Chapter Text
There’s a funny little feeling in Rose’s chest, every time her phone pings.
A moment of panic, maybe, before it’s overshadowed by something overwhelmingly giddy, a bubble of light that floats up and hovers where the hollow of her throat bobs when she swallows. Most of the time, the bubble pops as she scrolls through her notifications and opens an email from Natalie or a text from her mother or smears away a notice from Instagram that she’s been tagged in a photo.
But sometimes—not nearly often enough—the feeling fizzes up her throat and spills over her tongue in buttery sparks of excitement because it’s a text from Shane or Rozanov or it’s something in the groupchat, something that makes her heart race and her mind whirl helplessly. Sometimes Rose can’t help but laugh, fingers pressed to her mouth as she reads what they’ve sent.
This time, she isn’t laughing.
Rozanov’s sent a picture. A gym selfie. It feels like both a few weeks and full decade has passed since the first one he sent her in the beginning of all of this, the muscles in his biceps straining against the edges of the screen and his fingers parted over his tongue, slick and red. So much has changed since then. Some things haven’t. The curve of Rozanov’s shoulders tapering down to his arms still makes Rose’s teeth ache some kind of way. She feels a little less weird about wanting to bite him than she did however many months ago.
The café she’s currently the patron of—at Miles’ request, because Rose would never voluntarily brave a place that blew up on Instagram just three weeks ago—is playing some nasally Soundcloud rap laid over an uneven beat and it makes her pulse feel like it’s moving at the wrong rhythm, stumbling over the way her breath catches in her throat as her eyes trace over the damp lines of a black sleeveless top clinging to his body.
His legs are spread, bracketing the corners of the picture and reflecting in the mirror in front of him, like seeing hem of his shorts strain taut over the flex of his thighs once wasn’t nearly enough to torture Rose as she stands in line for coffee. She locks her phone for a moment, closing her eyes and blowing an exhale out in a steady, smooth stream of air.
Today 9:17 AM
Lily
You know you want.
i really don’t actually
“What can I get for you?” The barista asks, blissfully ignorant to the raging war happening inside Rose’s mind and body as she looks up blankly at a menu printed on the wall at least six feet above her head in the smallest font imaginable. The things she does for Miles.
Shane ♡
You should take it if he’s offering
Just saying
you are NOT HELPING!!!!
Shane ♡
Especially post workout
ISTG!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shane ♡
(*/ω＼)
Rose toys with the idea of continuing to be indignant for only a moment before settling for gently irritated; the barista gave her a free slice of coffee cake that is currently stuffed in her mouth, the Soundcloud rap has transitioned into something smoother with a nice, rolling beat, and she likes it too much when Shane doesn’t take himself so seriously. Talking with teenage girls—like his cousin—is clearly good for Shane, and she would suggest doing more of that if it wasn’t an objectively creepy sentence to say out loud.
okay lover boy
put that thing away
Lily
Who are you talking to?
There’s another photo from Ilya. It’s more dimly lit this time, but Rose can’t find it in herself to care when that same shitty locker room lighting is what’s highlighting the edges of his knuckles, flexed around where he’s gripping his hard cock through his shorts and Rose is suddenly, mortifyingly, dizzy.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, locking her phone and shoving it away so fast it slips past the seam of her pocket and clatters to the floor. Her face is bright red as she bends down to pick it up, she’s sure of it, and that should be enough to put her off checking her phone again, except Ilya’s texted her again and her cheeks are burning and it’s another—
---
Photos are always a big part of a girl’s life. Even more so for a girl who’s as online as Rose Landry. As famous as Rose Landry. As heavily stalked for pieces of her day-to-day life as Rose Landry.
A girl’s trip to Cancun is less day-to-day than usual, but she still has to have the photos to prove it. Thank God Tracy’s good at taking a thousand candid shots in five minutes so they can get that part of their lives out of the way and get to the stuff that really matters; stuffing themselves with ceviche and gossiping so loudly on the beach that eventually their laughs eventually reach the volume and intensity of a group of seagulls.
Rose is still smiling as she flicks through today’s batch of photos, body halfway melted into the mattress with a pillow cradling her chin as the tip of her tongue curls over her lip to chase the taste of tequila and salt. There’re a few good ones here that’ll definitely make the end-of-trip photo Instagram dump, a couple that are nice enough to send to the family—
Ah. Not that one.
Her bikini strap had snapped—and that’ll show Rose, still wearing the swimwear she bought from Target a decade ago. The top had fallen open, a few moments of cool ocean air against her chest before Rose had slapped her hand over herself with a shriek. She’s flashed Tracy a lot worse in the however many years they’ve known each other, so that’s hardly the problem here.
The problem is that Tracy is a little too fucking good at taking photos. It’s still a damn good one despite how her left tit is hanging out in the open, fingers halfway cupped over her chest in a lost effort to cover herself in that little frozen moment of time. The sky is spectacularly blue and Rose’s hair looks perfectly windswept, lips cherry red and the sharp angle of her nose framed against the clouds as she laughs and what the fuck, how is this one of the best photos of the day?
I should send this picture to Ilya Rozanov, the insane part of her brain volunteers cheerfully. Rose physically jerks back, an almost hysterical laugh spilling over her lips as she helplessly watches her fingers start to fiddle with cropping the photo, just enough that if something were to get leaked (again) then there could maybe be some plausible deniability…
Oh, who is she kidding? She would never be afforded that. She certainly wasn’t last time.
But she sends it to him anyway. Blames the fluttery feeling high in her throat and the buzzy fingertips as anxiety at sending something that could get her in trouble with Natalie as opposed to getting in trouble in another, completely different way that she maybe wants, just a little.
Rozanov responds within minutes.
Take it off.
maybe
are you capable of asking nicely?
