Chapter Text
Spring 2016
Frankly, Ilya is shocked the door code still works.
He's battered, broken in places he didn't realized he had bones, and worst of all, he's spent the last twenty minutes stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic enduring a taxi driver's snide comments about his apparent lack of French fluency. ("No, I don't speak French." "No, not even 'merci' or 'de rien.'" "Yes, I guess these ones I know now." "No, I'm not going to say them again.") Christ. Isn't Montreal a bilingual fucking city? The psychological warfare of it all was nearly as painful as the almost-but-not-quite shoulder tear he'd earned getting smashed into the boards. At least in Boston, when they swear at you, it's more punctuation than it is any real indicator of feeling. Here, when balding old men start muttering in québécois Ilya spends half the time wondering if they're casting some sort of ancient Acadian curse.
He forces himself to wait for the cab's taillights to disappear around the corner before starting his walk towards his destination: a squat, three-story condo nestled in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal. Just as in previous visits, he'd asked to be dropped off a few blocks away, always in a different spot. The inconvenience of this routine was largely to ease Hollander's paranoia, though Ilya had to admit there was some merit to it. It's not like he's Beyoncé — most people need to hear his first and last name to have any idea of who the fuck he is. And sure, the average Montrealer isn't likely to recognize him with all his teeth and in the absence of a helmet — there were plenty of curly-haired, blonde, broad-shouldered men he could be mistaken for. Even so, he wasn't any more willing to risk being recognized slinking into Shane Hollander's apartment than Hollander would be himself. They both had far too much to lose.
Going tonight was a particularly risky choice, after Montreal's game five series-clincher of the conference finals. He's donned the most nondescript outfit he could muster — black jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a baseball cap for covertly pulling over his eyes, peering around corners like he's playing hide and seek with the entire fucking city. The cab had passed at least ten impromptu street parties. Even now, he can still hear the hollers of "Olé! Olé! Olé!" echoing down the streets. Montreal's victory brought the Voyageurs one step closer to their path of a back-to-back Cup victory, and brought Hollander one step closer to cementing his legacy as one of the greatest to ever play the game. All the more poetic, to trample over Rozanov's Boston Bears on the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.
Whatever. The fact that Boston even managed to take a game from Montreal was impressive enough. They'd barely skirted into the playoffs on a wildcard, and had played two vicious series to the full seven before this one. Their roster had been riddled with injuries all season. Meanwhile, Montreal had swept their first round, and played their second round to five as well. Playoffs are a marathon, unless you're Hollander's Voyageurs — then they're more of a light jog on your way to the jewelry store to pick up a few rings. At least Ilya had done what he could to avoid the humiliation of a sweep.
The rule has always been: no fucking during the playoffs. It was a simple rule, and one that had served them both well. They were fucking professionals — in every sense of the term — not so stupid as to let their hookups get in the way of winning games, but also, committed to being as discreet as their secret necessitated them to be. And while Hollander loved his rules, Ilya was fond of loopholes, relishing the creativity they required of him. Seeing as he was no longer in the playoffs, surely that meant the fucking rules — in every sense of the term — could be re-negotiated.
Which brings him to: the door code.
He looks down the alleyway in both directions before keying it in. The Code had been reluctantly gifted to him the one time he'd beaten Hollander here last year; one of Ilya's more brilliant suggestions to stave off Hollander's panic attack of people potentially spotting him waiting outside. There's no reason to expect he'd changed it, Ilya reasons, muttering the little jingle in Russian he'd made up to remember it — "Seven six nine two six six eiiiiight," — but he still manages a small quirk of a smile at the sound of the latch unlocking.
There is a chance, he thinks, letting the alleyway door close behind him carefully, that Hollander isn't even here, so he takes a second before entering the building to drop the smile — no sense in getting his hopes up. He'd texted shortly after the game asking to meet up — sure you won but you didn't score. can come over and we fix this embarrassment for you — and sure, Hollander had ignored him, but that didn't necessarily mean he wasn't interested or available. Ilya spent the drive over forming the argument in his head for how he'll convince Hollander to ride him — Ilya wants to put his mouth on him and his tongue in him, no question, but maybe Hollander could sit on his face for that part as well. Goading would likely end up being his main strategy of attack — it's rarely failed him in the past where Hollander was concerned. "Is okay, you choked in the second period. Maybe tonight you let me do the choking," he tries out loud, then shakes his head. Too straightforward for Hollander's taste. "Handled a stick all night but couldn't finish? Have another stick you could try." No, far too cheesy. Fuck. Marly's terrible pick-up lines were rubbing off on him.
It doesn't matter. His stupid lines aren't what gets him through the door with Hollander anyway. That's what the mind-blowing sex is for. Sure, his ribs are a little too bruised (possibly a little broken, but he didn't owe the team medic a full physical for a few days yet) to put in too much of the work this evening, but that wouldn't be a significant detriment. Surely Hollander's playoff regimen has him wound tight enough that he'll be open to carrying more than his fair share in the spirit of getting fucked.
He takes the stairs slowly (why does every movement involve his ribcage? The human body is fucking useless), finally arriving at the door to Hollander's secret sex condo. He hates when Ilya calls it that, but nothing he says can convince Ilya that it wasn't purchased exclusively for the sole purpose of keeping their hookups covert — not, as Hollander tried to delude himself into believing, as a legitimate real estate investment. He settles himself with a slow inhale and exhale, and knocks twice.
Nothing.
He can still hear the post-win block party going strong a few streets over, and his frown deepens — he hates their fucking joy. Ilya purses his lips, leaning against the wall now as he fishes his phone out from his pocket. No response by text. He hesitates, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. Double texting goes against all of the rules he's established for himself in his dealings with Hollander. It betrays far too much eagerness. Hollander is probably out celebrating — no, never mind, he'd never be so exciting as to risk jinxing the rest of the finals run. So, not celebrating, but sleeping, maybe. Rejuvenating in his cryo chamber. Meditating so hard he floated up into outer space…
He hits send anyway.
think coming will jinx your chance at the stanley?
There. Nonchalant, and made his interest entirely deniable as long as it wasn't interrogated too closely. He grimaces a bit as he shifts against the wall. It's late — just a couple minutes past midnight. Could Hollander be asleep already? Surely even he isn't so boring. It would be a shame, not being able to take advantage of this one last hookup of the season on one of the few nights Ilya doesn't have curfew to deal with.
His phone buzzes in his hand.
sorry, can't tonight.
Well. Unsurprising, if a little (monumentally) disappointing. The image that had been forming in his mind's eye fizzles out at the text — of Hollander opening the door, lips slightly parted, eyes screwed up in dismay at the sight of Ilya, fists clenched to prevent himself from reaching out until Ilya had his hands on him, and then the tension would slowly spill out, rippling from the point of contact of Ilya's hand on Hollander's pulse point…
He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, considering a response, before shaking his head, deciding against it. Nothing he can come up has the indifference the moment calls for. Ilya sighs, pushing himself off the wall, and turns to begin the trek back down to street level.
Behind him, on the other side of the door, he hears a loud, clattering crash.
Ilya freezes. He turns on his heel, confirming the unit number is, indeed, Hollander's (of course it is, no one else lives in this fucking building, that's the whole point). He strains to hear anything further through the door, waiting a beat, then another, before another clang echoes through.
