, something came up. Really appreciate the invite though!
Shane skates up to him during warmups.
“Hi,” he says. “Sorry again about cancelling. It was really cool of you to invite me.”
Ilya grunts at him.
“Okay,” Shane says, twisting his fingers anxiously around his hockey stick like he’s an elementary schooler and not a future hall of famer. “Um. I’ll see you around. Around here, I mean. When the game starts.”
Jamie Butler chooses that moment to skate to a stop between them, spraying ice over their legs. “Roz. Hollander. Keeping it civil?”
“When am I not civil?” Ilya says, baring his teeth.
Butler laughs at him and skates away to the barriers. Just behind the glass, a blonde woman waits — Butler’s wife. She holds one of their sticky-faced toddlers in her arms. The toddler presses a hand to the plexiglass and Butler waves back.
Ilya turns back to Shane. Shane’s watching Butler and his sickeningly sweet little family photo moment. Ilya raps his stick on the ice once, impatient.
Shane startles and looks back at Ilya. “Good luck,” Shane says. He goes back to his team’s side.
Ilya plays like a man possessed. Strangely, so does Hollander.
These two are on fire tonight, they’re playing like it’s a finals game, a commentator says, and he’s not wrong.
Ilya’s willing to die on the rink tonight, especially if it means he gets to forget the way Shane’s got him feeling like a little boy left with no partner at the school dance. He doesn’t die, but he does win, not that Shane makes it easy.
When Ilya’s showered and dressed and done with the post game interviews, the embarrassment creeps in. People cannot read your mind, Ilyusha his mother had said to him a lifetime ago. It’s not Shane’s fault that Ilya’s never been stood up before. And maybe Shane didn’t know Ilya was thinking of this dinner as a…something.
So when Ilya spots Shane in the halls of the arena, he calls to him.
“Hollander!”
Shane stops, smiles when he sees that it’s Ilya. He’s wearing a wool sweater instead of the sponsored athletic gear he’s always in. Ilya wants to touch him more than anything.
“You were a beast out there. Good game,” Shane says. Whatever strange mood had taken him during the game has evaporated with the final horn.
“Always a good game when I win,” Ilya says.
“We made you work for it.”
“Just a little bit,” Ilya says. "Tiny bit. Warmup, really."
Shane smiles. Not the closed-lip one he does during press rounds, but one where his lips part a little.
“Your backhand, though,” Ilya says. “Weaker than usual.”
“Shut up,” Shane says. Then after a moment: “Yeah, actually. I’m still recovering from a thing.”
“What thing?”
“I got gashed by a skate during practice,” Shane says.
Ilya whistles. “Nasty.”
“It really wasn’t that bad, but then the stitches got infected. It’s better now but still a little harder to move it this way,” he says, gesturing like he’s about to hit a backhand.
“Show me,” Ilya says.
Shane rolls his eyes and pushes up his sleeve. Ilya takes his arm and inspects the fresh pink gouge on his forearm. He wonders what it would be like to kiss it, to hold Shane’s hand as he does so.
Then his eyes sweep lower, to Shane’s wrist, and he sees it. A familiar bracelet of dark wood beads.
He drops Shane’s arm like it burned him. It has burned him.
“Rozanov?” Shane’s voice echoes.
Ilya turns tail and runs.
Jamie Butler and Shane Hollander. For years. In his own bed. Butler running his disgusting old man hands all over Shane’s perfect body, and Ilya’s been helping him do it. He’s been a fucking clown, a fool.
He had thought Shane was a soft boy raised by soft parents. And it is true that Yuna Hollander is not Grigori Rozanov. Ilya has seen her at the games and the interviews, and has seen the way Yuna Hollander orbits her only son. She would sooner cut off her own hand than raise it against Shane, and if Shane got up one morning and asked to quit the whole hockey superstar thing, she would probably help him do it. But Shane would never ask to quit, because he was the son Yuna raised. Yuna put her son to the whetstone and ground his edges so sharp nobody could come close; Ilya had tried and gored himself.