Regardless of what Rozanov is capable of, Rose knows she’s not capable of sitting there and watching him type out his answer. She swipes away to her text thread with Shane, fingertips bumping against the screen in vain as she searches for a distraction.
is lily a tits man?
🙄
What do you think?
He’s said some stuff about yours
yeah?
Yeah so if you’re encouraging it
Your funeral
you make it sound like he’s going to maul me
As I said, your funeral
Rose scoffs, rolling onto her back as she clicks back into her text thread with Ilya. Like he could say anything that—
No, but I know how to ask dirty))
She feels herself swallow. Stops herself from reading the next message that he just sent, longer than the last. She does glance down at it, just for a second. This one doesn’t have any smiley faces attached to it.
Show me your pretty tits so I can think about where I am going to suck first
Fuck. The two margaritas Rose had after dinner hit her all at once, a shot of slick, burning heat that has her curling her toes and pressing the heels of her feet into the mattress. That what she blames it on. The alcohol and the arousal that makes her grind the back of her head into the sheets for a moment before fisting her fingers around the hem of her cami, knuckles dragging over the hot swell of her own tits—no bra, Rose’s on fucking vacation— as she pulls it up to her collarbone.
It’s the alcohol and arousal, not that tight, fluttery feeling deep in her stomach, beating hard up to her chest, that has Rose extending her arm and angling her phone down just enough to capture how her nipples have gone tight in the dim, hotel lighting, the shadowed valley between her tits, the mess of soft cotton bunched near her throat, her teeth digging into her bottom lip.
It’s the alcohol that’s making her feel jittery, that has her breath running high and fast as she presses send.
He takes so long to reply. But when he does—
Fuck
A voice message slips in after, an insurmountable 13 seconds. Rose presses her thighs together, so turned on she feels dizzy.
She presses play and—
---
Rose doesn’t consider herself a particularly masochistic person, normally, but the NYT Crossword is a painful exercise in realizing how little you know about the world and things like poker hands and types of salsa and sewing techniques; Rose has a 63-day streak, so maybe she’s a little fucked in the head.
She taps her fingernail against the phone screen, dimly aware of Shane and Ilya stretched out together on her screen via Skype as she considers how many human bones she actually knows the name of.
Ilya yawns. Tibia, Rose decides, tongue running over edges of her teeth as she pecks the letters in.
“Oh yeah,” she says suddenly, remembering, “Chris said he mailed those spice mixes that your mom asked for from Tokyo, they should be there by…early next week?”
“My mother and father both thank you,” Shane says vaguely from where he has his head buried in Ilya’s thigh. Ilya’s fingers drag through his hair slowly, gaze flicking across his phone screen as he scrolls with his other hand. “It’s nice of Chris to cover the cost of all the stuff he sends back for you.”
“Oh, no, this was a special case for your family. He normally holds my packages hostage until I Venmo him. Nine down, a non-alcoholic beer you can get in the air. Not from…Canada?”
“Schweppes,” Ilya and Shane say at the same time. Shane peers up, one eye squinting. “Canada Dry and Seagram’s are the only two major brands that are formerly Canadian. And why does Chris make you Venmo him, doesn’t he work for BMO or something? He can afford it.”
“There are more banks in the world than just the one your family uses,” Rose snorts as she pokes at her phone. The screen lights up pleasantly. “And he can, but he’s my brother, he’s obligated to torture me.”
“That seems cruel.”
“Is cruel to have older brother in general,” Ilya sighs. “You are so spoiled, only child.”
His fingers tighten over Shane’s hair. An answering noise filters over Rose’s laptop speakers and she freezes instinctively.
“Not—spoiled,” Shane huffs out, looking a lot less put-upon than he sounds as he peers up at Ilya. Ilya’s head tilts down, tongue flicking out to wet his lips, and Rose can feel the tension between them starting to stretch like warm taffy, sticky and pink.
“Very spoiled, зайка.”
Rose watches from under her lashes as Shane pushes himself up right as Ilya begins to pull himself down and their mouths crash together with a hungry, wet noise. They’re three time zones away but they’re still the reason air in her apartment is suddenly gone, the reason her lungs are flailing and her heart is pounding as her fingers hover uselessly over her crossword. Nine down. A triangle with two sides of equal or congruent length…
Her phone screen goes dark.
“Say it again, I dare you.”
“Shane—”
Shane’s head tilts over Ilya’s throat and Ilya groans, melting back against the couch. His eyelids droop half-closed, but she can still see his gaze watching her, mouth falling half-open on an exhale.
He makes an elaborate gesture with one hand, a gesture that Rose could charitably interpret as a demand for her to take her clothes off if she were ever the type of person to feel charitable in Ilya Ilya’s presence. Instead, she blinks guilelessly at the screen, watching as Shane straddles Ilya with all the fervor of an animal trying desperately to maul every inch of skin available to him.
Ilya’s grunts as Shane’s elbow bends, shoulder shifting just so. Rose props her chin up in her palm as she grins.
“Was there something you wanted?”
Shane laughs, delighted. Ilya’s fingers twist in Shane’s hair with a low growl, fingers slipping under Shane’s shirt to pinch his ribs and send him squirming.
“Rude,” Shane gasps even as his head twists toward Rose, a conspiratorial smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “You should ask nicely.”
“You are both very annoying,” Ilya huffs. “We give you show, yes? This is—” He continues in Russian, words that make Shane visibly freeze onscreen as he cocks his head, trying to parse with what Rose knows to be his limited—but rapidly growing—vocabulary.
“Price of admission?” Shane says carefully after a few moments.