Someone is robbing Shane Hollander's secret sex condo.
Ilya's mind races. Should he call the police? Call Hollander? He struggles to remember if Hollander keeps anything of value in that apartment, but apart from his eighty-five throw pillows and his inexplicable coffee table books (Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, Hell in Japanese Art, and a new one he'd spotted on his last visit: Soviet Bus Stops), he can't think of anything that Hollander would keep in there worth stealing. Still, Ilya grapples with the surge of annoyance and possessiveness that grips him in equal measure — sure, this is a nondescript, seemingly abandoned building for Hollander's stowed away secrets, but until a few moments ago, Ilya had been sure he'd been the only one privileged to be inside.
you are being robbed. He sends the text before he can second guess himself. will deal with it, don't worry.
Never mind that this, of course, reveals that Ilya has made the trek to Hollander's condo without confirmation that Hollander was even interested in seeing him. There were more important things at stake — like saving lives and exacting vigilante justice. They'd have to strike him dead before they made out with Hollander's twelve-pack of ginger ale.
His phone buzzes in his hand. Jane is calling.
His gaze narrows as he picks up, keeping his eyes trained on the door. "Someone is in your condo," he whispers into the phone. "Hear crashing noises."
"Yeah, I know," Hollander's voice comes through clear over the phone. "It's me."
Ilya does a double take. "What? You are here?"
"Why are you here?" Hollander snaps. Through the door, and delayed through the phone like a strange reverb, Ilya hears another crash.
"What the fuck are you doing in there?" Ilya demands. "Practicing slap shots?"
"I'm fine— fuck! Stop that!" It takes a second for Ilya to realize that the exclamation isn't being directed at him. Whatever Hollander sounds like, 'fine' hardly seems like an apt descriptor. Ilya hears scuffling on the other end of the line, Hollander's voice momentarily echoey and tinny, before it returns to the phone. "Go away, Rozanov."
Ilya glares at the door. "Someone is in there with you?" he demands.
"What? No," Hollander shoots back, his voice skipping an octave. Another crash.
He really is the worst fucking liar Ilya's ever met. Thank God the league is full of idiots who never thought to ask the obvious direct question, Hollander, is it true you've been fucking your rival in secret for the last seven years? He'd say no in that same, pitchy, breathy voice and give the whole damn thing away. "Well whoever is in there with you knows I'm out here, so I should get to know who's there too."
"There's no one— ow! Fuck. There's no one here, Rozanov."
"Why the fuck are you lying to me?" Ilya demands. "Let me in."
"Go away."
"If you do not let me in I will scream," Ilya says finally in a huff. "I'll go outside and yell that the Voyageurs are overrated and couldn't even convert on the power play against team with three starters on IR."
Hollander deigns to give no response; for a moment, all Ilya hears are the continued muffled sounds of whatever skirmish was happening on the other side of the door. The tried and true strategy of goading had finally failed him.
Fine. Fucking fine. Desperate times call for desperate measures. He presses his phone to his shoulder with his ear to free up his hands, digging into his pockets for the pack of cigarettes he'd snagged on his way out of the hotel. "And I'll smoke indoors."
"Rozanov, come on," Hollander says immediately, returning back to wherever he's put down the phone. God, he was so predictable. Not even an active apartment brawl could prevent Hollander from whining at Ilya about his bad decisions. "There's no windows to air the smell out there."
"Then let me in to where the windows are," he says simply. "Getting lighter now. Will give you to count of three."
"You are a fucking child."
"One…" he starts, holding the cigarette between his teeth, "Two…" the word comes out muffled, his lips sticking uncomfortably to the rolling paper — he should've wet his lips first. "Thr—"
The door lock clicks as the call disconnects. Ilya grins, cigarette still hanging from his teeth, victorious, as the door opens slightly, held partially shut by a chain.
Hollander's dark, furrowed brow appears through the crack of the open door, his single eye meeting Ilya's. "You need to leave." Even as he says it, the dark pupil of his single visible eye keeps flicking somewhere off to the side, crinkling the constellation of freckles smattered across his cheek.
The cigarette is still in his teeth. Another crash, louder now without the door to dampen the sound, echoes through the empty stairwell. Ilya's grin drops, giving way, in spite himself, to genuine concern. "You have a wild animal in there or something?"
"Or something," Hollander says hurriedly, shifting slightly out of the door frame. "Look, just trust me, no one's here, no one knows you were here, I just… I have to deal with—"
It's at this precise moment that Ilya finally spots, through the gap the chain allows, in the wedge of light spilling in from the hallway, the something in question.
It is low to the ground, a sickly blue-green colour, oddly leathery, barely the size of an American football. It is gnawing — with great commitment — on what appears to be a pair of reading glasses. It has a tail. It has — Ilya goes slightly faint at the realization — wings, folded against its back like a wet umbrella, ruffling them out as it tries to close its mouth around the end of the glasses frame. It lifts its head, and, apparently realizing it has an audience, turns its neck towards the door. Two enormous yellow eyes — comically large for its otherwise small frame — blink once in his direction.
The cigarette falls out of Ilya's mouth.
He's imagining it, of course. It's not real. A prank. An enthralling, utterly indecipherable trick of the light.
Hollander's face reappears in the frame of the door, filling his field of view. "You can see it?" he asks urgently.
The last load-bearing wall of Ilya's denial comes crashing down. So, not a figment of his imagination. "Of course I can fucking see it." Ilya's voice arrives from very far away. "What the fuck is it?"
Hollander shifts again, looking back, and Ilya sees the thing release the glasses, scramble back, then, without pausing for even a second, pounce. He hears the crack of the lenses under the weight of the creature. An evasive prey indeed.
Neither of them says anything, as Hollander watches Ilya watch the creature. It makes a sort-of grated chirping noise, a bright crackle in the back of its throat, and Ilya's eyes widen as a thin curl of smoke rises from its nostrils and dissolves in the air. He picks up again on the faint noise of street celebration from outside, remembering suddenly that the whole city is drunk on victory, crowds of people already revelling in anticipation of their imminent, impossible, last-pulled-off-in-the-90s, back-to-back Stanley Cup Victory. Little did they know that a far greater impossibility was stashed away in Hollander's secret condo.
The door abruptly shuts, and Ilya distantly hears the chain slide off before it cracks open again, this time pulling wide. Hollander stands at the entryway, haggard, a thin, red scratch along his temple, holding a bag of ice in his left hand.
The creature has snapped the glasses in half, taking half its spoils with it as it rolls onto its back.
"You'd better come inside," Shane says. The door closes behind him as Ilya is swallowed by the threshold, to reclaim his place as the first of Hollander's prodigal secrets, returning to its cage.
"You really can see it?" Hollander asks again insistently, once Ilya's inside.
Ilya's eyes haven't left the creature since he walked in. He tracks it as it waddles across the room, having now abandoned the glasses (whose glasses were they, even? Not Hollander's, surely) in favour of a disembowelled coffee table book. The half-torn, slightly singed pages of Hell in Japanese Art are scattered all over the living room. The black leather couch is scratched to shit. One of the lamps in the room keeps flickering on and off; Ilya's gaze follows the path down to the cord plugging it into the wall to find it half chewed through. Another smaller lamp — one that used to sit on the small end table by the couch, has shattered on the floor, broken pieces of ceramic gathered up unceremoniously in a pile. A broom is propped up on the wall nearby.
