Chapter Text
"yeah, i know, i know
it's still not enough.
nothing short of everything,
nothing short of everything's enough.
no matter how wide or how tough,
nothing short of everything's enough"
- from the song ‘Now For Plan A’
by The Tragically Hip
2017
The worst part is: they never even fight. They don’t yell. No one chases anyone into the street. No one says the kind of thing that is meant to slip between the ribs and fester there. It just… ends, in fucking Florida, after the All Star game, and Ilya thinks: of course.
It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt - physically, spiritually, cosmically. In fact, it hurts so bad that the misery of it marches right down to his bones and builds a home there, in the marrow, in order to properly ache for generations.
It’s just that- well, he’s not surprised.
Ilya’s always known it would end, and that Shane would to be the one to do it. He knows this because the first time he looked over his cigarette into Shane Hollander’s eyes all those years ago, he was struck by the certainty that he’d never be able to deny Shane anything that was his to give. And because - embarrassingly, horrifyingly, tragically - the list of things that are Ilya’s to give is pretty fucking finite.
It’s not like Shane hasn’t been inescapably aware of how impossible they are, just as Ilya has. But a fundamental difference between the two of them is that Ilya is someone who is accustomed to yearning, and Shane is a person who is used to getting what he wants. That’s not to say he’s entitled, or spoiled. He may be the MHL’s golden boy, it’s not because they wanted him. He’s their star because Shane Hollander is fucking undeniable. He achieves because he works for what he wants. He works so hard and accomplishes so much that he makes refusing him an impossibility.
It’s not just hockey. It’s always worked this way with Ilya, too, is the thing. Shane’s tenacity. Shane wanted to fuck Ilya so bad he bought a goddamn apartment building over it. So, there’s precedent. And so Ilya knows, deeply, that when Shane asks him for more, Shane thinks he’s going to get it. Even if it’s hard. Even if he doesn’t yet know how.
But he can’t have Ilya, is the thing. Not wholly. Not the way he’s asking for. Because, look - Ilya would give Shane his own skin if he asked for it. Would rip the organ of Shane’s choosing right out of his body with his own hands, if he even got so much as a vague impression that Shane might like that.
But he is not his own to give.
The most Ilya can get out is, “Because: Russia! Because: my father!”
It’s true, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Ilya is not his own to give because his father and his brother are Russian police. Because Putin is, always is, the President and America fucking elected Trump. Because the MHL has some real good in it, but also some real fucking bad, and the bad is really dangerous. Because of hockey culture. Because if Ilya gets deported, it’s going to be to Siberia or worse. Because Shane is Japanese Canadian and if gay got added to that list the Commissioner would ruin Shane’s career and legacy just for the casual cruelty of it. Crushing Shane would serve as a semi-pleasurable way for Crowell to pass a Wednesday afternoon.
What it comes down to is that Ilya has run thousands of scenarios in his mind ranging from realistic things to aliens coming to earth and taking over management of the MHL, but each one ends with the certainty that there is no way they can be anything more than what they already are: which is the biggest, most soul-crushing, truest thing Ilya has ever known and - at the same time - absolutely nothing. Nothing with a name. Nothing that they can share with anyone. Nothing that is even safe to say in low voices to each other inside a locked room.
In fact, in his secret heart, the best Ilya has ever dared to hope for is that, one day, when he’s old and grey, he might read something in a book, or see a child do something amusing in the street, and - all of a sudden - be reminded of Shane. He’ll smile wistfully, a little wryly, because he hasn’t thought of Shane, or being as young as he is right now, in a long time, and isn’t life just funny that way? The best case scenario has always been that it doesn’t end bloody - that Shane gets out with his career intact and Ilya doesn’t end up in Russian prison - and Ilya gets to tuck away the tender memory of them somewhere inside himself to sustain him through the decades.
Ilya realizes he’s crying, a little bit, and then he’s in Shane’s arms. He hadn’t realized he’d been reaching for him, but he’s always reaching for Shane, isn’t he? Which is a large part of the problem. But then Shane - his Shane, but never his - gathers him and holds him: in place, together. Like he’s something precious. Like there couldn’t possibly be anything in the world more important than doing this.
It’s this that does it, for Ilya. It’s too real. It’s too much. Ilya has worshiped, on his knees, at the altar of Shane Hollander his whole adult life, and a little bit before then too, but this is, somehow, too intimate. It’s too raw. It’s too, plainly, loving.
Ilya pulls back abruptly. Shane’s face creases, and Ilya looks away from it because he has to get out of this room immediately. Like, right the fuck now. He needs to go before the pounding in his chest gets any louder and Shane can hear it.