Ilya’s nose wrinkles. “Sure,” he says, brow furrowing the way it does when the translation isn’t quite one-to-one and he’s processing a new arrangement of words, and it’s fucking insane that Rose knows what that expression looks like. There’s that tight, fluttery feeling in her chest again, crawling higher up her throat and completely at odds with the thrum of her pulse between her legs, hot and slick, and the only way Rose can think to distract herself from it is to give Ilya what he wants, curling her fingers into the worn cotton of her oversized t-shirt to pull up and—
---
It hits Rose mid-bite of her salad. While on-set, no less.
Lettuce, hard-boiled egg, bleu cheese, tomato, and Jesus fucking Christ, Rose Landry has a crush.
This isn’t—it’s not a game anymore, is it? With her and Ilya and Shane too, but it’s different with Shane, so different because she’s not a romantic attraction to him but something else, something safe, and there’s not a single thing about Ilya that’s safe and—
She likes him. A lot.
Rose has a fucking crush on Ilya Rozanov.
She pulls her fork from her mouth, blinking down at her knees.
Shit.
---
Rose doesn’t really know or really care who her mind unconsciously chooses to call until Michael picks up on the third ring and…she’s admittedly a little conflicted about this choice.
“Yeah?”
“I have a problem,” Rose opens with because there’s really nothing else that can encompass the everything that is wrong with her feelings. “A really fucking big problem.”
“Are you in any immediate danger?”
“What? No—”
“Do you owe people money?”
“No?
“Then it’s not an emergency,” Michael says slowly. “Why are you calling me?”
Rose pinches her nose hard. It has to be genetic. There’s something wrong with the entire Landry line, it all needs to go into the dumpster ASAP.
“Okay, well, I was hoping you’d be helpful or something, but clearly you’re not interested in doing that,” she hisses, and Michael laughs flatly, the way he always does when he thinks she’s being a little brat.
“If you wanted someone nice, you should have called Chris.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Then do it,” he says. She can hear his eye roll. “Go cry to him or whatever, I have things to do.”
“No you don’t,” Rose shoots back immediately because she doesn’t know how else to ask for the help she needs except by clawing for it, digging her nails in and leaving swollen, red trails in everything she reaches for. It’s how she learned to survive. And it’s served her well.
But now she’s reaching for something she’s not allowed to leave marks in, even if Ilya Rozanov seems to be extending his arm for her to grab. He seems to be reaching for her too, ready to scratch back just as hard. Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it is a game for him; he has Shane and he has hockey and he has an entire life, full and complete without Rose coming in to fuck things up to high hell. Maybe this is just Rose being stupid again, looking at things she wants and thinking she can have them when in reality there’s a thick pane of glass that keeps her out and all she can do is press her hands flat to that cool, clear wall and wish and want and—
“Fuck,” Rose snaps, more to herself than anything as she starts to pace a tight line between the bed and dresser of her hotel room. “I like this g—someone. I’m really into someone right now.”
“Okay? Huzzah I guess? This has never been a problem before.”
“Well it’s a problem now.”
“Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Okay,” he says, distinctly unimpressed. “Is there something wrong with him?”
“Not with him, but there’s like this huge problem with the whole”—he’s my ex’s boyfriend and I’m having sex with both of them even though my ex is very gay and that’s not even covering how they are both closeted and also world-class hockey players and— "I can’t.”
Rose can practically hear her brother squinting. “Don’t tell me this is that weird right-wing podcast guy that was trying to get you to go on a date with him—”
“No,” Rose says, shaking her head so hard her vision spins for a second. “Jesus no, not him, it’s not a politics thing.”
“This call is turning into 20 questions and it’s stupid as fuck.” Michael sighs. “If it’s not politics then what? PR? Homewrecking? You met Pierce Brosnan or whatever and accidently told him you spent your pre-teen years jacking off to Goldeneye?”
“That would still be homewrecking, he’s married,” she says weakly. “And I can’t tell you, it’s not—I’m not allowed to.”
“PR then? Seriously, what’s the point of asking me for help if you can’t even tell me what’s going on?”
Rose wishes she knew. She’s not always informed of the reason behind her own actions. Sometimes she just does things without thinking.
Like sending photos of her fingers, her body, random slices of her life. Like listening to audio messages and calling back, always calling back. Like watching Shane and Ilya fuck and liking it and wanting to—
“I don’t know,” Rose says, feeling herself grow shriller. “I don’t ever know what I’m doing, so why the hell would I know why I’m calling you?”
“Jesus, Rosie,” Michael sighs like the annoyed older brother he is. “Just—don’t do stupid things. Or do them, what do I care. I’m not Mom.”
“Mikey—"
“Don’t ‘Mikey’ me,” he snaps, and so Rose goes for the next best option.
“Michael Peter Landry—"
“You are so annoying,” he interrupts irritably. She half expects the call to end right there and then—Michael doesn’t have the patience for these kinds of things. But he stays on, the silence buzzing quietly between them. It beckons accusingly. You have to give something to get something.
“It’s just…so complicated,” she settles on after a moment, and it’s the completely wrong way to start but Rose doesn’t know where else to begin. “It shouldn’t work for so many reasons but it does and it’s…it’s almost not worth it, for how much harder it makes everything, and it’s still hard right now but—but I want to keep doing this with them. I don’t know how to go back to how it was before. I can’t go back to how it was before.”
She’s dimly aware of the slip, but she can’t take it back. The silence lingers between them.
“Pandora’s box, huh,” Michael says after a few moments, and Rose feels herself letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
“Yeah.”
“Multiple people?”
Rose groans, burying her face in her hands. “Believe me, that’s not even the weirdest part.”
“You always liked breaking the mold,” he says with a laugh, the sound tapering off into a thoughtful noise. “Look, you won’t tell me anything and I don’t know enough to even begin to know how to advise you. So I’m not gonna try. But I do know that you have no problem recognizing what you want, even if you moan and groan about it forever. And if you want it bad enough, you’re going to make it work.”