"What am I seeing, exactly?" Ilya asks by way of answer. The creature is dragging its wings against the floor. They're strangely segmented, like an insect's, thicker, more opaque, but still allowing the faintest bit of light to filter through, casting strange, elongated shadows on the floor, with a minuscule, curved talon protruding from the wing tips.
"I don't know," Hollander says, wringing his hands together. His eyes keep darting between Ilya and the thing. "I just came home and it was," he gestures at the creature. "This antique statue my designer had gotten me — it was all cracked and there was this," he shudders visibly, "goop and shit everywhere and it was crawling over the floor—"
"Like it hatched?" Ilya asks in disbelief, rounding on Hollander. "Your antique was flying lizard egg?"
"It was supposed to be abstract," he says meekly, retreating into his shoulders, pulled all the way up to his ears. "I don't know, it was this spherical, marble — well, I thought it was marble, obviously it was something else—"
"So call the— fuck. The zoo? Or, animal catchers? You have these here, yes?"
"I did!" Hollander insists, immediately on the defensive. "Obviously I called fucking animal control." Ilya cocks an eyebrow at him — he's staring back at Ilya like he's the one saying nonsensical garbage when Hollander's the one talking about creatures hatching out of abstract art. "They came and looked right at it—" he gestures back at the creature, currently in the process of attempting to unhinge its jaw to chew on the mahogany of the couch leg, "— and they couldn't see it!"
Ilya shakes his head, thoroughly confused, for reasons that had nothing to do with his semi-limited grasp of the English language. "What?"
"They saw the mess," Hollander says, running his hand through his hair. It stays stuck, ends pointing every which way. "But not…" he hesitates, nodding his head at the creature instead, as though worried it might understand him. "They asked me to describe what I'd seen while it chewed my shoes two feet away."
"They didn't… hear it?" Ilya asks. On cue, the creature makes a sharp hacking sound, once, twice, then sneezes with such a force that it blows itself a few inches back, smoke shooting out from its nose.
Shane gives Ilya a pained look. "You don't believe me."
"This is making no sense," Ilya says, the absurdity of the situation giving way to something far more comforting and familiar: arguing with Hollander. "How can they not see it? Is right there."
"I don't fucking know!" he snaps for the third time in as many minutes. "They wrote it up as a break-in. Said it was probably a raccoon or something. One of them said I should call a contractor."
"So you brought it here?"
"I couldn't just release it outside!" Hollander insists. "I have no fucking clue what that thing is. What if it's an environmental hazard?"
Ilya isn't entirely sure what those words mean, but he's pretty good at gathering the essence from context, and just gestures to the carnage around them instead.
"Shut up." Hollander's cheeks tinge bright red. "Obviously I know it's… I mean, what if it starts eating peoples' pets or something. Or, I don't know, local wildlife. Or what if it gets hurt?"
"Oh we worry about its health now?" Ilya asks, watching Hollander visibly wince as it sinks its teeth into one of his decorative pillows.
"It's… look, I don't know. I don't know, okay? I don't fucking know. I just needed to get it out of my place. I wasn't really thinking, I just… shoved it in this bag," he nudges a torn apart duffel by the entryway. "I was going to leave it outside, but…"
Ilya follows Hollander's gaze back to the creature, who seems to have caught on that it is the subject of discussion. Even surrounded by its own chaos, it has an almost wretched, pathetic quality to it, sitting back on its two legs, tiny wings flapping until they finally fall still, its big yellow eyes blinking once, slowly, in Ilya's direction.
"Yes," Ilya says, understanding. "But."
Hollander lets out a long breath, slumping against the wall, sliding his back down the length of it until he's sitting on the floor, arms crossed over his knees. He presses his nose into his wrist, thoroughly defeated. The ice he'd been clutching has mostly turned to water, and Ilya can catch the small scratches and pinpricks up and down the length of his arm, along his temple where the creature had apparently snatched his glasses right off his head. That flare of annoyance burbles up in Ilya again — he hadn't even gotten a chance to see Hollander in those glasses —
Well. Nothing to do about that now but deal with the monster before them. "What do we think it eats?" Ilya says finally, and Shane lifts his head, eyes wide, adrift, shocked at the apparent lifeline Ilya's just thrown him.
Between the two of them, Hollander's still the closest approximation to Beyoncé, so Ilya nominates himself to make the trek outside, far less likely to be recognized as the villain of this city than Shane would be as its hero. He silently congratulates himself on the decision to wear the ball cap, and pulls it firmly over of the top half of his face before heading out into the throng to forage for a convenience-store dinner fit for a… well, whatever that thing was.
The dépanneur three blocks over doesn't give him a ton to work with, but he opts for a random assortment of cat and dog food, a pack of hot dogs, and — because what little he'd seen of the creature struck him as being of low standards — a bag of Cheetos. The cashier — a kid who looks like he'd much rather be celebrating on the street than stuck behind the counter — says something in French, and Ilya just says "no," which feels like the safer option until the kid raises an eyebrow in his direction, Ilya realizes he’s just declined a bag. Fucking French. He keeps his head low and awkwardly gathers his spoils in his arms, conveniently hiding the rest of his face behind precariously stacked cans of pet food.
He lets himself back into the secret sex condo (he realizes, forlornly, that it would need to be re-branded now that the secrets it held were no longer just sex-related), and finds the mess to be relatively where he'd last left it. A second pillow has been martyred for the cause. The littered depictions of hellfire and monsters were now intermingled with images of Soviet architectural marvels disguised as bus stops.
Hollander is sitting on the floor, his back against the black leather couch, holding a hockey stick, with a string attached to the blade of it. Ilya watches as Hollander, with a look of utter despondence, trails the string across the ground while the creatures stalks it from a few feet away with murderous, wobbling intent. Its tail swishes back and forth as it hunches over, the sharp point of its shoulder blades pressing up against its hide. The stick looks like a custom CCM — a Ribcore Trigger ASY model, Ilya notes distantly. There's something almost unbearable about watching Hollander use it to entertain this strange creature at one in the morning, and Ilya stands in the doorway for a second longer than he needs to, feeling a strange pang in his chest that he immediately attributes to his bruised ribs.
"Hope you're hungry," Ilya says walking over to the kitchen to set everything down before opening a can of the cat food and peeling open the pack of hot dogs. The creature abandons the string immediately at the sound of the seal popping on the can, and Ilya takes a few hurried steps back to give it space to investigate. It noses the cat food, sneezes, then, without further contemplation, uses the talon tips of its wings to drag a hot dog into its jaw.
"Good choice," Ilya says, keeping a wide berth to walk over to Hollander, sitting next to him on the floor. He hands him one of his impulse purchases from the dépanneur: a can of ginger ale.
"Thanks," Hollander says, holding it loosely in his hand. His eyes haven't left the creature since Ilya's walked in.