“Cigarette,” Ilya says, and even though he could damn well pay whatever the hotel fined him for smoking, and even though it’s his own goddamn room, and even though Shane obviously know this is a shitty excuse to run, he wrenches the door open and heads for the elevator.
It’s a classic set up. Even the fanciest hotels look the same around the elevator: ice machine, coke machine, little garbage can. He pushes the call button with more venom than it deserves, and then stands there, trying not to wake anyone slumbering in the nearby rooms with the ragged sound of his breathing or the roaring of his heart.
The elevator chimes it’s arrival, doors parting like brutalist theatre curtains. Ilya steps in, and after a moment it’s doors begin to slide towards each other. They’re about a hand’s width apart when, like it’s written in stage direction, Shane Hollander’s hand appears.
There’s a hysterical second where Ilya - on account of how gracefully Shane has extended his hand - thinks he’s being asked to dance. But then Hollander’s fist uncurls to reveal Ilya’s lighter.
“Thought you might need this,” he says, overly light. Ilya can’t help himself - his eyes flick up to Shane’s face of their own accord. Hollander looks guarded and split-open at the same time, eye’s a little too wet and shining strangely in the red glow of the Coke machine.
Ilya takes the lighter, and Shane pushes at the door with his newly empty hand. The doors yield to Shane Hollander, like everything does, and he steps in beside Ilya. He stands very close, but doesn’t touch Ilya. They both look straight ahead, like normal people riding in an elevator and not two people who are tearing each others hearts out.
The doors drift closed. Curtains.
When the elevator whirs with movement, Shane says, “You really shouldn’t smoke, though. You’re too good.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “You should be happy, Hollander. Maybe I ruin my lungs and make it easier for you to win.”
Shane makes a scrunched face that is so loud Ilya can practically hear all the protestations running through his mind. He makes himself look forward again, and watches the floors change.
32.
31.
30.
At the 28th floor, Shane says, “So. I didn’t know all of that.”
Ilya snorts. He’d said two sentences.
Shane sighs. “You don’t have to be like this with me. We can still like, you know. Be friends.”
Ah, Ilya thinks, there it is. They’re over, just like Ilya knew they fucking would be, and they didn’t fight about it, or fuck about it or, Ilya doesn’t know, put some information into a spreadsheet or however it is that Hollander decides anything. They’re just over, and no one has even said it. They’re just… talking logistics in a goddamn elevator on the 22nd floor, now the 21st, as if Ilya isn’t mortally wounded. As if Shane isn’t obviously about to cry.
Ilya raises his eyebrows at Shane, because he’s fucking dying and, therefore, is defaulting to being dismissive and mocking. “Be friends,” he repeats, dubiously.
“Yeah. Can’t we?”
There is no space between the moment Shane asks the question and the moment Ilya thinks: I don’t want to be your friend. Thinks: being near you but not allowed to touch you is bad enough in public, and if I have to do that in private it might be the thing that kills me.
Because there’s no fucking way he can say any of that shit out loud, he settles for, “We were never friends, Hollander.”
It’s true, but Shane looks crushed all the same.
15.
“Wow,” Shane says, and exhales so hard the force of it pushes his back against the mirrored wall of the elevator.
Shane collapses into it, bending almost at the waist. His hands brace on his knees and - fuck Ilya - Shane does start crying then, in the way that only he does. He’s almost completely still, except his breathing is too loud and too unsteady. Water domes in his big eyes like they’re overfilled cups of water until the surface tension breaks and tears flow down his unmoving face. It’s awful, and terrifying, and it causes the hurt in Ilya’s bones to flare in a whole new wave of wails. Ilya tries to stay upright. Shane stares through his tears at Ilya in this betrayed way, as if he isn’t the one doing this. As if he isn’t the one breaking Ilya’s heart, even though Ilya always knew he would. That he would have to.
It makes Ilya want to fucking grab him - to lick the salty tributaries from his face and kiss every single freckle, and tell Shane that he’ll fix it, he’ll do anything.
But he can’t. Because even though Ilya’s heart insists it would burn down the entire goddamn, useless fucking world for Shane, it won’t. It can’t.
10.
9.
Ilya sighs. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Shane,” he admits, too tired to sound any particular way.
“I mean, I guess just not like, the meanest shit ever?”
Ilya could be meaner, is the thing. He could always be meaner; Svetlana sometimes says he was born with a knife instead of a tongue, which is still insulting in Russian but sounds a little warmer. Ilya knows his tongue is too quick and too sharp a lot of the time, but he’s softer with Shane than anyone. And, tonight? He hasn’t said a mean thing, has he? Hasn’t he just said something true, while getting his heart broken? Ilya wonders briefly - meanly, go figure - about Shane’s understanding of him, if he thought we were never friends is the worst Ilya could do and not as good as wait, I love you.