“What if they don’t want it to happen?” Even saying the words feels wrong. The idea that Shane might stop replying, that Ilya will stop texting her out of the blue. No more photos, no more calls, no more reasons for her to scour MLH Updates for news on how many goals they scored, no more reason to feel an excited little jolt when Montréal or Ottawa gets mentioned as a potential filming location—
Rose can’t think about it. It makes her feel nauseous.
“Sometimes things just don’t work out,” Michael says after a long pause, and Rose remembers, suddenly, how he’d ended the longest relationship he’d ever had just last year, a decision that was looked to everyone like it was made overnight. Seven years, down the drain like that. He never talks about it, ever the tight-lipped, hard-eyed, serious brother she grew up with. But sometimes Rose catches a glimpse of him, cold winter sunlight slanting over his cheek, mid-conversation at the dinner table, lip curled up at the end of a tough scrim, and she realizes how much he’s grown. How much he pretends not to feel. How much he holds inside himself, will probably hold inside himself for the rest of his life because that’s just the kind of person he is.
Rose isn’t like that, not at all. She’s never been restrained or cool or calm because there’s always been this burning fire inside her, the part that snaps back and laughs too loud and lives through everything with bright eyes and too many exclamation points at the ends of her texts, and how could she ever hope to make it through something as stiff and banal as “it just didn’t work out”—
“But sometimes they do,” Michael says, like he can hear where her thoughts are shifting, the current in an ever-swirling stream. “And you’re not gonna find out by just complaining about it over the phone to me.”
She laughs. It sounds hollow to her own ears. “What if I’m scared?”
“You should be.”
“Do you have any brotherly advice for that?
“Don’t be,” he deadpans. Rose rolls her eyes so hard she’s sure it’s audible halfway across the country.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Always a pleasure being helpful,” he says, enough of a lie that she has to let out a snort. Except it’s not a lie, not really; Rose does feel better. Maybe not prepared, but a little…lighter, at least, knowing she’s not completely alone.
“Thanks Mikey. I love you.”
“I know.”
“Fuck off, you’re not Han Solo, so now you have to say it back.”
“Nope—”
“Say it back to me!” She whines into the phone, except the call ends with two mournful beeps and Rose is left staring at the last message Shane sent in the groupchat, a selfie of Shane shoveling ramen into his mouth as Ilya very carefully holds a singular noodle in his shaky chopsticks grip.
It’s a funny picture. Rose wants to save it, wants to make it Ilya’s contact photo and then make it her wallpaper. Or maybe the photo Ilya sent last month would be a better wallpaper, Shane fast asleep and curled up against his chest as Ilya’s bright blue eyes peered sleepily up at the camera from behind the desperate mess of Shane’s hair.
Except that photo doesn’t exist in the chat anymore, the same way this one will disappear in the next 24 hours. It’s the unspoken rule that whoever sends the image is responsible for deleting it, should they see fit. Shane is meticulous about this, Ilya less so. Either way, the pieces of their lives that they share are only temporary. There’s no proof that any of this ever happened except for the memory of heat and laughter and a million other tiny moments that Rose can only rely on her own brain for. That’s not—she can’t live like that. None of them should have to live like that.
She has the words fully typed out, “can we talk about something?” looking up innocently at her from the screen as her thumbs hover over the keyboard. It would be so easy to press send. It’s supposed to be the easiest thing in the world, the way every step to this point has felt easy.
Rose sucks in a breath.
She presses her thumb down, backspacing the text one painstaking letter at a time until there’s nothing left to send.
It’s not the right time yet, Rose decides as she locks her phone, tossing it on the bed before digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. She’ll know when the time is right.
Right?
---
Rose isn’t even watching the game on TV, really, more concerned with flipping through the novel she’s inevitably going to be asked about for her interview with DAZED tomorrow. It’s really her fault for leaving this so late, it’s been on her reading list for three months now and it’s not a hard read, not at all, but something about books like this just feels like pulling teeth—
Something pulls her away from the pages, right in time to watch someone on Ottawa’s side take a nasty hit, body sprawling onto the ice before slamming into one of the goal posts. Ouch.
Rose blinks, brow furrowing as he doesn’t move. The other players start to flit around like anxious moths and she can’t figure out why, but something starts to build, tight and hot at the base of her lungs.
The replay starts.
She catches a flash of his jersey’s number right before another player crashes into him.
81.
Fuck, oh fuck.
Ilya Rozanov goes face-first into the ice, and Rose watches in slow fucking motion as his body holds in half over the post, head snapping forward like a limp doll. She dives for the remote, fingers shaking as she shoves the volume up higher—
“—went hard into the post, he is not moving at all and this is a very scary situation for the Centaurs, to see their captain Ilya Rozanov take a brutal hit like that. We see…yeah, we can see Hayes coming in to protect Rozanov from the fight that’s breaking out next to them, everyone ready to come to their captain’s defense against Mueller, who just got out of the box.”
“I think we may have a twitch of his arm there, Ottawa’s trainer is on the scene and working on Rozanov now, but any movement is better than the alternative because that was not easy to watch, can’t even imagine how it must have felt to—”
Rose’s phone is in her hand, manager on speed dial before she’s even consciously aware of it.
“Natalie,” she says, bowling over her greeting, “Natalie, I have a “no questions asked” request and it’s really fucking urgent, I need a flight to—to Pittsburgh right now.”
“Done,” she says without a second wasted, and they literally made this system for moments like these, but Rose can feel something welling up in her, a gratefulness for being taken so seriously so quickly. She can sob about it later; right now she has a plane to catch.