He goes to the cavernously empty team gym and gets on the treadmill while still wearing jeans and a button down. He sets it to a punishing speed and runs in dead silence for nearly an hour, like he’s the fucking Terminator. After, he messages 5 girls on Instagram and ignores all of their responses. Then he sits in his car alone for an indeterminate length of time.
When his phone buzzes with Butler’s message, presumably the all clear, he can’t look or he’ll throw up. He wants to tie bricks to Butler’s ankles and throw him into the Boston Harbor. He wants a surgeon to cut out whatever defective part of him compels him to chase after Shane Hollander
He doesn’t want to go home but he does, anyway. He wonders where Butler has fucked Shane. His couch? His bed? His kitchen counter? He might burn the place down.
Ilya gets back to his apartment. From the doorway he sees a pale hand dangling off the side of the couch. For a moment he’s twelve again, and his stomach heaves. His brain departs his body. But then he comes back to himself, and with deep dread he enters the living area.
Just as he knew he would, Ilya finds a semi-conscious Shane Hollander slumped on the sofa.
“Hollander,” he says. “Hollander, wake up, what happened?”
“Hmm?” Shane says, and he opens his eyes. “Oh no,” Shane says when he sees Ilya, and his head lolls to the side.
Ilya’s hands search all over Shane’s cold face. His lovely red lips are now purple, going blue. His breaths are too few and far between, too shallow.
“Didn’t know it was your place,” Shane says, thick and slurred. “Didn’t know. Swear. Sorry.”
“What did you take? You take something?” Ilya says. Shane says nothing, so Ilya shakes him. Shane’s face crumples in pain. “Tell me you did not take anything, Hollander.”
“No, no,” Shane says. “I just…drank. Forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
Shane’s eyes flutter closed. Ilya slaps him.
“Ow.”
“No sleep,” Ilya says, because what if Shane falls asleep and doesn’t wake up? “What did you forget?”
“Meds,” Shane says, unhelpfully.
Ilya swears, closes his eyes for a moment, and sends a prayer up to his mother.
“Do not move,” he says. “Do not fall asleep. I will be back.”
Ilya goes next door to ring Esther’s doorbell. God must be real that night, because Esther answers within moments. She’s in her pajamas, hair wrapped up in a towel.
“Emergency,” Ilya says, before Esther can get a word in. “Please. Help me.”
Because Esther is a good person who in a just universe will go to heaven, she follows Ilya, no questions asked.
“He,” Ilya says, and he waves a hand at Shane. “He said he drank. And took medicine?”
Esther immediately goes to work checking Shane’s pulse and his breathing. “What medicine?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he spots the Metros duffle bag in the corner. He digs through, finds an orange pill bottle, and brings it back to Esther.
“Antibiotics,” she says, and sucks on her teeth. “Okay. Your friend here got a case of alcohol poisoning. Happens a lot faster when you mix the two.”
“Sorry,” Shane mumbles again.
“Stop saying sorry,” Ilya says, because he knows who really needs to say sorry.
He dials Butler.
“Roz? Hey, what’s going-“
“You leave Shane fucking Hollander to die in my apartment?”
“Fuck. What?”
“You leave him alone like this? His face is blue, fucking blue,” Ilya snarls.
“Look, I didn’t. What’s going on? Is he okay?” Butler asks, with about the level of concern someone might have for an acquaintance’s sick grandmother.
“He will be fine no thanks to you, fucking cunt.”
“Goddammit, I’m really sorry about this, Roz,” Butler says. A child wails in the background of the call. “Look; it’s a really bad time, could you do me a huge favor and handle this? I-“
“I do not want to do any favor for you. Fucking shit motherfucker,” Ilya says, because he’s too angry for creative language. “Get your own sex apartment for next time you fuck someone ten years younger than you then leave them alone to die.”
He hangs up.
Butler calls back. Ilya declines the call.
His phone starts buzzing with messages.
I’m sorry
Youre not gonna tell anyone right
Please dont tell anyone
If you tell it’s over for me
He’s fine right?