7.
"You liked that I am mean, Solnyshko,” Ilya says.
6.
The endearment just slips out. He’s never used it for Shane - at least, not out loud. Not on purpose. But there it is. He’s said it, and Shane’s face creases in confusion and then he gives his head a little shake and lets it hang and, fuck, Ilya needs to stop talking, because it’s over. Because it has to be. Because Shane said so, without even asking for input from him, which is in it’s own way a gift - a labour he’s taken from Ilya, who would never have had the strength.
It’s Ilya’s turn, now. For Shane, he can leave. He can walk out into the lobby and leave Shane crying in this elevator. He can get on a plane, and play for Boston for the rest of his miserable life and not look back at Shane, even once. Because if he did look back, he would be on his knees in front of Shane, penitent and pious, using every word he knows in two languages to beg for forgiveness. He’d be pulling Shane into him, and once did that he would never let go, not ever, and it would ruin both their lives.
3.
Ilya bends towards Shane, and gently touches the knuckle of his pointer finger to Shane’s chin. Shane tilts his head up, and he’s a fucking painting. A dream. A quest. Something men would fight wars over, and women would negotiate peace treaties for.
“I am sorry, Shane.”
“Same,” Shane almost whispers.
2.
The elevator dings, and they both straighten. The doors part to reveal the lobby, and they’re both on stage again.
Ilya steps out. He walks to the hotel bar and does not look back, his mind a mocking chorus of same, same, same.
────۶ৎ────
He doesn’t really remember making it back to Boston. He doesn’t make it back pretty, that’s for sure. He feels like a giant, American truck drove over him and reversed and he looks it, too. It’s actually surprising in some ways that he makes it back to Boston at all, because he spends the entire journey drinking as much as he can manage at the airport bar, and then drinking as much as his wheedling can convince the flight attendants to give him on the plane. (They are fans of Boston and clearly having conflicting feelings about whether doing their Captain a special favour is worth being implicated in a terrible on-ice performance and/or an impending case of alcohol poisoning. Marie, who is brunette, is less concerned than Ashley, the redhead, and for this, Ilya is grateful.)
He rinses and repeats this act all the way back to Boston, sleeps for an unbelievable fourteen hours, and then he’s at the airport again with his whole team. He is showered, and on time, and thrilled to be flying to fucking Montreal, Coach, let’s fucking go.
They arrive, they play and they lose, horribly.
Coach bemoans the cursed fucking All-Star break, saying it old timey, like curse-ed. He swears that this shit happens every goddamn year.
Ilya doubts very much that this exact shit happens every year, but knows better than to say anything. Besides, it’s not the All-Star break that made Ilya play like shit. His performance actually has much more to do with the fact that Shane hadn’t looked at Ilya once in three fucking periods. It made him feel like his stomach was going to fall out of his mouth at any second, which subsequently made it quite hard to track the puck.
He knows better than to say this, either.
────۶ৎ────
He’s terrible to everyone the next day. Especially to Marleau, who he’d already treated awfully the whole evening after the game. Their usual routine after road games is: they shower, they get to their room as fast as they fucking can, they order a borderline disgusting amount of pizza, and then they eat a borderline disgusting amount of pizza while they watch a dating show that Marleau pretends they’re not following, but finds with impeccable speed and precision in every city.
Instead of doing this, Ilya had fucked off for a very long time and did not answer anyone’s texts or phone calls. The sick part is that he was not even doing anything in particular - just fucking wandering around Montreal in a near-blizzard, like maybe if he got cold enough his brain would shut off or his heart would freeze over. Or something.
When Ilya returned, so late that it was almost early, he’d whipped his toque at Marleau’s sleeping head. The snowflakes that had turned wet in the elevator and soaked into the yarn made a painful sounding thwack as the toque connected. Marley made a shocked sound but didn't get up to beat the shit out of Ilya, which was both concerning and infuriating.
As it turns out, no one will fight with him. He doesn’t know why he wants them to - it’s misplaced something, and he knows it, and is unwilling to look at it too close, just yet. But, Marley’s pillow is clearly still wet in the morning, and he doesn’t retaliate or even mention it, and it’s completely infuriating. Ilya walks down to the lobby beside him, desperately hung over and completely incredulous.