For a moment, the only noise is the faintly repulsive, guttural sound of the creature shoving hot dog after hot dog into its mouth. For one distressing moment, Shane and Ilya tense as it starts hacking, like it's choking on too big of a bite, before it spits out what it chewed and tries again, un-fussed by the potential of a blocked airway. Feeling both nauseous but also strangely hungry himself, Ilya gets up to grab the bag of Cheetos, then comes to sit back down. He eats a few handfuls, not bothering to clean the crumbs and cheese coating off his fingers between bites. He offers the bag to Hollander, who declines.
Eventually, the sound and smell catch the creature's interest. It ambles back over, coming within arm's reach of Ilya. They stare at each other, eyes narrowed, before Ilya sighs and extends his hand out. The creature presses its nose to his hand. Quick as a whip, a forked, serpentine tongue extends out to lick the Cheeto dust off his hand, then without warning, it flares its teeth and pricks its razor-sharp canines into the pads of Ilya's fingers.
Ilya retracts his hand immediately. "Nyet," he snaps sternly. "No biting."
The creature looks appropriately admonished, twisting its long neck away from Ilya, before it hesitantly flickers its tongue out, tasting the air. Ilya rolls his eyes, and tosses a Cheeto across the floor. The creature scampers after it.
Through the entire ritual, Hollander is quiet, but at least is now sipping on the ginger ale. His face isn't quite as pale as it was when he first arrived — a marginal improvement. The creature eats all of the hot dogs, the cat food, and a respectable quantity of Cheetos, after which its belly distends to comic roundness and its eyelids begin to sink. They watch it perform one last circuit of the destroyed living room, sniffing the pillows and books and the chewed up duffel, until it finally yawns, its jaw opening impossibly wide for its tiny body. Mid-yawn, it alarmingly shoots out a small jet of flame that causes Ilya to jump with a start.
"Yeah," Hollander says tiredly, nonplussed. "It does that."
It staggers past them, struggling with its belly now in the way, to clamber up onto the side table, and then from there, onto the windowsill. It turns around on the spot twice, before finally settling, tucking its chin on its own tail. Diffuse orange light from the streetlamp outside catches the membrane of one wing as it stretches, making it briefly translucent — veined and delicate and impossible — before folding its wings flat against its back. The two of them hold perfectly still, as though a sudden movement would startle it, until they hear the faint rush of air exhaling from its flared nostrils, watching its body rise and fall with the steady breath of sleep.
Ilya watches curiously as Hollander shifts, setting the now empty can of ginger ale on the floor, looking around the room, taking in the extent of the destruction. His eyes flicker back to the creature, now softly snoring, before he carefully stands, and reaches a hand down to pull Ilya to his feet, nodding for Ilya to follow him to the bedroom. Treading carefully, wincing as a small piece of ceramic cracks under the sole of his shoe, they both whip their heads in the direction the creature, who remains steadfastly asleep, and continue their careful trek to the room. It's only after Hollander has firmly closed the bedroom door that they both release a heavy sigh.
"This night is karma, I think," Ilya muses.
Hollander's eyebrow furrows, perplexed.
"For all the times I called you boring," Ilya explains easily. "Point made, Hollander. Will never call you boring again."
"Fuck off," Hollander says, still keeping his voice low. "Like I had anything to do with this."
"You are innocent victim," Ilya nods sagely. He kicks off his shoes in a pile by the door, wriggling his toes in relief. He falls back into the mattress with a groan. "Ugh… finally."
Hollander shakes his head. "Oh, are you tired?" In spite of everything, that unnerving glimmer has found its way back to his eyes, and Ilya braces himself for the chirp that's soon to follow. "Don't know why you would be, seeing as you barely showed up this series."
"Mmm, big talk from number one scorer in the league — oh wait, no, that is also me," Ilya shoots back.
"Couldn't score your way into the finals," Hollander says simply. "Enjoy your Lindsay if that's the hardware you're going for."
Ilya lifts his head up off the mattress, propping himself up on his elbows. "Can think of other hardware would rather see instead," he says with a grin.
Hollander makes a face. "Gross, Rozanov. Christ." He shakes his head, then, realizing Ilya is being completely serious, widens his eyes to take up nearly half his face. "What — now?"
"Why the fuck do you think I came over?" Ilya forces himself to sit back up on the edge of the bed, biting back a visible wince at pain that shoots through his side as he does. "Was not to eat Cheetos and babysit your pet dinosaur."
"You're insane," Hollander mutters, shaking his head, but Ilya sees, pleased, how his cheeks have started to flush red. Hollander's pants — simple, black trousers — conceal a fair bit, but Ilya can make out the hardening line of his dick pressing against the seam.
He raises an eyebrow. "I've seen crazier things today," he says. He pushes himself off the bed, reaching his hands out for Hollander's waist. Ilya watches carefully as Hollander's eyelids start to fall, heavy, that familiar, glazed look passing over his face. "Eastern Conference Champion… you deserve something, no?"
Even half-way down to where Hollander goes when he's blissed out like this, he still manages to shake his head. "Not 'til I win the cup," he murmurs.
Ilya huffs. What a fucking impossible, maddening, utterly infuriating perfectionist. "Then maybe I deserve something, hmm?" he says, pulling Hollander's hips flush to his. His hand finds Hollander's cock, and Ilya cups it through the fabric of his pants, warm against his palm. "Consolation prize?"
Hollander flickers his eyes to back to the door, forcing himself to take a second, breathing hard through his nose. "We have to be quiet," he says finally, and Ilya's nodding, even as his lips latch onto Hollander's neck, his hands slide up under his shirt. "Don't want to wake the…" he trails off, breathing hard through his nose.
"Quiet is not a problem for me," Ilya says into the curve of Hollander's neck, pulling his lips just far enough away to push Hollander's shirt up his chest, the fabric bunching at the armpits. "Might be big problem for you though." He presses a trail of kisses down the center of his chest, then slides his mouth along the expanse of his pec, trapping a nipple between his teeth and tugging gently.
"Fuck," Hollander hisses out, sucking air between his teeth.
"Shh," Ilya says, pushing the shirt fully over Hollander's head now, and tugging him onto the bed. "Failing already? Is not like you." Really, the need for quiet is in his best interest as well; quiet would force some self-restraint, which was always sorely lacking where Hollander was concerned. He'd resigned himself to the possibility of having to go without this — Shane in his hands, his cock in Ilya's mouth, his moans in Ilya's ears — now that it's happening he's already heady with it, this knowledge that Hollander's horny and needy and desperate enough to need just a few words and a crooked smile to let Ilya take him apart.
Hollander, sadly, doesn't sit on Ilya's face — some saying about the best laid plans drifts in and out of his mind. But he still goes down easily, and laid out underneath Ilya, the gorgeous spread of his shoulders, the lines of muscle along his abdomen, tapering to the thrust of his hips, the mottled specks of bruising stark against his ivory skin, and the dusting of freckles across his nose — it makes Ilya ache, something in him seizes, maybe it's his goddamn ribs—
Another moan from the man beneath him mercifully breaks his train of thought. "Quiet, Hollander. Come on — you like to be good for me, don't you?" His knees sink into the mattress, naked between Hollander's legs, already two fingers deep inside of him, slowly adding a third.