He silences his phone and turns back to where Esther is still checking over Shane, pulling a throw blanket over his shivering body.
“Does he need to go to the hospital?” Ilya asks.
Unfortunately, Shane hears this.
“No hospital,” Shane says, and with superhuman speed veers directly from the verge of unconsciousness into a hurricane-force panic attack. “No hospital; I can’t, they’ll know-“
“Mr. Hollander,” Esther says. “Shane, I need you to breathe. Can you do that for me?”
Tears stream down Shane’s face. “I can’t, can’t, can’t.”
“Yes you can,” Ilya says. “You have to, you can.”
He rubs Shane’s back forcefully.
“Fuck, I can’t,” Shane sobs, and then he abruptly stops. His eyes go wide.
“Hollander?”
Shane thrashes out of Ilya’s grip and tumbles to the floor.
“Hollander!”
Shane drags himself over the living room trash can and hurls violently, at length, like he’s exorcising the insides of his body.
Ilya must make a face because Esther says: “That’s a good thing, actually.”
“Does he need a hospital?”
Esther gives him a long look. “No,” she says, reluctant. “I think the worst is over. And he puked, so no stomach pump needed. But he needs hydration. And someone to keep an eye on him for the night. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Ilya says.
Esther leaves him with a couple bottles of Pedialyte and a stern warning to call her if anything happens.
“I won’t say anything,” she says at the door, looking weary as Ilya feels. The towel fell off her head at some point, and wet dark hair sticks to the back of her pajama shirt. “I know who he is, I know who you are. What I don’t know is what happened here tonight, but you need to get it together. For his sake. For everyone’s sake.”
“I will,” Ilya says, even though he has no idea where to even begin.
He starts by running a warm bath, because Shane’s still clammy and because he will feel even worse in the morning if he wakes up crusty with old sweat and vomit. He turns the lights off and strips Shane down to his briefs, which he leaves on for modesty, even though technically speaking they’ve been naked next to each other before, because it feels like crossing a line to take half-unconscious Shane’s dick out. Shane seems to have used the last of his energy on his panic attack; he’s awake, but only just, and is quiet through the whole ordeal.
Only when Ilya guides him into the bath does he speak.
“No,” Shane groans, and Ilya freezes.
“You want out?”
“Nooo,” he groans again. “Wet…underwear.”
Ilya rolls his eyes.
“I’m being a gentleman, Hollander.”
He knows that Shane is not well because he receives no pushback or insult for that statement.
Ilya bathes Shane. It’s a foreign act. He’s never done this for anyone, ever, nor has anyone done it for him since he was a child and his mother was still alive. He washes Shane’s face, indulging himself by running a finger down the perfect line of his nose and jaw. Moves down to his neck, shoulders, chest, then the legs. Skips Shane’s feet because he winces and twitches away when Ilya puts a light hand on the top of his foot.
When he’s done, he pats Shane down with a towel and leans him against the wall.
“I am going to turn around so you can take those off and put clean ones on,” he says slowly, like talking to a scared animal. “Don’t fall down.”
When Shane - agonizingly slowly and clumsily - manages to get a clean pair of boxers on, Ilya wraps one of Shane’s arms around his waist so he can walk him to the bed. He puts Shane on his side and tucks him in, puts a glass of water on the nightstand. Then Ilya makes himself a stack of pillows, so he’s lying half upright, and gets into the other side of the bed on top of the covers.
Shane starts snoring immediately. It takes Ilya much, much longer to fall asleep.
When Ilya wakes up again, the sun isn’t even out yet. Shane is still fast asleep. Some human color blooms in his face again, but he’s frowning and clenching his jaw. Most people look younger, more peaceful when asleep, but somehow not Shane. Ilya aches.
He makes himself some coffee, puts on some game tape to review, and waits.
At around noon, a soft thump of feet hitting the floor. Ilya goes to find Shane in the bedroom doorway, leaning onto the frame for support.
“Hollander,” he says.