It isn’t until Rose slips into Ilya’s hospital room, fresh off a direct flight from LAX to PIT (she’s still not sure how Natalie made that happen, flights like that shouldn’t technically exist), takeout bag from a trendy salad and grain bowl mix sort of place that was somehow still open and disturbingly generous with their protein portions in one hand and her overnight duffel hiked over her other shoulder, that it really occurs to her how someone more normal would have like, texted or something before flying cross-country.
The room is blessedly empty except for Shane—thank fuck he caught a flight—hunched over in a chair next to Ilya’s bed as he says without looking up, “his blood pressure is lower than it was when you checked four minutes ago, is there any way we can do something about that?”
It’s not normal in the slightest. But Rose feels something uncoil in her chest, being in the same room as the two of them, and she decides that none of it matters because nothing any of them have done has ever been fucking normal, has it?
“Um,” Rose says eloquently, watching Shane’s head snap up so fast she’s surprised his neck doesn’t crack. “Surprise?”
“What the fuck, Rosie,” Shane croaks, chair legs shrieking against the linoleum as he pushes it back to cross the room in three long steps and crush her in a hug. “How?”
“I saw,” she says, gesturing uselessly with the hand holding the takeout bag. “…it on TV, booked a flight, and kind of blacked out after that, I think. Also I have dinner.” Something clicks in her brain and she turns, body still pressed in a tight line against Shane as she looks at the source of all of their current problems. “How is he?”
The man in question looks like complete shit. The shock of bruising across Ilya’s face feels wrong, looks even worse against his already pale skin and the unoffensively patterned hospital gown they have him in. Rose feels her lips press together as she takes in the sling cradling his left arm, gaze sliding up until she sees him squinting one eye suspiciously at her.
“Отлично. Как видиш.”
“You’ve definitely looked better,” Rose tries to scoff, except it comes out breathless and a little scared as she steps to the side of his bed. There’s this weird prickling at the tips of her fingers, some strange urge to touch him and make sure that he’s actually here and alive, except her hand can’t decide whether it should reach up to feel where his curls have gone limp in the dry hospital air or if it should cradle his jaw or whether touching Ilya Rozanov at all is just too intimate, too familiar for them—and Jesus Christ, it’s hitting Rose now that they’ve never actually met in-person before, have they?
Except her hand seems to have moved without express permission from her brain at this point, palm touching his cheek as her thumb grazes lightly over the delicate, bruised skin under his eyes, across his nose.
“Does it hurt?”
Ilya’s eyes are so strikingly blue, focused hard on her despite how she can see the painkillers dulling the edges of him.
“да,” he rasps, “hurts very bad, will never recover.”
“Don’t listen to him, they’ve got him on the good stuff,” Shane says so easily that she can tell it’s the phrase he’s been soothing himself with for however long he’s been sitting at Ilya’s side. The way his voice wobbles in the middle betrays him.
“I’m sure they do, we’d never hear the end of it otherwise.” She lets her fingertips ghost down Ilya’s cheek, stubble prickling her skin, before she pulls away. “What’s the damage? Other than the usual.”
“3 cracked ribs and a hell of a concussion. His shoulder was dislocated but they popped it back in when he first came in.”
Rose nods her head to the side as she wrestles her thoughts into something smooth and logical that she can manage easily. For the both of them.
“Nothing permanent then, as long as he’s good with his concussion recovery. Which you will be, right?” Rose prompts expectantly, brow raising. Ilya’s eyelids flutter half-closed, only a sliver of his eyes peeking up at her as the corner of his mouth slouches down.
“Я тебя не слушаю.”
“Mm. Not like Ottawa really had a shot at playoffs this year anyway, did they?”
That prompts a lazy middle finger for her. Rose scoffs, forcing herself to turn away to look at Shane.
“He’ll be fine. Have you eaten?”
It’s only by experience that Rose knows how much food she needs to get Shane to eat before his body will relax just enough to be pliable. From there, it’s just a matter of getting Shane to distract himself, rambling incessantly about concussion statistics as she tips him over onto the tiny couch with a blanket over his shoulders. He’s out like a light in less than 30 seconds.
“Глубоко впечатляет.”
And then it’s just her and Ilya.
She turns to watch him, but he doesn’t say more. His eyes are half-closed again, face slack enough that he might be dozing. Rose takes Shane’s chair, tucking her legs crisscross as she prepares to take vigil.
Shane’s probably called Yuna and David by now. They’re probably on their way, which is good because Shane has a game tomorrow and Natalie already texted the return flight information over because there’s a premiere Rose can’t miss—
It feels dumb. Ilya’s fine. Safe in the hospital. Nothing bad will happen. Why does she even fucking care?
Rose bends over, forehead pressing to the sheets.
She fucking hates the hospital. Hates how it smells, how it feels. How clean everything is, white and crisp and an overall soulless place to die. And it’s an even shittier place to watch people die, though every place is a shitty place but it’s worse here because it’s supposed to happen and you’re supposed to be ready but you never are—
There’s a sudden pressure over the back of her head, warm and heavy against her hair.
Rose freezes.
The seconds tick by. She sucks a shaky breath in and the fingers in her hair flex, ever so slightly.
Rose tilts her head, slow enough that the weight moves with her. Ilya’s palm slides, gravity pulling it to nestle in the valley of the back of her neck as Rose rests her cheek against the sheets.
She blinks up as Ilya peers down on her. There’s a deep crease in his forehead, mouth pulled down in a little frown as his eyes slowly drag over her face.
He’s never looked at her like this before. Probably never really looks at anyone like this except Shane, and it’s in that moment that Rose realizes how much of Ilya Rozanov is built on the idea that he doesn’t care. That he doesn’t listen or look hard enough or really try; all of him is supposed to be effortless, especially the sharper parts that slice over the ice and under people’s skin.