"I… fuck… no. I hate you, actually," he bites out, arching up as Ilya grazes his prostate. That flush of red returns, rising in his cheeks, spilling down his throat to the top of his chest.
Ilya chuckles darkly as he curls his fingers. "Yes, must really hate this." He drags his left hand up to grab a handful of Hollander's chest. "Tell me how you really feel."
Hollander's hips thrust up involuntarily. "I— ugh. I do. I fucking hate you."
Ilya swallows his cock so suddenly Hollander has to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from shouting. Managing a grin through his full mouth, he sucks once, twice, pressing his tongue along the underside of the thick vein of Hollander's dick before pulling off and retreating his fingers. He taps Hollander's hip, motioning for him to turn around on his hands and knees, and Hollander goes willingly, spreading his knees slightly wider as he presses his face down into the pillow.
Now that Hollander can't see his face, Ilya lets the pretence in his expression drop, swallowing back the sudden rush of tenderness that threatens to spill over, at Shane finally succumbing to him, releasing the stress and tension of the series and the expectation of a back-to-back Stanley and the fucking mythological creature in his living room. He's over-tired, exhausted from a long playoff run and an even longer night, so they're excusable, the stubborn tears prickling at his eyes. Unthinkingly, he presses his lips down against the notches in Hollander's spine. The gold cross that permanently hangs from his neck drags against Hollander's back, and the man flinches beneath him at the sensation of the metal against his skin. "Tell me again," Ilya says, his voice breaking slightly, holding Hollander's hips steady with one hand, his cock against Hollander's hole with the other.
"I hate you," he says, but the words come out like caress instead, whiny and pitchy and more like he's trying to convince himself than anyone else. "I hate you, I fucking hate you—"
Ilya sinks in.
"Oh my god." Hollander says it, but Ilya thinks it, oh my god, and that's worse, somehow, that even in his own head he can't escape how this feels, impossibly tight and warm and his. He think mine viciously, with each thrust, determined to leave the shape of him so far inside Shane that nothing else would be able to fill it.
It's too rich a thought — too indulgent. It makes him sick to his stomach, so he grips Shane's hips even harder, presses his thumbs in the divot of his hips, over his ass. "Again," he says. "Say it again."
"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you." The litany of Shane's hatred washes over him, and Ilya inhales sharply, lets the words sink in, a ward in his mind against whatever other feelings might be lingering. It occurs to him, fucking into Shane with earnest now, both of them forgetting to be concerned about being quiet, that maybe even in hating him, Shane certainly isn't thinking of anything else other than Ilya.
His hips still as he comes, and he tries not to collapse his full weight on top of Hollander. He reaches down to jerk Hollander off, only to find him wet, softening already — he's already come. A strange swell of disappointment rises up in Ilya at the realization — like he's mad at himself for missing it.
Collapsing on the bed, Shane presses a little closer to Ilya than usual, avoiding the come stains on the sheets. They play the same game they have for years, waiting each other out until the efforts to avoid the logistics of after outweighed the benefits. Hollander sighs, and pulls away from Ilya; the line of his damp skin along Ilya's side leaves him colder than before Shane had touched him. It's a good reminder that there was always a net deficit where Hollander was concerned. The mattress shifts and creaks as Hollander moves out of it, and Ilya keeps his eyes closed until a damp cloth lands on his stomach. He cracks his eye open to see Hollander efficiently wiping himself down with a cloth of his own before leaving his field of view again to retrieve clean sheets.
They go through the motions — stripping the bed, and changing the bedding, and going as long as they possibly can without saying anything at all. Ilya slides his boxers back on, waiting on the now clean bed while Shane starts the laundry, all while tip-toeing around, a bandit in his own home. By the time Hollander returns to the bedroom, Ilya feels more like himself, grounded in the familiar dynamic of coming and fucking and coming and leaving.
"I should go," he says, meeting Hollander's eyes briefly as he stands at the doorway.
Hollander's eyes go wide, like he wasn't expecting Ilya to say that, and it makes Ilya feel crazy — pissed off, even, like he'd forgotten who they were and how they were supposed to be with one another. "Wait… but what about…"
Ilya raises his eyebrows impatiently.
"The…" he hesitates. "The thing. Outside."
Ilya snorts. "The thing? You mean the tiny zmej flapping around your living room?"
Shane's face scrunches up in confusion, just as it often does in response to Ilya's occasional Russian. "What's that, a zmee?" he says, and Ilya is annoyed of course (not fond, not endeared) at his butchering of the word.
"You know. You call them, um… serpents? Or dragons. Big monster." He gestures vaguely in the direction of the zmej in question. "Flies. Many heads. Breathes fire."
"It has one head," Shane retorts, as though that's the only point of contention to be had.
"Yes well, is young."
"I don't know what insane version of dragons you've got in Russia," Shane insists, slipping into that familiar, 'I can and will argue with Ilya Rozanov about anything' kind of tone, "but here they usually come with one head."
"Ah yes, 'here'," Ilya can't help but smile, finger-quoting the word for emphasis. "You are such a zmei expert, of course. Have raised many dragons here."
"It's not a dragon." Ilya rolls his eyes at the denial. Annoyed. Not fond. Not endeared. Shane grabs his pants off the floor, like the problem is that he's arguing about mythological creatures in his boxers, and not that they're arguing about dragons at all. "Dragons aren't real."
Ilya throws his hands up. "Okay, well, I don't know what to tell you, Hollander. Is not a fucking cat."
"Whatever it is," Hollander says, the post-coital calm curdling now into full-blown panic, "it can't be here."
"So put it outside."
"I can't." He aggressively pulls one leg through his trousers, then the other. "I don't even know who else can see it. It could really hurt someone. Or get hurt itself."
Ilya exhales sharply through his nose. "Then keep it here."
"I have the finals," Shane says, and it's like he's not even talking to Ilya anymore, just going through the motions, the mental checklist of everything it takes for perfect Shane Hollander to maintain his perfect life and win his perfect Stanley fucking Cup.
"You have a least a week." Ilya is already tired of this role he's been cast in — the placater, the patient source of reassurance. "You don't even know if it's Nashville or Anaheim out of the west yet. You have time."
"I have practices. I can't be— hiding this — this thing while I'm—" he cuts himself off, struck by something, and turns to Ilya with expression of dawning, awful hope. "You're done with the playoffs."
Later, Ilya will reflect that his sheer exhaustion is to blame for the negotiation that follows. In the moment, however, he haplessly nods, unaware of the trap Hollander has laid. "Yeah, was there, thank you so much for this reminder."
"So you have time."
"Time for…?" Then he realizes. "No."
"Can't you just—"
"No," he repeats firmly. "This is not my problem."
"—just keep him? For a while?"
"How," Ilya says, with far greater patience than the moment or the man deserves, "the fuck am I supposed to do that. Do I declare him as goat to customs? You are so certain no one in the world can see this thing?"
Shane falters at that, then his eyes go wide again. "You could drive!" He looks so proud at having come up with the idea, the thought of pointing out the obvious flaws in his plan seems suddenly unbearable to Ilya. "I'll pay for your rental. You could… drive him to Boston. It's barely — what, five hours? And then after the finals, you could… I guess. Drive him back."
"What would I tell my team?" Ilya asks, pained, as each question digs him further and further past the hypothetical point of imagination. "I have flight home tomorrow."