“Uh. Good morning,” Shane says.
“It’s noon.”
“Right.” Shane looks at him, less a deer in the headlights and more a deer that has already been struck by the car.
“You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.”
“You need to drink,” Ilya says, and he goes to the kitchen. Shane shuffles after him.
In the kitchen, Shane screws up his face in pain.
“Something hurts?”
“The light,” he mutters.
Ilya draws the curtains shut. He slides a bottle of Pedialyte across the counter, and two Advil tablets.
“Take. And drink.”
Shane obeys. When half the bottle is gone, Ilya decides it’s time to rip off the bandaid.
“How much of last night do you remember?”
Shane stares down at the lip of the bottle.
“He left. I drank. I meant to get a cab after, maybe go to a bar, but…” he shudders. “Then I felt really bad really fast. I got cold. And then you were here, I think. And after that it’s black.”
“How could you do this?” It slips right out of Ilya’s mouth.
“Excuse me?” Shane says. “I didn’t know it was your place, okay, how was I supposed to know?”
Ilya scoffs. “I don’t care about that.”
“Oh, so it’s the cheating, that your captain is cheating with me?” Shane crushes the plastic bottle in his hand. He’s shaking. “Since when do you fucking care-“
“I don’t fucking care about cheating,” Ilya says loudly, cutting Shane off. “I care that you do this to yourself. You looked dead, did you know that? You were all, no color. Barely breathing. And for him? For that trash?”
“It was an accident,” Shane says, and that word, accident, slides between Ilya’s ribs like a knife. “And he’s your captain.”
“So what? My captain is nothing, he is shit!” Ilya says fiercely. “He has a wife and Shane Hollander and both he treats like trash.”
Shane swallows.
“Why did this happen, Hollander?” Ilya says, more quietly. “Why for so long?”
Shane’s eyes are fixed on the counter. He rubs at an invisible spot of dirt on the granite as he takes his time answering. “He wanted me. It felt good. And it wasn’t as scary as trying to find another...”
“Another man,” Ilya finishes.
“Yeah. He had something to lose, too, if people found out.” A pause. Then: “Do you care?” Shane says, an unacceptable amount of fear threading his tone.
“No,” Ilya says.
Shane stands there, still only in his boxers, weak and shaky from his near overdose, his worst secrets spilled like bloody guts and viscera all over the kitchen floor. Ilya hates it. He hates a version of Shane that has so little power.
“Sometimes it is the same for me,” Ilya offers. “I… like both.”
“Yeah?” Shane’s face is still, like the placid surface of a lake with a current churning underneath.
“Yes,” and then adds, because sometimes Shane needs things spelled out: “I will never tell.”
“Thank you,” Shane says, eyes shiny. He’s looking at Ilya like he’s some kind of savior, and it just won’t do.
“No,” he says. “No thank yous. Get dressed, Hollander. And eat. It will be a problem for me if you pass out again in my apartment.”
Shane’s curled up on the far end of Ilya’s couch, wrapped in a throw blanket and choking down some dry toast, when he freezes.
“Oh fuck. I missed my flight.”
“So find another one.”
Shane types furiously on his phone. Ilya does not raise a finger to help him.
“Next one to Montréal today is…fuck, in thirty minutes. I’ll never make it.”
“You want to fly like this anyway? You will throw up on your neighbor before plane even takes off.”
“The next one after isn’t until tomorrow. I can’t drive back like this.” Shane wrings his hands. “Fuck, I gotta find a hotel.”
“Hollander,” Ilya says. “Don’t be stupid. You can stay here.”
Shane hesitates. Ilya swoops in for the kill.
“My doctor neighbor told me to watch you. She will be so angry with me if she finds out I didn’t.”
“Okay,” Shane says. “Okay. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
Shane dozes on and off for the rest of the afternoon, still curled into the corner of the sofa. Ilya does his best to go about his normal business – a workout in the downstairs gym, a quick trip to the corner store, emails to his agent and manager he’s been ignoring forever.