But he’s trying now. His brow is furrowed and she can see he’s struggling to focus through the painkillers as he looks at her, as his jaw works despite how he doesn’t open his mouth. He’s trying and he’s trying for Rose and it makes something tighten in her chest, bubbling up throat like a sob or a laugh or just…something.
I’m not supposed to care about you this much, am I?
The words sit there on the tip of her tongue, pressing against the backs of her teeth. She doesn’t let them fly loose. Rose lets her fingers creep back instead, covering the broad fingers still cupped over the back of her neck.
“I’m not an idiot,” Rose murmurs instead, letting her eyes flutter closed. Her fingertips find where his skin has gone dry around his thumbnail; she should have some lotion in her bag somewhere. “I know you’re a hockey player and that injuries like this come with the package.”
His fingers tighten over the back of her neck again, a gentle press.
“But I wanna be selfish for a second. Promise me you won’t do this again.”
She props herself up with one hand, feeling Ilya’s hand slide down her shoulder.
“At least do it for Shane.”
“Попробую ради вас обоих,” he says, gaze flicking up slowly to drag over her face before stumbling back down again. His fingers are toying with the ends of her hair, twirling the limp strands around his fingers over and over. Rose knows she’s due for a trim—she has so many split ends it’s ridiculous—but she’s been thinking about letting it grow out more.
“Thank you,” she says primly instead of blurting out something holistically stupid like, “would you like my hair more if I let it go longer?”. But what comes out next isn’t much better really.
“It’s weird, right? That this is the first time we’ve met in-person?”
Ilya’s gaze crawls back up to her face again. His fingers stop twisting over her hair, thumb instead pressing into her chin as he clumsily tips her face up to look directly at him. His grip is surprisingly strong for how lax the rest of his body is, eyelids drooping half-closed even as he scans her face intently.
“Чёрт,” he mutters, a soft exhale pushing through his nose as he closes his eyes and tips his head back on the pillow. Rose feels an answering exhale tumble from her mouth, like his gaze was pinning her in place, frozen. “Так ты ещё красивее.”
Rose leans forward slightly, trying to catch more. But all Ilya gives her is the soft, sleep-even breathing rhythm of someone who has finally succumbed to the all-powerful effects of the morphine being shot directly into his veins.
And as Rose sits there, in a Pittsburgh hospital room with the dry air of the airplane still clinging to her clothes and the smell of antiseptic trying to crawl up her nose, a strange sense of calm sweeps over her, the same type that smooths easily over the panicked dread of realizing that you fucked up and the peace of knowing that there’s really nothing that can be done about it.
It was always going to turn out this way, Rose decides as she reaches up to brush her knuckles down the line of Ilya’s jaw, holding his face gently between her fingers before she pulls away. She cares so deeply about Shane, of course some of it would extend to Ilya. And of course Ilya would make the most of it, the same way he angles his stick to coax the puck exactly where he wants it to go.
It so happens that Rose is a shit goalie. She’s standing in the crease of her heart, completely upright, stick loose in her hand as she watches Shane and Ilya skate by and sink puck after puck into the net she’s supposed to be defending.
Maybe the problem is that at this point, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
---
“Centaurs Captain Ilya Rozanov Returns to the Ice”
Roger Mendoza, The Canadian Press· Posted: May 29, 2019 11:01 AM PDT
Centaurs captain Ilya Rozanov is back on the ice after the longest long-term injury reserve period in his storied career. Emerging from the March 17th game against the Calgary Fire with a dislocated shoulder, 3 cracked ribs (and a few more bruised ones) along with a concussion, Rozanov scared more than just his fans with the extended time off. According to sources in the MLH, there were more than a few whispers about whether Rozanov could come back from this and still keep up the same caliber of brutally intense, sharp hockey that he excels so well in.
Rozanov’s untimely break didn’t bode well for the Centaurs and their playoff plans; Ottawa ended the regular season with 94 points, just shy of the of the cutoff. When I asked Rozanov if there was a way the Centaurs could have eked out just one more point in his absence, he just shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not, I do not know everything. Most important is I get injured, I get better, we do better next year,” says the captain, fresh off his first team practice in nearly 3 months. The break doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all. In fact, he looks ready to jump into the 2019-2020 season already, despite the fact that the Stanley Cup has yet to be won in the final few playoff matches.
The Cup may be there year after year, but player rosters change. Injuries happen, and they get worse sometimes. Is Rozanov worried that so much time off in the face of such intense injuries will impact his performance in the coming seasons?
“You are secretly hoping, yes?” he says with a laugh. “What do Americans say, keep on dreaming? Summer camp begins soon, and we have good rookies. No time to slow down.”
And then Ilya Rozanov does something I’ve never really seen him do genuinely. He smiles.
“I am doing better and I am grateful to people who come and check on me, who flew in and make sure I was okay. I will do better in upcoming season. All of Ottawa will.”
---
MLH Stanley Cup Final – Wednesday, June 12
Today at 5:00 PM; Enterprise Center
Montréal Metros at St. Louis Sky
>Click here to buy tickets<
---
im gonna throw up
You are lying.
im not lying im seriously going to pass out
what the FUCK is going on with the metros did you see that line change???
the puck is going all over the place
this is hockey not fucking hot potato
They will win.
it's tied up 2-2
theres 9 minutes left
Yes I can read clock also.
we are not gonna fucking make it
Who is this we?
Are you going to put on pads and go onto ice?
I FUCKING MIGHT
IF MEIER MISSES THAT SHIT ONE MORE TIME I SWEAR
Does not matter.
Shane will win this.
He has to.
im gonna have a fucking heart attack
You will not.
St. Louis d men are slowing down.
Getting sleepy.
drapeau cannot keep this up
he looks exhausted
I would also be if I had to play
What do you call this?
Snoozefest?