His behaviour escalates over breakfast, on the bus ride to the airport, in the security line up - but the worse he acts, the more concerned everyone’s faces get. By the time they get to their gate, no less than three guys have magically accidentally bought two chocolate bars, and given Ilya their ‘extra.’ Their rookie has inexplicably, and completely wordlessly, given him a brown teddy bear from the Duty Free who is kitted out in a full Canadian Mountie uniform: red serge jacket, big brown wide-brim hat and black pants with the yellow stripe on the side. It’s even wearing shiny black boots. It’s incredibly stupid, and the weirdest of the offerings by far, but when Cardinal tries to make a grab for it Ilya almost decks him.
They’re delayed, because why the fuck shouldn’t Ilya spend more time in Shane’s fucking city? Ilya’s seething and pacing and that might be why the coaching staff pretends not to notice when Besser starts organizing them into little squadrons to slink off to the airport bar.
Ilya drinks and lets the sounds of his teammates conversation drift over him without hearing what they’re saying. He plays with the shiny buttons on Mountie Bear’s jacket and nods when it seems like he should, but he is pretty certain they’re all just trying to keep an eye on him. Boys are terrible at feelings and talking about them at the best of times, and Ilya knows he’s freaking them out. They’re all clearly feeling a bit of pity for their Captain, and he feels badly about that, he does. But he also hates pity.
He also hates planes, and delays and every single person on his team even though he loves them dearly. He hates hockey and, as it turns out, Coffee Crisp chocolate bars. Ilya hates Russia. He hates America.
In fact, the only thing he doesn’t hate is Shane. He can’t - he’s tried, many times, since he was basically a kid.
Finally, they’re able to board. Ilya sits in his seat by the window and adds to the list: Montreal. Snow. He hates them. The way airplane windows are shaped.
“There’s a lot of hotties in Boston,” Cliff says, out of nowhere. “Lotta hotties in Montreal, too, if you like, have a thing for the Quebecois in particular.”
“There are hot women in every city in world. Maybe you do not notice because you are so ugly they do not come near.”
Marleau, infuriatingly, leaves the bait where it is. “Just saying, Cap,” he says good-naturedly, and shoves his shoulder into Ilya’s a bit, just like he would on the ice. Then he puts his headphones on and starts trying to find the dating show on his airplane screen.
Ilya stabs at his own screen until he finds a movie about dogs. He puts it on, then looks out the window and hates the sky, too.
────۶ৎ────
After this - almost perversely - the Bears can’t seem to fucking lose.
They win and win and a third of it is that the team is just that fucking good. Another third of it is that Ilya is just that fucking good. The last bit - the alchemic one - is that, without any real reason not to be, Ilya is a flaming ball of untiring rage that is only mildly satiated by generational wins.
In the dressing room, he’s a maniac. He screams himself hoarse before every game. He’s got a room full of guys hating every city in North America in fucking detail. Like, he’s looking up shit about cities’ histories on Wikipedia so that their rage can be righteous and accurate. At some point, Marley takes to marking the end of Ilya’s speeches by leading the team in rousing renditions of a a famous song in which Ilya is Russia’s Greatest Pain Machine, or Russia’s Greatest Rage Machine, or Russia’s Greatest Gordie-Howe-Hat-Trick Machine, depending on the night.
It’s funny. People always say that Hollander is a hockey robot, but yeah. It does turn out that Ilya is a goddamn hockey machine.
On the ice, Ilya is an elastic band that has been pulled tight and let go of without warning. He ricochets around the ice like a pinball in a machine, laying a guy out at centre ice; crunching a defender into the boards by their own net; lowering his shoulder and bashing his opponent’s best forward into the boards. He moves with the focused abandon of someone who does not care what he hits, but wants to hit it hard. Like if he gets thrown around enough - if something connects in a brutal enough way - maybe something in him will get knocked loose.
His bones have felt heavy since Florida, like a weight to haul around, and he thinks maybe he can run into something with enough force, at enough of a speed, that at least some of the grief will be forced to pack up and move somewhere else, and he’ll be able to breathe again.
It doesn’t work, of course. They can’t lose. They decimate other team’s morale. They crush rookies. They break personal, team, and league records. But it doesn’t matter a fucking bit, because none of it makes it any easier for him to breathe on the ice. He can’t breathe on the treadmill, either, trying to outrun a loss he’s not allowed to name. He can’t even breathe with his face in Svetlana’s pussy, safe and known and wonderful as it is.
They still fuck, in the same comfortable way they have since they were old enough to understand how their parts fit together. It’s more comfort than anything. He loves her, of course he does, but in a way that’s almost familial, if calling it that wouldn’t make the sex gross and emotionally incestual. The sex is neither of those things. Nor is it romantic. It’s - well, it’s familiar, to be touched in a way that is not life-altering or soul-crushing, but perfect in it’s practiced efficiency. To be touched by someone with no need of instruction, who just knows because they know you, and have known you for a long, long time.