When Ilya gets out of the shower that evening, clanking and thumping echoes in the hall. He turns the corner to find Shane elbow deep in his sink, busy at work scrubbing down his kitchen.
“What the hell are you doing, Hollander?”
Soap bubbles float in the air between them. Shane pushes a wet strand of hair back from his face with his wrist. “I know I put you through a lot of trouble last night and today. So I’m trying to uh. Pay you back.”
“Stop,” Ilya says. “You were not well, it happens. You would do the same for someone else, yes?”
“I would,” Shane says.
“Okay, then you understand. Now drop it.”
Ilya points. The sponge hits the bottom of the sink with a wet plop.
“Sit,” Ilya says. “I will order us food.”
“I, uh. Already did that,” Shane says.
“Oh, Hollander. You are insufferable,” Ilya says, with a theatrical sigh.
“Who taught you that word?”
“People say it to me a lot,” Ilya says.
“I don’t think you’re insufferable,” Shane says, dead serious. “You’re pretty sufferable, actually.”
Ilya bursts out laughing. “You should have been a poet, Hollander.”
The food arrives. Ilya sets the table even though normally he eats sitting on the rug in front of the TV like an uncivilized beast.
“If you couldn’t play hockey, what would you have played?” Shane asks, in between neat little sips of his soup.
“Rugby,” Ilya says. “I like the, what is the word? Intensity? American football, they wear all these pads like little babies, but in rugby they play like men.”
“American football actually has a way higher rate of concussions than rugby-“
Shane’s phone buzzes on the table. Ilya looks down and sees a notification from Jamie, no last name.
“You should not answer,” Ilya says.
Like a gust of wind blowing at window shutters, Shane’s face slams shut. “Don’t tell me what I should do. It’s not your problem.”
“You do it in my house, on my bed. So I think it has actually been my fucking problem for years now.”
“I said I was sorry, and I won’t do it here again.”
“You should not do it again anywhere.”
“And why not?” Shane pushes himself back from the table and stands.
“Because he’s bad for you,” Ilya says, and he surges to his feet.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Ilya wants to shake Hollander until his teeth rattle.
“You are not stupid, Hollander, how do you not see this? He is a terrible man and he makes you treat yourself like shit.”
Shane fists his hands at his side. “Oh, fuck you. ‘Treat myself like shit’? I got too drunk once.”
“You want to lie to me and say that was the only time?”
“Why do you even care who I see? Why does this bother you so much?”
“Because why him and not me?” Ilya shouts, before actually, physically slapping a hand over his mouth like a sitcom actor.
It’s as if someone hit the pause button on Shane Hollander. He stares at Ilya, utterly blank.
“Forget I said that,” Ilya says, and is proud to find that his voice is flat again.
Shane’s eyes flare with sudden anger like a struck match thrown into an oil slick.
“No. No, you don’t get to say that and then take it back. What the fuck do you mean?”
“God, Hollander. You know what I fucking mean.” Ilya’s volume ticks back up. “Don’t make this hard.”
“Fuck you, I don’t know. Tell me what the fuck you mean!”
Shane advances until he’s nearly nose to nose with Ilya. Ilya itches all over. He would like desperately to climb out of his own skin, or to hit something. But there’s nothing to hit, only Shane.
Ilya’s hands move faster than his brain. He finds himself with a palm pressed on each side of Shane’s face, fingers tangling into his hair. Shane’s eyelashes are wet.
“Tell me,” Shane hisses.
Ilya pulls Shane’s face forward and kisses him roughly, all teeth and tongue. Blood pounds in his ears. Distantly he hears Hollander make a noise from somewhere deep in his throat, unable to speak while Ilya bites his bottom lip. It hits like a punch to the solar plexus. He wrenches himself away.
“Fuck, I’m sorry-”
But Shane is on him again instantly, tongue pushing into Ilya’s mouth. Ilya stumbles a little under the insistent weight of him.
“God,” Shane moans into his mouth.
Ilya is lost underneath the enormity of everything he’s ever wanted happening so suddenly.