"Tell them… you're hooking up with someone." Shane won't meet his eyes when he says it, and Ilya really does hate him, in that moment, abruptly and completely. "I don't know. You could make something up."
He should say no. He has every reason to say no, the most basic of which being that this was so far and away from being anything remotely close to Ilya's problem.
"Rozanov. Please." Ilya meets Shane's eyes, wide and pleading and hopeful and —
And... fuck.
And, the thing is this: it isn't the first time Hollander's said that word. Please, fuck me. Please, let me have you in my mouth. Please, I'll be good. Please, I want it. I want you. Please. Ilya remembers exactly how those instances have played out. And he understands, in a split second, that this time won't be any different.
"Fine," he says. "I'll come back tomorrow."
Shane, to his credit, looks shocked. "You will?"
"Do you want me to or not?" Ilya snaps, standing now to get dressed himself.
"No, no, I do, I want you to," Shane says hurriedly, and Ilya's heard those exact words too: I want you. I want you. Whatever look passes over Ilya's face in that moment, Shane remains oblivious. "I'm just — thank you."
"You figure out how I'm going to… feed it." Ilya waves his hand haphazardly, pulling his shirt over his head. "And carry it around. And after the finals, this thing is your problem. Hollander's fucking pet dragon."
"It's not a dragon," he says automatically.
"Your cat, then." Ilya stands, gathering the last of his clothes, his protests, his dignity. "Ugliest fucking cat I've ever seen."
He leaves moments after that. Shane hovers uncertainly behind him, but mercifully, manages to resist offering up any more pleases and thank yous — fucking Canadian niceties. Looking over his shoulder as he leaves, he catches the silhouette of the dragon in the windowsill, still fast asleep.
Out on the street, just past two in the morning, the chants of "Olé! Olé! Olé!" still going strong, Ilya replays the absurdity of the night in his mind. He starts walking, not even certain he's walking in the right direction, but not yet wanting to go through the motions of calling a taxi. His thoughts are so loud he's certain even a driver would overhear them.
It's as he's scolding himself for the foolishness of this thought that he realizes: at some point in the evening, he'd been referring to Hollander as Shane in his own head. Stupid, he thinks, overcome with a sudden urge for a cigarette. This whole night has been so fucking stupid. He aggressively shakes a cigarette out of his pack, swearing as it falls to the sidewalk. He snatches it up off the ground and sticks it in his mouth. The first drag after the light does little to settle him. Maybe Hollander had been right, all these years. Maybe the fucking rules were in place for a reason.
Ilya has been called many things, but hardly ever a liar, and so, true to his word, sometime after noon the next morning, he pulls up to the back alley near Hollander's building driving a bright red Corvette. It wasn't his first choice, but there were slim pickings for last minute luxury rentals in Montreal. His excuses for not travelling back with the team had been flimsy at best, but he so rarely pulled his star power for any sort of meaningful favour that asking for a couple extra days to "get dicked down in Montreal" (as Marly had so poetically put it) hardly seemed like an impossible request, especially since the Bears' season was well and truly over.
He texts that he's arrived, and waits, tapping on the wheel while keeping his eyes on the back door, entertaining himself with guesses at the sort of face Hollander would make at the sight of the car. He's not left waiting long: the back door swings open and Ilya laughs, watching all of Hollander's features scrunch up in dismay, before he gets out of the vehicle.
Hollander is carrying six bags in one hand — a strange assortment of groceries, pet store items, and hardware supplies. He has a backpack hanging on one shoulder. In the other hand, he is holding a large, sturdy-looking cat carrier.
"This is… overkill, is the word, I think?" Ilya asks, bemused, as he approaches.
"I just wanted to cover our bases," Hollander says defensively, then spares a look at the car. "Really?"
"I am not driving to Boston in a sedan Hollander, be serious," Ilya says, reaching for the bags and walking over to the trunk, peering inside them as he throws them in. "What did you buy for our little friend?"
"Food, mostly. Just a little bit of everything. Nothing perishable. Meat, mostly — dried, canned stuff. Feels like a safe bet. And I got you some material you can put over your furniture, to prevent it from scratching and chewing and all that." He hands the bags over one by one, hesitating at the last one, keeping his grip on it for a second too long. "And, er—"
"What the fuck is this," Ilya asks, still laughing as he sets the bag down in the trunk and reaches in to grab the first item he sees — a giant stuffed toy, shaped like a bottle of tequila. There's a fake label etched on it: Silver Puptron.
"He probably needs things to, you know, entertain himself with," Hollander says, red flushing down his neck.
"Tequila, but no vodka?" Ilya teases.
"They didn't have any— I mean, I just grabbed what they had. Things that looked sturdier, you know."
Ilya delights in the mental image of Hollander going through pet store aisles, assessing toys for durability, and successfully fights the smile forming on his face. He nods to Hollander's other hand. "And how is the little monster?" He rifles through the bags, grabbing a bag of jerky out of one of them and closing the trunk, walking Hollander over to the passenger side.
"He's calmed down, I think." Hollander holds the carrier up, and Ilya peers through the grate to see the dragon, awake, but settled somewhat comfortably, chewing on the brim of another toy shaped like a cowboy hat. When it registers Ilya's face, it flares its nostrils, and snorts a small, indignant puff of smoke. "He scratched the carrier a bit from the inside, but it seemed to hold up okay." He swallows, before offering the carrier to Ilya.
Ilya takes it, careful not to jostle the creature inside too much. It's a little too wide for the seat, but Hollander, clearly on his best behaviour, doesn't say a word about the impracticality of the choice of car, as Ilya takes a second to maneuver it around before closing the door firmly.
"Thank you," Hollander says. His shoulders slump with relief. "I… I really owe you one."
"Yes, yes, will send you my bill," Ilya says impatiently. "Just until finals are done."
Hollander nods. "Yes, of course. I'll take him back right after. I have a — a private place I can bring him."
Ilya is about to make a joke about Hollander franchising the secret sex condo, before he remembers the ESPN fluff piece about Hollander's stupid perfect fucking cottage that had come out earlier this year. He feels that bile of envy bubble up in his throat — another locked door in Hollander's life and Ilya isn't allowed to open, another room Ilya is unfit to enter, while this feral, snarling creature would be deemed pitiable enough to be admitted inside.
"Come, little zmej," Ilya says, ignoring Shane's eyes as he clambers into the driver's seat. And then, in Russian: "Let's see what trouble we can get up to, hm?"
The drive to Boston is, as Hollander promised, barely five hours, and Ilya spends most of that time unexpectedly growing quite fond of his passenger.
It's uneventful for the first leg of the trip, but about two hours in, the thing begins shrieking with such ferocity that Ilya's forced to pull over, and doesn't even hesitate for a second to set the carrier on the ground and open the door to let it out. He realizes, a second too late, that the creature might make a run for it, and then, a second later, wonders why that would even be a problem, but the worry is unfounded. The creature drags itself out into the sun, blinking up at the wide expanse of grass and sky, then huffs. It fluffs out its wings and returns to its carrier, immediately falling asleep. Ilya shakes his head. "Dramatic," he notes, rolling his eyes and settling them both back in the car once more.