If he wanted to analyze it, which he doesn’t, Ilya would guess it’s a side effect, maybe, of growing up somewhere harsh. They had learned early on that softness was considered weakness, but conquests were acceptable. As kids in Russia, they didn’t have any other way of expressing their closeness, and, well, human beings are creatures of habit.
Still, Ilya worries, sometimes, that the doesn’t have any friends he doesn’t sleep with. Worries that he doesn’t have any friends at all, really, besides Svetlana. He has the team, and he knows they care, but they don’t know the whole of the hurt. They say fuck Jane, Cap and they mean well, but it makes him wants to tackle them.
He’s eternally grateful for Svetlana, and her specific combination of intense nosiness and discretion. She’s been visiting more often since things ended with Shane, even though he didn’t tell her things ended, or that they’d ever begun. They communicate about the rest of their lives the same way they do about sex - she likes to know without having to be told, and Ilya likes to be known and not having to do the telling.
One evening, when they fall together after watching a truly dismal Buffalo-Calgary game, he flicks her clit with his tongue - a little harder than most girls he's been with would find pleasurable, but exactly how she likes it - and looks up at her.
“We could get married,” he suggests, not for the first time.
She wrinkles her nose. “Don’t be gross, Ilyushka.”
He’s not trying to be. It’s just, the Voyageurs were knocked out two days ago, so he won’t play Shane again this season. He won’t see Shane again until next year, and despite Shane saying they could be friends, he hasn’t spoken to, or texted, or even looked Ilya’s way since Florida.
Not that he’d ever really expected them to be friends. He knew they wouldn’t be, and he doesn’t really want to be, if he’s honest. He just… misses him, he guesses.
“Get up here,” Sveta demands and, gratefully, he goes, shoving his tongue into her mouth so she can taste herself on it.
Before she gets on her plane the next day, she touches one of her slender fingers softly to the bruises on Ilya’s shoulders, the cut underneath his eye, the bandage on his hand.
“Please be more careful,” she says, frowning a little. “I worry.”
“I’m always careful,” he says in English. Her frown deepens, and she kisses his forehead, gently and protectively, as she leaves.
────۶ৎ────
Ilya is not careful.
Not traditionally, and not now. In his defence, hockey is not a careful sport. It’s not fucking golf. It’s dangerous, and hard and tough. You fight. You get hurt. You keep playing. You break your hand and tape it up. You come back for the third. You keep playing. It’s expected. It’s part of it.
Play-off hockey is even grittier. It asks you: how bad do you want it? What will you do for it? What will you give? What will you endure? In a lot of ways, the play-offs are a race to the bottom where the last team standing - or, mostly standing, doing their best to - are the victors.
There’s a reason they say the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win in sports.
Ilya is not afraid to hurt - he’s pretty fucking used it, actually, in every sense - but he is running out of skin that isn’t some variation of blue, green and yellow. His bones are still heavy, but so is his entire body now. He feels like an arrow that has been loosed from a quiver but cannot find it’s target; is just reflecting off whatever appears in front of it, taking glancing blows and crashing off into something else.
It is so annoying that it’s Scott Hunter - literal dinosaur, fucking relic on ice, Scott Hunter - that finally gives him purchase.
────۶ৎ────
It’s game three, and Ilya is out for blood. He doesn’t particularly care whose blood it is but, as it turns out, Scott Hunter is the closest target.
Hunter isn’t really a fighter, but Ilya has to give it to him - whatever speed and skill the sands of time have ravaged from him have, evidently, been replaced by enough old man strength to match Ilya’s rage. By the time the refs pull them apart, Ilya can tell his ribs are broken by the feel, and three other scraps have started. The Admirals’ goalie is skating closer and closer to the centre line in wide, warning circles like a shark. There are two refs on Ilya, each holding one of his arms back. He feels for his teeth, which he thinks are all there, but his mouth is a little bit numb so who the hell knows? And who the hell really cares? Half his teeth are fake at this point anyway.
He spits. A red firework splays onto the ice and begins to bloom outwards, like a living thing. Warm red melting frozen white.
“Jesus Christ, Roz,” Hunter says, a few feet a way with a ref’s arm braced across his chest. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
Ilya stares. A lot, he thinks. Everything.
He feels the blood dripping off his lip - imagines it hitting the ice like a raindrop but the wrong colour. He suddenly feels very ashamed. It feels stupid, to be fighting Scott Hunter. Even stupider to not have an reason for why. Truthfully, Hunter had done nothing more egregious than be on ice at the same time as Ilya, and be sort of handsome, and be a little bit like America’s Shane Hollander.