5 min i cant watch
You can.
i cant im gonna go stare at the wall now
lmk when its over
Incoming call from: Lily
“I’m seriously going to throw up,” is what Rose answers the phone with, fingertips pressed to her mouth as she watches St. Louis’s center smack the puck just three centimeters shy of the net. “Either that or I’m going to die from stress.”
“You are very dramatic,” Ilya says tersely.
“Yes, I am an actress, it’s my job to be dramati—oh my God,” she gasps as she watches Shane slam into the boards, tumbling down onto the ice. “Please be okay, do not be injured please please—”
“He is fine, look,” Ilya says, and Rose is kind enough not to point out how she can hear his voice shake, just a little, as Shane pushes himself up with an unsteady arm, shaking his head at his teammates. “He is fine, he will win faceoff.”
“The Metros look like they want to tear St. Louis apart. They just need to do it fast.”
The puck ricochets around the St. Louis net, trapped against the boards in a scrum. “3 minutes,” she says to Ilya’s answering grunt, and that’s when she knows it’s down to the wire because he would never pass up a chance to make fun of her for stating something so obvious.
There’s a cute little scuffle in the Metros’ d-zone and then Gondouin makes a break for it, tearing down the ice with the puck just barely kissing his stick as he shoves it forward. There’s a St. Louis enforcer hot on his heels, a generous two seconds away from a tripping penalty, so Gondouin flicks it out of reach except now the puck is in the air, free falling with no one to take it—
Shane’s stick catches the puck like it was born there, expertly pouring it onto the ice as he edges closer to the St. Louis goal. They’ve got 2 defensemen on Shane because they’re not idiots, they know what he’s going to do except they don’t, they have no idea what’s happening as Shane hits a deep edge seven feet from the net and then turns, stick curling protectively around the puck before his arm cocks and he sweeps it towards the goal in a sharp, elegant backhand.
It sinks in beautifully. Top left, like it was pulled in by a magnetic force.
Rose might be screaming.
“Oh my God!”
She can hear a jumbled stream of Russian in her ear, can imagine Ilya jumping up from the couch—or maybe he was already standing?—to punch the air in excitement. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!”
“Three minutes left, they can hold, they will not lose this,” Ilya says. “They will win Cup.”
“This will be—”
“Shane’s third, yes,” Ilya says breathlessly, and they watch in mutually anticipatory silence as the Metros wear down the clock, all the way to the last 15 seconds where Shane rockets a shot right into Hayden Pike’s stick, easy enough for Pike to feint left before slipping it through the miniscule gap between Hoffman’s leg and the goalpost.
The stadium explodes. The buzzer sounds, and then the Metros turn into an indistinguishable pile of blue-red uniforms on the ice; it’s impossible to pick Shane out until they’re handing him the Cup and he’s raising it above his head, face split on a grin so wide his cheeks are bunching up the way they did in the baby photos Yuna sent her digital scans of last year. He looks so fucking happy.
Rose definitely cries.
---
Today 7:52 PM
YOU ARE A FUCKING STAR SHANE HOLLANDER!!!!
I AM SO SO PROUD!!!!!!
STANLEY CUP CHAMPION x3!!!
Shane ♡
Thank you
I’m so overwhelmed rn
But thank you
I’ll call you when this has all died down
Lily
Saturday still okay?
Shane ♡
Yes please
you two aren’t gonna call until saturday?
:((((
Lily
No, we will be at cottage by Saturday.
We will call later tonight.
You are free?
like
free for a normal call or should i be charging my vibrator
Lily
No vibrator.
Just hands tonight.
Well if I am feeling generous, maybe you get your hands.
I give you time to think how you can convince me.
fuck
Shane ♡
Fuck
---
Attrition’s festival premiere goes really fucking well. The audience reception is good and there’s a normal amount of clapping—there’s a reason they chose Toronto over Venice. But all in all, the feedback is as expected; Attrition is an artistically sharp and simultaneously emotional film that will resonate with a wide range of audiences and hopefully make some money. Relief is the primary emotion that Rose feels as she walks out of the theater.
Except then, two days later, Attrition is announced as the winner of the 2019 People’s Choice Award and Rose feels distinctly like she’s taken a massive blow to the side of the head as she walks up on stage with the core cast and crew and tries her best not to burst into tears in front of however many thousands of people she needs to look good in front of because this now means they actually might have a fighting chance for a Golden Globe and maybe even a fucking Oscar this year and, fuck, she’s really going to start sobbing. Luckily Tarsem handles the speech and only asks for a rallying “thank you!” to be shouted into the mic by the group before they’re hustled offstage. Justin’s gripping her hand hard the entire time; they’re both fucking shaking.
Two photoshoots, one afterparty, and one much-needed vending machine pack of sour Skittles later, Rose finally braves the warzone that is her phone notifications. Family texts of congratulations first, and then emails from Natalie about upcoming changes in her schedule, and then a couple notes from her team about some hair appointments and cosmetic stuff she’ll have to worry about during awards season, a new slew of interviews in light of the TIFF award, and—
Fuck it. None of these are the people she wants to be talking to.
Today 1:34 AM
tiff went really well
we won the people’s choice???
Shane ♡
Holy shit
That’s amazing!
You deserve all of it and more. Really proud of you Rosie
im in fucking shock rn
jesus
really excited for both of you to see it
theater release won’t be for awhile tho
god im so out of it i wanna sleep for ten years
Lily
Rest for what? You fly to Canada to watch movie.
i'm in the fucking movie
Lily
You filmed this so long ago, you are old lady now.
i just won an award be nice to me
Lily
Is team award, yes?
He’s so good at it. So fucking good at it, it still makes her blood simmer beneath her skin, and Rose knows that so much has changed only because she doesn’t roll her eyes and toss her phone on the bed to ignore it all. She keeps typing.
shut up
look i just spent the whole weekend working hard looking good for everyone
so be nice to me
And it’s supposed to be joking. Playful. The right kind of teasing.