As soon as he crosses the border, he finds the nearest Dunkin, desperate for a coffee. The drive-thru line isn't particularly long, as soon as he's boxed into the line, the creature starts its chirping again. Ilya tenses, knuckles white as he grips the steering wheel, trusting that the carrier is opaque enough that they wouldn't be able to see the creature inside.
For a split second, he considers just driving through, but his lids are heavy and the circles under his eyes are dark and he's already been put out enough by the presence of this creature; god forbid it keep him from coffee. He starts silently practicing the excuses he'll make when he gets to the window. The chirping is incessant now, impossible to miss. He scrambles to approximate what animal it most sounds like, a bird maybe? Or… would anyone know enough about the sounds lizards make to question him? He takes a full second, rolling down the window for the impatient server, coffee already held out in between them.
Ilya takes it quickly, but doesn't miss the server's eyes drifting to the carrier. "You want a pup cup?" he asks.
Ilya blinks in confusion, setting the coffee in his cup holder. The chirping has evolved to a strange, rhythmic, percussion sound. He eyes the carrier nervously as smoke starts to filter out through the closed cage door. "Er…"
"You know — for your dog. Or, is it a cat?"
"It's… um. Yes. Cat." The carrier trembles with its charge as it rocks back and forth inside. Ilya watches the attendant's eyes carefully.
"Ah too bad." He pulls his hand back, smiling pleasantly. "Cats are decent. Love dogs though. Give it a scritch for me when it wakes up."
Ilya nods quickly, rolling up the window, and pulling back out onto the highway. When it wakes up, he'd said. Like it wasn't awake already. Like the strange, static-filled shriek emanating from the carrier was just background noise, and not a full-on demonic ritual.
"Oh my god stop," he says out loud when the noise reaches an ear-splitting register. Without looking away from the road, he reaches over to unlock the carrier.
From the corner of his eye, he watches the creature poke its head out, snout first, then eyes, unblinking and round, then its long, twisting neck. It cranes to look up, dragging itself up using its wing talons to clamber on top of the carrier, where the sun has warmed the surface of it. Through the light streaming in through the window, its green-blue scales shimmer, giving it a pearlescent, almost silvery hue. It perches on top, looking expectedly at Ilya.
"What?" Ilya snaps harshly in Russian, immediately regretting his tone as the creature recoils. "Okay, okay, sorry, was just fucking annoying, that noise." The dragon tilts its head, sticking its tongue out for a moment, and Ilya sighs in recognition. "Ah. Yes, okay." He struggles to open the packet of jerky one-handed, but eventually manages it, setting it open on top of the carrier. The dragon chirps again, a far more pleasant noise, before burrowing into the bag, fitting in its entire head and part of its neck as it chomps happily.
"Just say you're hungry next time," Ilya says tiredly, taking a long sip of his coffee. "Giving me a fucking migraine."
The dragon doesn't respond, of course, too busy chowing down on teriyaki beef, and then, the plastic bag it came in. Ilya wonders idly if it would understand better if he spoke to it in English instead of Russian, before quickly dismissing both the question of languages, and of speaking 'to it' at all, as utterly ridiculous notions.
Now that the creature has been liberated from its cage, it seems content to give Ilya his space, only making its presence known when it grew hungry or bored or needed to flap its wings, though Ilya noted that the wings were more decorative than functional, as it didn't seem to be making any real attempts to fly.
By the time he arrives home, he's so bone-tired that he spends the first twenty minutes slumped on his couch, staring into space until the furniture around him becomes blurry and shapeless. It's a series of sharp, pointed chirps from the dragon, which had since been returned to its carrier, that startles him back to consciousness, and he heaves himself off the couch to "dragon-proof" a spare room. It's painstaking work, but he remembers the carnage of Hollander's apartment, and works efficiently to remove anything that could become collateral damage — the chairs and cushions and books and picture frames and lamps and end tables. He pulls out the material Hollander had purchased from the hardware store — thick swathes of canvas — and drapes them over the larger shelves that he can't be bothered to move. Lastly, he fills the now-empty room by dumping all of the toys Hollander had purchased in the middle of the floor, setting down a bowl of water in the corner, before unlatching the carrier to give the dragon free reign.
"It's no sex condo…" he says, watching curiously as the dragon happily trots out, apparently so easily placated by its new makeshift home. Ilya means to watch it only for a few minutes, but blinks when the room has suddenly gone dark, the sun setting past the edges of the windows, and he glances at his phone to realize that he's been in the room for hours, watching the dragon use its wings to bat at the rolling feathered toys, and immediately pounce with a snarling ferocity when they started to roll out of its reach.
It's also in checking his phone that he realizes Jane had sent a text, a few hours ago now. He doesn't know how he missed it — usually he sees them right away and spends a few hours fighting the urge to reply instantly. He clicks open the message.
thank you again. I owe you.
Really, he doesn't think he's ever been thanked so much in his life. "Good." he says, typing as he talks. "Many…ideas… for… how … you … pay … me… back… send."
The reply comes back almost instantly: all these ideas are family-friendly, I assume.
Ilya snorts. He starts to reply, when the dragon tumbles onto his back, growling as it captures two of the feathers sticking out from the toy in its teeth. It freezes, tilting its head further back to meet Ilya's eyes. It's such a strange looking thing. But also, unexpectedly adorable in its demeanour. Unthinkingly, he takes his phone in hand to snap a quick photo, and sends it off to Hollander.
The reply takes a little longer this time: are those feathers a choking hazard?
Ilya rolls his eyes. Too anxious for his own good, that Hollander. He shifts in his spot on the floor to keep his legs from growing numb. Clicking through his other messages, he hovers his thumb over the contact of the one person he trusts more than anyone — Svetlana — and then, because he's too tired to second-guess himself, let alone test his theory in a more strategic fashion, sends the photo to her too.
Her response takes about ten minutes — because she has a life, unlike Hollander. But he still takes great pride in being one of the few people she'll prioritize when his name pops up on her phone.
dog toys but no dog? comes the reply back in Russian. Ilya inhales sharply, and puts the phone down.
He gets up in a daze, leaving the room and closing the door shut behind him, hardly affording the creature a second glance on the way out.
Hollander hadn't been lying, then. Animal control hadn't seen it. Neither had the drive-thru attendant. Neither could Svetlana, apparently. Not even in a photograph.
He stays awake for a long time, the obvious, unanswered question rolling around in his mind. If most people couldn't see it, why could Hollander? Why could he?
The weeks that follow are largely, business as usual, except for the presence of a dragon in his otherwise unremarkable, post-season life.
He finishes out the season with year-end media and the obligatory physical. He delivers the news to his brother and Svetlana that he'll be a few weeks delayed in heading to Moscow, and doesn't wait to be asked before sending his brother, Alexei, more money for his trouble, leaving their ailing father's care in his barely-capable hands. He watches the Montreal-Nashville finals with more than a passing interest, keeping a careful eye on Hollander's performance, telling himself that he's noticing him favour his right side for the competitive advantage the insight gives him, and not for any sense of misplaced concern.