Finally, words come out of Ilya’s mouth that must have been born there. He has no recollection of thinking them, or deciding to say them, but all of a sudden he is saying, “I’m disappointed. I heard you were good at hockey again.”
“Oh, fuck you, man-“ Hunter says, and lunges for him again.
Ilya is very lucky to not be tossed. If it wasn’t the playoffs, he’d have a five-minute major and a hearing tomorrow on Zoom. As it is, he gets four minutes in the box, from which he has a great view of the Admirals taking the lead after Hunter serves his two minutes, jumps out of the box, accepts an almost impossible pass and scores a goal so smoothly it looks fake. It’s directly Ilya’s fault, and will undoubtedly be on Best Plays reels for decades to come - so, that’s something else for Ilya to really look forward to. Everything’s coming up Ilya.
He’s not surprised when the Bears lose, but his whole bench looks a little like they're in disbelief. They file out wearing expressions like children who have just learned there is no Santa Claus.
Ilya lingers, and skates little figure eights before making his way over to the Admirals bench. Hunter is waiting by the gate like he always does, because he is a superstitious fuck and also probably gets off on being such a gentleman that he’s the last to leave the ice. He looks up warily as Ilya approaches but does not move.
Ilya, for his part, honestly isn’t sure what he’s doing. He stops, and looks at the bruise that’s developing like a little galaxy under Hunter’s eye. He looks at his collar, where there is blood. He wonders if it’s his, or Hunters. He sees that it weeps out into the fabric of the jersey like it had on the ice, edges of the stain softening and spreading.
“You good, Rozanov?” Hunter asks, voice pitched low so as not to be overheard. He ducks his head a little and peers at Ilya, like he actually really cares about the answer.
“I am sorry,” Ilya says, and smiles. The gesture reopens his split lip, and his tongue is flooded with an earthy, penny tang.
Hunter looks very much like he does not know where to put the apology, but he nods.
────۶ৎ────
Very late, that evening, looking out over the New York skyline, Ilya texts Shane:
who knew Hunter could fight? Maybe he learned in first world war?
He doesn't know why he sends it. He regrets it, immediately. But it doesn't matter, anyway.
Shane is silent, as ever.
────۶ৎ────
They lose the next one, too.
Scott Hunter got him good, that prehistorically ancient asshole, and it turns out Ilya was right about his ribs. They are fucked. He can barely bend over to get his skates on, let alone actually skate in them. He probably shouldn’t be playing, but it’s the Conference Final. He doesn’t suggest sitting and neither does anyone on the staff, and really, Ilya’s been playing in pain since the All Star break, since Shane, so what’s the difference?
It’s hockey. If Ilya can do one thing, it’s play fucking hockey.
So he does, but suddenly, they’re down three in a row, and they come close in the last game, but- no. They lose. It’s… shocking, honestly. Like, Ilya knows how it happened - vividly - but it’s still confusing, somehow. Ilya looks around at the celebrating fans and feels like he’s seeing everything for the first time. Like he’s had, he doesn’t know, noise cancelling headphones and dark sunglasses on for months and they’ve just been pulled off his head. Everything is bright, and loud, and he cannot believe that this is it. That there’s not another game or another chance. That he’s lost, again - that he fucked up again. That he still isn’t good enough of a player or a Captain or a person.
It’s not a terrible showing - they get beat by a single goal in the second overtime of a game that had been tight the whole time but who gives a fuck, really? Ilya’s father has always told him something that is more auspicious and threatening in Russian but basically amounts to the American sentiment if you’re not first, you’re last. His father can go fuck himself but on some occasions, such as this one, he is correct.
There is, as is tradition, a voicemail from his father, left before Ilya has even gotten through the entire handshake line. He sees it when he checks his phone after, but doesn’t bother listening to it before he deletes it. He’s been verbally lashed by his father enough times to get the general idea. He can see there’s some other messages, too - can see Svetlana’s name, but he doesn’t see Jane and even though he didn’t really expect to, something about it makes him power his phone off.
────۶ৎ────
The flight home feels like exactly what it is: going home to lick your wounds with your tail between your legs. Everyone is quiet, ashen-faced. It’s got the vibe of a dry wake.
He should say something, he knows. That’s what a Captain’s job is. He should yell, encourage them to get it out. He should give a rousing speech to give them hope. To light the fire of revenge in their belly so it can simmer all summer and they can all come run it back next year and win the whole damn thing.
He doesn’t have it in him. He’s tired.
To distract himself from yet another one of his shortcomings, he shoves his headphones on and watches a movie on the airplane screen called Isle of Dogs because he loves dogs and not because Shane had said he’d seen it and thought Ilya would like it, that first night in Florida, before.