“Slow,” he says, and presses Hollander against the wall, breaking the kiss.
Hollander looks at him with those big stupid eyes, betrayed and still needy. His lips are cherry red.
“I thought-“
“Do not think,” Ilya says.
He slides his hands up under Shane’s shirt, careful not to break eye contact. Ilya sweeps over the flat plane of Hollander’s stomach, up the bones of his rib cage, and feels the slight tremor that wracks Shane’s body under his touch. Shane runs hot under his skin, he finds. He explores more, cupping a hand below the swell of Shane’s pec as if it were a woman’s breast. When he sweeps a gentle thumb across Shane’s nipple, still underneath the shirt, Shane jolts as if he’d pinched it.
“You like?” he says.
Shane nods helplessly.
Ilya pulls Shane’s shirt up and over his head, Shane’s body shifting easily to let him do it. Then he drops his head to the curve where Shane’s neck meets his shoulder and breathes deep, before latching onto the delicate skin there and sucking.
Shane makes some unintelligible noise and hooks a leg over the back of Ilya’s thigh, dragging his whole body even closer.
“Do you know how long I've wanted this?” Ilya asks the warm darkness of Shane’s neck.
Shane shakes his head.
“Since the day I saw you. Fuck, you have made me crazy.”
“Sorry.”
Ilya pulls his head back in amused astonishment. “Sorry? You are saying ‘sorry’?”
Shane’s ears and neck are red with embarrassment. He’s hard underneath his sweatpants. He actually closes his eyes.
For the first time in a long while, Ilya feels the ground steady and even beneath his feet.
“Fuck, I - don’t look at me,” Shane says.
Ilya grabs at Shane’s bulge and squeezes. Shane’s eyes fly open.
“I will look at you if I want, Hollander,” he says. “You are acting like no one has ever done this to you before.”
“Not true,” Shane mumbles.
“No,” Ilya agrees, and a lick of terrible, sour jealousy burns in his throat again. “You do this with Butler. In my house.” He leans in, whispers right into Shane’s ear: “But he is bad at it, I think. Or you would not be acting like this, just from a little touch.”
He brushes just the tips of his index and middle fingers to Shane’s Adam’s apple and feels Shane swallow. The other hand, the hand that still rests on Shane’s flank, Ilya slides down to thumb at the vee of his hip. It’s like holding a baby bird in his hands; he wonders how exactly the universe created something so complicated and perfect, and why he’s the one allowed to hold it.
Ilya tugs Shane’s sweatpants and boxers down in one go, leaving him naked at last and shivering against the wall. He can see it all, all the signs that Shane is a real living breathing person under his hands: the hair at his groin, the silvery stretch marks at his hips, the shallow expansion of his abdomen with every breath.
Shane reaches for Ilya’s biceps and grips so tight the skin there goes white from the strength of his hands. His hips cant forward, searching for touch and friction.
“Roz, please.”
“Not here,” Ilya says.
Not up against the wall like a sweaty hookup in a nightclub bathroom. Butler was a failure at this, clearly. Ilya’s going to do it right.
“Come on,” Ilya says. He takes Shane’s hand and runs a finger over the scarred knuckles and rough palms. He tugs him forward, away from the wall. “With me.”
He puts a possessive hand on the nape of Shane’s neck and pushes Shane ahead of him, steering him toward the bedroom. Ilya lets himself enjoy the sight of Shane, naked, moving dreamlike through the hall of his apartment.
When they get to his room, Shane sits down on the edge of the bed, hands resting on his knees, and looks up at Ilya expectantly. A wave of fondness slams into Ilya, the current nearly pulling him under. Shane watches Ilya strip off his own clothes with rapt attention. Ilya isn’t stupid. He knows he’s an attractive man. But he’s never felt closer to being a Greek god than this, with Shane Hollander watching him get naked like the sight is rearranging his brain cells.