The dragon eats — constantly. It was not rooming alongside other hockey players, truthfully, with their five-thousand-calories-per-day meal plans. Hollander's instincts had been right — meat was certainly its preference. But perhaps by virtue of being a temporary ward of Ilya's, it had also developed a taste for potato chips — though it had strong brand preferences.
He learns that it goes stir crazy when left unattended for long periods, especially at night, and so he takes to letting it out as soon as the sun sets, watching from his backyard porch as it wanders through the garden, digging up worms and eating insects, flapping its wings with all its might and still failing to get more than an inch or so off the ground.
He allows it to encroach, little by little, into the non-dragon-proofed areas of the house, and finds himself more unbothered than he would've thought at the intermittent scrape of its talons against the floorboards, or the occasional scorch mark on the floor. And through it all, it remains unseen. His neighbours don't see it. His private chef doesn't see it. His housekeeper doesn't see it, though she takes great pains to mention, at the sight of the dog toys, that she charges an additional fee for pets. It grows comfortable enough to even clamber on Ilya, on occasion, and Ilya becomes almost careless with it, answering the door for deliveries with the creature on his shoulder, confident it will remain invisible to prying eyes.
After the Voyageurs go up 2-0 in the series, Ilya finds himself googling dragons.
It isn't a conscious decision. Highlights from the game are playing (another Hollander hat trick, the pundits are saying), and the dragon is flapping its wings at the puck as it zips across the screen of the television, and then his thumb is typing the word zmei into the search engine, and the screen fills with the dragons of his childhood.
There are a few familiar characters, of course, but the most popular of them — Zmey Gorynych, the Snake of the Mountains — appears predominantly. He was a shape-changer: a handsome youth on the ground, and a flying monster in the air. Ilya flicks past images of a twelve-headed serpent, coiled across the sky, one of its jaws open wide to bite into the sun. He scrolls past hundreds of images of the serpent, rendered again and again across centuries — in lacquer, in woodcut, in the gold leaf art of a hundred churches. Rarely is he depicted without the hero — Saint George, in some versions, or the knight Dobrynya, in the classic byliny he'd been forced to read as a child. There'd been a school visit to some museum, or church, perhaps — he can hardly remember now — some ancient structure whose walls and ceiling frescoes were covered in endless depictions of good triumphing over evil, of hero and serpent locked together forever, one defined entirely by killing the other. He'd been young, ten years old, maybe, bored half to death, but though the details are lost to him, the feeling has stayed with him — his private sympathy for the serpent of myth, pinned and bleeding under the hero's perfect aim.
He looks up from his phone to find that the dragon has burrowed its head into the couch cushions. Its tail whips back and forth, as it finally emerges, victorious, its mouth closed on a piece of lint. It tries to bat the lint away from its own mouth, and bonks itself in the snout with its own wing.
Ilya huffs a laugh, holding up the phone beside the creature, the twelve-headed monster from his youth and the small leathery idiot on his couch. A bite out of the sun… not likely. This particular dragon had spent ten minutes earlier this evening losing a fight with an overcooked piece of steak.
Sensing attention, the creature abandons the lint, crawls along the length of the couch, and collapses just within arm's reach of Ilya with a sound like a sigh. Ilya hesitates, before reaching out, touching his finger to the top of its head, and tracing the curl of its spine.
A few nights later, the Voyageurs win the Stanley Cup finals. Ilya watches, with the dragon curled into his side, asleep right at his hip, as Shane lifts the cup over his head for a second, back-to-back year. He smiles, in spite of himself, and feels strangely grateful that not even the dragon is awake to see it.
Two days after Hollander's won the cup, Ilya makes the drive back to Montreal. He goes through a drive-thru with the dragon out of its carrier on the passenger seat, unfazed now at the absence of comment from the window attendant as she hands Ilya his food. He unwraps one burger for the dragon, and one for himself, and between the two of them Ilya makes the larger mess, squeezing burger sauce out of the sandwich and onto the steering wheel, cursing himself in Russian. The dragon makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like he's laughing at him. It keeps up its chirps as Ilya flicks through radio stations, eventually settling on a synthy pop song that Ilya likes well enough, even though he can't quite make out all the words.
Hollander's already at the roadside stop about an hour outside of Montreal when he arrives. He's driving a Jeep, because of course he is, practical as ever. He half expected him to show up with the Stanley Cup itself in tow, but of course, it's just Hollander, wearing a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses, leaning against the side of his car, both his hands in his pockets. He's not even busying himself on his phone, the way Ilya would be when he's left waiting for others. Ilya wonders how long he's been waiting, but decides, in the spirit of making this exchange as efficient as possible, not to ask.
"Congratulations," Ilya says, getting out of the car. "Lucky number two."
"Three's the lucky number, actually," Hollander says pleasantly, but at least has the good sense to look somewhat bashful. He's moving stiffly — it had been a long season. "But thanks."
"Yes." Ilya's cursing himself in his head already, always starting conversations he has no idea how to dig his way out of. "Here." He opens the trunk and hands out the bags, one after the other, like the world's strangest custody exchange. "He sleeps during the day, mostly. Is more calm now. Needs to go outside a few times. But comes back on his own."
"Right," Hollander says, immediately taking out his phone to jot everything Ilya's said down.
Ilya rolls his eyes, but waits for him to finish it anyway, before reaching for the carrier and handing it over.
"Thank you again," Hollander says.
"Save it for your parade speech." Ilya says, not wanting the gratitude or any of the wide-eyed, earnest looks that come with it. "'I owe it all to Rozanov,' you could say."
"Fat chance," Hollander says, and sets to the task of organizing the car.
Ilya watches for a moment, bites back the correction as Hollander places the carrier in the back seat. He fights the urge to point out, that, actually, the dragon likes being in the front, in arm's reach, with the seat warmer on. He likes music on, nothing too slow — with good bass and a steady, predictable beat. He likes salty foods — but gets sluggish if he eats too many — freshly cooked meat is best; it's not a picky eater, so it's best to be more discerning on its behalf. He wonders what he's supposed to do now with all of the useless information he has about this creature in his head.
He feels foolish. Embarrassed, even, like he's been caught doing something shameful. He shouldn't have done Hollander this stupid fucking favour to begin with. Now he'll be arriving to Russia a month later, with an overly inquisitive best friend and a brother who loves his money but hates him and a father that barely remembers his name. Now there'll be songs that play on the radio that he won't be able to hear without thinking of a small head bopping along in his passenger seat.
"Goodbye, Hollander," he says finally. He doesn't wait for a response as he gets in his car and closes the door. He thinks he hears Hollander say something, but doesn't pick up the words over the rev of the engine. He pulls out of the road-side stop, back onto the highway, and presses his pedal flat to the floor.
He glances up at the rearview mirror, and resolutely ignores the curdle of disappointment when he finds neither Hollander nor the dragon staring after him. He keeps his eye on the rearview for as long as he can, on the shape of Hollander standing by his car. He should've said a better goodbye. It would probably be the last time he'd see that creature. But Ilya knows better than most that goodbyes are never what people want them to be. When it comes to farewells, he takes the meagre scraps he's offered, and focuses his energy on wanting less.
Eventually, the road curves. He drives until he loses sight of Hollander, then his car, then the rest stop. Other cars start to come in behind him, and then he's far enough away that Hollander and his dragon are gone.