Ilya likes it.
It is a stop-motion movie about all the dogs from a big city getting shipped out to Trash Island. The mayor - who is corrupt, Ilya clocks her immediately - says this is because they are spreading a virus but really, she prefers cats. A well-loved dog that belongs to a little boy meets a gang of rough-around-the-edges strays on Trash Island. Mountie Bear is inside of Ilya’s backpack and he doesn’t take him out, but he does hug his backpack to his chest, and no one gives him any sidelong glances about it.
Before Ilya knows it, he’s silently, but fiercely, crying because Chief, the main dog of Trash Island who Ilya has privately been identifying with, says: My friends think I like to fight but it's just not true. Sometimes I lose my temper and blow off a little steam, but I’ve never enjoyed it.
I'm not a violent dog, I don't know why I bite.
────۶ৎ────
Svetlana is already in his place in Boston when he gets in. Maybe she had texted that she would be, but he still hasn’t turned on his phone. But still, he’s not surprised to find her leaning a hip against the kitchen island, plating what is clearly Chinese take-out. When she hears him, she doesn’t say a word - just comes to him and wraps him fiercely in a hug.
His ribs ache from the grip of her arms. His face hurts where it’s pressed into her shoulder, and her shirt feels kind of wet, and - fuck, wait, did he open up a cut? Is he bleeding on her?
He tries to pull away to check, but she stops him with a gentle hand on the back of his head. It’s only then that he realizes that, of course, he is crying. Again. It’s like all he does anymore is fight and cry and lose things he really, really cares about.
The only word for the way she pulls him back into the crook of her neck is cradle. She cradles him. Her fingers thread gently through his curls, and her other hand rubs circles on his back just like his mama’s hand used to do, when he was a child and still had her. He wonders if he’d told Svetlana this at some point - if she’s doing it on purpose, or if its just an instinct that all women have for people they love.
Then he remembers Florida - remembers how terrified he was, and how panicked his voice sounded yelling at Shane, Because Russia! Because my father! He remembers crying, and the way Shane held him. It was different than the way Svetlana does, and different than the way his mama had, but only because Shane is as big as him and just as physically strong. The angles were different, but Shane had cradled him, too, with astonishing and devastating gentleness.
Ilya squeezes his eyes shut so hard they hurt.
────۶ৎ────
A few evenings later, Sveta asks about Ilya’s laptop and he tells her, from the kitchen where he’s (maybe too forcefully) chopping peppers that it’s in his road bag the door.
He hears her footsteps, following by a rustling, and then a groan so loud it’s almost theatrical.
“What the fuck is this.” It’s a question, technically, but the way she says it in English is completely flat. Like she’s so disgusted she can’t even bear to say it in Russian.
Ilya follows her voice to the living room, bare feet padding the tile. Svetlana is standing over his open pack, holding Mountie Bear away from herself like he’s unpleasant smelling left overs just discovered in the back of a fridge and not an adorable stuffed animal.
“He was a present from my rookie,” he says defensively.
“Ilya, this is a fucking cop bear.”
Ilya sniffs. “It is more ceremonial role. He is not an active duty officer. He’s just a bear, Sveta.”
“All cops are bastards, Ilyushka,” she says, like you should know this more than anyone, Son of a Cop, Brother of a Cop.
Ilya moves to snatch him back, but she twirls around and jumps on top of the couch, holding Mountie Bear even higher.
“Pretty desperate for a present from your rookie, aren’t you?” Her eyes are much too shrewd - expression far too wicked - for a woman playing keep away with a stuffed animal.
“Meaning?”
“Is this from ‘Jane’?”
Ilya immediately stops jostling her. He doesn’t answer, but glares.
“Ilya, if this is from Jane we are burning it.”
“You are not burning him, Sveta,” he demands. When she doesn’t move he sighs. “He’s not from Jane. And can we please not talk about fucking Jane?”
Svetlana still eyes Mountie Bear like he’s a leaking bag of trash, but she gives him to Ilya immediately. Still standing on the couch, she takes advantage of the height difference and leans forward to kiss Ilya’s forehead. When she pulls back, her eyes are concerned and searching.
“Yes, my oldest friend. We will not talk about fucking Jane.”
And they don’t. But, one night, lying awake beside a sleeping Svetlana, Ilya’s phone dings. He has it on again, but mostly connected to a charger in his room, like a landline that he can’t take around with him.
He fumbles with it, temporarily blinding himself during a struggle to turn the brightness down. He manages it, and blinks a few times to clear the sting and - well, and then his heart thumps so loud he’s afraid it might wake up Svetlana.