He steps into the gap between Shane’s legs with a vague idea of maybe pushing him to the bed and crawling over him, stealing some more kisses. But before he can, Shane grabs Ilya by the back of his thighs and pulls him close, burying his face into the crease between his thigh and groin and taking a deep, shaky breath.
“Fucking hell, Hollander,” Ilya says.
Shane only inhales deeper and closes his eyes, rubbing his nose in.
“You like it that much? You like the smell of my cock?”
“I…fuck,” Shane says, his voice cracking in a way Ilya’s never heard from him before. “I do.”
And then he takes Ilya into his mouth. Shane Hollander, as it turns out, sucks cock like a champ. Ilya should have expected this. Shane is the best at everything he does, why should he be any different in bed? Ilya feels like his knees have liquified, or maybe like Shane is sucking out through Ilya’s dick all of his will to do literally anything else with his life. Only then it occurs to Ilya - if Shane’s mouth is this good, what about his ass?
“Hollander,” he says. He taps at Shane’s jaw. “Shane.”
Only at the sound of his first name does Shane stop and look up at Ilya.
“I want to fuck you,” he says. “Do you want me to fuck you?”
Shane pulls his mouth off Ilya’s dick with a slurp. Clean, dignified Shane Hollander doesn’t even bother to wipe the spit all over his chin. “Yes,” he says, all breathy.
“Do you?” Ilya says.
“Yes, God, I do.”
“I don’t know. Are you sure? I think maybe you want me to finish here, on your face.” He gives his own dick a tug, just to wind Shane up.
“No, no, please,” Shane says. “Please fuck me, I need it, I need you to fuck me.”
“Since you ask me so nicely, then,” Ilya says, as if he’s not in imminent danger of his own heart rate shooting past zone 5 and then dropping dead.
He manhandles Shane onto the bed and puts him on his back. Shane claws his fingers into Ilya’s sheets like he’s afraid of someone bodily dragging him out of the bed.
“Relax,” he says. He means to tease, but it comes out soothing. “I will give you what you need.”
When he presses a lubed finger to Shane’s rim, Shane gasps and his thighs clamp together, crushing Ilya’s hand.
“No,” Ilya scolds. He pulls Shane’s legs back apart by the knees. “You do that again, I cannot fuck you. Not with broken fingers.”
“Sorry,” Shane says. “It’s just. A lot.”
Ilya shushes him. “I know. I will take care.”
He shifts between Shane’s legs, which have butterflied around him. One leg, he pins flat to the bed with a firm hand on the thigh. The other, he slings over his shoulder, holding Shane open. On a whim he drops a little kiss to the inside of Shane’s calf before he sets to work fingering him. Ilya’s not really a size fetishist but it does something for him, to see his own thick fingers push into Shane’s tight, silky hole.
Soon enough, Shane’s writhing underneath his hands.
“Please, please, I’m ready. Now.”
“Cockslut,” Ilya says, full of affection, and Shane flushes a pleasing shade of pink.
When he turns Shane over onto elbows and knees, he feels the coil of tension in Shane’s lats.
“I will fit,” he says. He strokes up between Shane’s shoulder blades. “I promise.”
“I know,” Shane says.
Shane trembles with nerves, yet still does not hesitate to expose the most delicate part of himself to Ilya, even though Ilya knows that he has never had a reputation for kindness or tenderness. Butler was presented with the same Shane Hollander and chose to act without care. Ilya cannot fathom it.
Ilya pushes in. If he were to die right then and there it would be a glorious death, worthy of the halls of Valhalla. He has a job to do, though. He begins to fuck Shane with slow, deep thrusts.
“Holy shit,” Shane gasps, his breath punched out in time with the thrusts. “Harder, harder, please.”
“Greedy bitch,” Ilya says, and he delivers. He pushes Shane’s face into the mattress, and Shane moans, choked off and wet, as Ilya pounds him. Ilya’s never fucked anyone who could take it like Shane does, back muscles rippling beautifully.
“You love this,” Ilya says, chest heaving with triumph.
“Oh fuck, yeah, I love it.”
Abruptly, Ilya pulls out.
“What-“
“Oh your back,” he says, impatient. “I want to see.”
Shane turns over. When Ilya lines his dick up, this time he gets to see Shane’s eyes roll back into his head as he pushes through to the core of him. Shane’s collarbone glistens with sweat. His tits bounce with every wet, filthy slap of Ilya’s hips to his ass.
Ilya takes a hold of Shane’s jaw, because Shane has always had issues with eye contact, and makes Shane look at him.
“Look at me,” he says. “Who is fucking you?”
“You.”
“Who am I?”
“Ilya,” Shane gasps out. “Ilya Rozanov.”
“Fuck, good,” Ilya says. “Now you never think of him again. Next time you feel empty,” Ilya says, and it’s getting harder and harder to talk, but he needs Shane to hear this. “Next time you touch yourself, you only think of how I fuck you.”
Silvery tears gather in the corner of Shane’s eyes. He’s entirely nonverbal now, only able to moan. Ilya releases Shane’s jaw and collapses onto Shane in an open mouthed kiss, saliva trailing between their tongues. He grinds into Shane, and the friction of his stomach on Shane’s dick is enough to do it. Shane comes between them, back arching up into Ilya spectacularly. With a few more frantic, messy thrusts, Ilya follows.
Ilya is, admittedly, usually the type of guy to immediately roll off and pull out. But he makes out with Shane for a while after as his dick softens, their kisses cooling off into something sweet. When he does finally pull out and tie off the condom, Shane is lax and sleepy.
Later, when the sheets are changed and both of them are showered, they get back in bed together. Shane drapes himself against Ilya’s back, his lap perfectly fitting against Ilya’s ass. He massages his fingertips through Ilya’s curls as they both lie and breathe together.
“I’m not stupid. I never thought he would leave his wife or anything,” Shane says, whisper quiet, to the back of Ilya’s head. “I didn’t want that. I just wanted him to kiss me.”
I will kiss you, once for every time you wanted and he didn’t give to you, and then twice again just because, Ilya thinks.
Shane leaves the next morning. Ilya has no idea what happens next. This whole time with Shane Hollander, he’s been like a dog chasing a car. And then he caught the car and realized, what the hell does a dog do with a car?
For a couple weeks, he doesn’t hear from Shane.
Then one morning in the locker room, Jamie Butler gets up in front of the team and tells them that this season will be his last season, and that he’s retiring to ‘focus on his family’. And with that, the wheel turns. Ilya knows he’s next up for the captainship, and he intends to do that better than Butler too.
Marleau, who has always been a gossip queen, leans in close to Ilya.
“I heard his wife just moved out. Think she found out he was cheating,” he says in an undertone.
After practice, a text from Shane waits for him: Thank you for everything.
In early June, just after the season has ended, he gets another text from Shane: Are you going to be in Boston this Friday? I’ll be in town.
Ilya tells him yes and tries not to get his hopes up. When Friday evening comes around and he hasn’t heard anything else from Shane, he goes to his kitchen to crack open a bottle of liquor and mope alone. Maybe he’ll pop an edible too, so he can really obliterate his brain and drool in front of the TV for the rest of the night.
A knock at the door interrupts him.
Ilya opens it to find Shane Hollander with a bag of takeout Japanese food in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other.
“Hi,” Shane says. The summer sun has toasted his freckles cheeks a rosy brown.
“Hi,” Ilya says. He blinks, checking his eyes. “You brought me flowers?”
He looks at the velvety white starbursts of petals, a delicate dusting of yellow pollen at their centers.
“Uh, yeah,” Shane says. He shuffles his weight from foot to foot. “I just thought they looked nice. But if you don’t like that’s fine. I’m really sorry I bothered. I’ll just-“
“Shane,” Ilya says. “I like the flowers.”
“Oh. Good.” Shane bites his lower lip.
“Did you come from Montreal just to stand there and be nervous? Or are you going to come inside?”
Shane smiles at him then, bright and open. And he crosses the threshold into the apartment.