JANE: How are your ribs?
It dings again.
JANE: Sorry I didn’t reach out before. I’ve been doing a silent retreat thing at my cabin.
Ilya takes a deep breath.
LILY: fine. how is silence?
JANE: Fine.
JANE: Are you bummed?
Ilya can barely fucking believe it. Fucking Shane. So earnest. So fucking vague. Is Ilya bummed about what? About the worlds most embarrassing fight resulting in broken ribs? About his impending return to Moscow for the summer, after losing again? After not being good enough, again? Is Ilya bummed about Shane telling him they could still be friends, after breaking his heart - which, to be clear, Ilya doesn’t blame him for, but, still. Is he bummed Shane said they could be friends and then just going totally radio silent for months on end?
Christ.
LILY: about the cup?
JANE: Yeah.
LILY: what do u think?
Shane tells him his mother thinks it’s Scott Hunter’s year. Ilya thinks this too. It sure as fuck isn’t his.
The conversation is over as suddenly and strangely as it began. It takes awhile for Ilya to force himself to accept that no more messages are coming, at least this night. He eventually drifts off, but he sleeps fitfully. He wakes up cold and covered in his own sweat, with a throat that aches in a way that suggests he’s been yelling in his sleep. Svetlana doesn’t say anything about it. She just puts his sheets in the laundry while he’s in the shower and has the grace to look very busy on her laptop when he emerges into the living room.
“Final tonight,” she says.
“Fuckin’ Hunter,” he groans.
That night they sit beside each other on the couch and watch Scott Hunter win the cup and kiss a man at centre ice. Ilya cannot believe it. He is overjoyed. He is terrified. He is grieving - deeply, helplessly. He is hopeful. He is excited.
He keeps looking down at his phone. Should he message Shane? Surely Hollander is watching. Why isn’t he texting Ilya? He’s capable of it. He’d just done it the day before.
“You’re happy for him,” Svetlana accuses.
“I am happy Scott Hunter has cute, strong man to take care of him in old age,” Ilya says flippantly, like it doesn’t matter to him. Like his entire fucking worldview hasn’t just shifted. Like the whole planet hasn’t just tipped in a way he’s never even imagined.
Ilya keeps glancing at his phone, unlocking and locking it, until the ceremony is over and the talking heads come on. He doesn’t message Shane, and Shane doesn’t message him, and the moment passes.
────۶ৎ────
The night of the MHL awards, Scott Hunter wins the Hart and the Conn Smythe. Ilya will never, ever tell anyone, but he thinks Hunter deserves these both very much, and is sort of proud of him.
Scott Hunter gives a speech that is boring but defiant. He is gracious, and accepts his accolades with his signature, nauseating ‘aw, shucks, me?’ attitude, but what he does not do is back down. It’s very clear: Hunter will not be swept under the rug by the long broom of the MHL.
Ilya’s belly has been full of a fire made of nervous bravery since the Final, and Hunter’s speech stokes it. It’s how he, feeling a little reckless and a little giddy, (and, admittedly, a little nauseous) ends up at a local gay bar for Scott Hunter night.
When Scott sees him, he looks wary - like he’s worried Ilya might wail on him again. But he also doesn’t look totally surprised.
Ilya tries to sound normal when he says, “Wanted to see what Scott Hunter Night was. Is not as bad as it sounds.”
Hunter snorts, shakes his head. "Did you really come to a gay bar in Vegas just to make fun of me?”
Ilya didn’t, is the thing. He came to see… well, firstly, he wanted to see if he could come. If his feet would carry him to the door and then through it, and they have. He also came to see how it might feel. What it might be like to be in a gay bar. What it might feel like to be himself in one.
It’s a dangerous move. Anyone could see him, just like Hunter has. There could be pictures of it online at this very moment. It could ruin his life or end it, which sounds dramatic but then again, Russia is dramatic. But Ilya finds he just can’t care, because the lights are bright, and coloured, and they have made a kaleidoscope of the room. People are dancing, and laughing, and kissing, and no one looks worried about being seen doing any of it. The music is loud enough to make the baseline feel like a corporeal presence in Ilya’s chest and - well, it really seems to be doing a what no hit on the ice was able to achieve. It’s not like, a life-altering shift or anything, but the bass does knock a little bit of the sadness out of Ilya’s bones. Not all of it. Not even most of it. But definitely, it has an effect.
It’s a start.
“Is good,” Ilya tells Hunter. “What you did. It will be good for... others."
“I hope so,” says Hunter, and he smiles, tentatively, at Ilya.
Same, Ilya thinks. He hopes so, too.
Two days later, he flies back to Moscow.