Rose Landry is fun, right? Flirty and cool and a chill person to work with, hang out with, have sex with.
please
Fun, flirty, famous people like Rose Landry already have so much. People like that aren’t supposed to want more.
i just
But Rose is hungry.
im in toronto. could meet in montreal or ottawa
So, so hungry it aches in her, like a hole deep into the hollows of her bones that she can’t seem to stuff with enough scripts and designer clothing and good food and sexy text messages into to fill it up. The hole shouldn’t be there. She has so much. It shouldn’t be there.
its totally okay if youre busy but lmk
i can book tickets, whatever is easier for the two of you!
Shane ♡
Rose
Rose nearly drops her phone at Shane’s text. She’d forgotten, for a few stupid moments, that she was texting people who can read what she’s writing. Who could see how badly she wants what she can’t have.
“Dammit,” she hisses, digging the heel of her hand into her right eye and grinding it in hard against the pressure she can feel building up. “Get a fucking grip.”
She also remembers, too late, that her face is still caked in makeup. It feels like a cowardly escape, to leave her phone behind as she rushes to the bathroom to swipe everything all off with the small mountain amount of makeup wipes piling up around the sink. Her face still feels grimy despite the sharp tingle of cleaning solution sitting over her skin, scrubbed raw and pink, as she approaches her phone warily, like the screen will bite at her fingers as she unlocks it.
Shane ♡
Of course we can meet
@Lily I know you have a game today but you’re free Friday?
There’s no such thing as a makeup-removing equivalent of post-nut clarity, but Rose is now a firm believer in its existence as she feels a cold wave of something like regret pour over her body, dripping in rivulets down her arms and chest as she types so fast it feels like her thumbs are flying.
shit sorry i didnt even check the game schedule before asking
im sorry, that was a silly request ik youre both really busy
we can meet some other time
im sure ill be in canada again soon haha
Lily
You think this is cute, pretending you are so easy?
The cold wave runs deeper. It turns her blood to ice.
whats that supposed to mean
im trying to be considerate
i shouldnt spring this on both of you so last minute
Lily
You are honorary Canadian? Hide everything in polite sorry and thank you?
Or you think you are sexier if you are so easy and flexible and small?
Is stupid when people lie about what they want.
If you want then fucking ask.
Just ask. It sounds so easy. It’s never that fucking easy.
If she really wanted to, Rose could look back on every single point in this entire fucked up journey and rationalize her way out of any of them. Every concession she made, everything she did with Ilya was for Shane. Everything she did with them was for fun. No strings attached. Easy.
Asking like this means it’s not just for fun. Asking like this means there are stakes. Asking means that she might hear “no” and Rose is a big girl, she can handle “no”, but it’s so much easier to pretend that “no” doesn’t exist, that this is all just because of the coincidence of being in the same city occasionally, the convenience of opening her phone and seeing a text and just responding, the ease of answering the phone and touching herself and laughing and wanting more and—
Shane ♡
It’s just us, Rosie. It’s okay
Rose is weak. She plays pretend for a living, but when it comes to her own life, the façade crumbles.
can i visit you both before i leave canada?
Lily
Why?
Is this what dogs feel like, begging to be loved? Is this what it feels like, to want so badly that you’re willing to put yourself on your knees and bare your throat and hope the blade pressing against your skin doesn’t shake, doesn’t slip?
It takes everything in Rose to put her fingers to the screen, one aching letter at a time.
i miss you both
and i want to see you now
There’s more typed out, ready to send with shaking fingers, except—
Incoming call from: Shane ♡
She pulls the phone to her ear in a daze.
“Good,” is the first thing she hears, Ilya’s voice low and approving. “Very good, Rose.”
She shivers.
“Thank you for telling us that,” Shane adds, earnestly warm. “I know we’ve been kinda, uh, dancing around all of this, but we miss you too. Let’s meet in Montreal, I just have practice to work around so I can pick you up from the airport whenever you land, okay?”
“Okay,” Rose says, feeling shaky and weak and not very much like herself at all.
“I have game tonight and Friday optional skate,” Ilya says. “I will text with plans.”
“Okay.”
There’s an uneasy pause. “Alright, Rosie?”
“I think,” Rose says softly, numbly looking down at where her hand is shaking as her breath catches high in her throat, “I think I’m crashing.”
There’s relief somewhere in there, squashed between the rapidly deflating pressure of the premiere, the realization sinking in that they won the fucking People’s Choice, and a sudden, intense flare of want, so strong that it makes Rose feel like she’s two seconds away from throwing up. She’s not a big fan of throwing up. There are tears suddenly leaking down her cheek and dripping off her chin and she lets out a hiccupping laugh, fingers pressing absently to her own damp skin.
“I—I need to go. I’ll, um, text you my flight stuff, ‘kay bye.” She yanks her phone away from her ear to end the call before shoving her face into the pillow and screaming.
What is wrong with her??
She used to be able to take so much. But now Ilya barely prods her and Rose folds right into Shane’s blunt but gentle kindness, hopelessly easy for them in a completely different way. It’s sickening, how weak she is. How she wants more.
“Fuck,” Rose sighs to herself, dragging the back of her hand over her eyes and then the heel of her palm, when that isn’t enough. Her phone screen is a blurred glow in her vision but she can still feel the buzz of it in her palm, texts from Shane and Ilya maybe asking if she’s alright or if she was dropped on her head as a child or if she’d like to reconsider being such a colossal idiot when it comes to her love life.
She wipes at her eyes again before blinking down at the letters swimming before her at the bottom of her screen, the ones she’d typed before Shane had called.
i dont think i can keep pretending i do all of this with the both of you just bc its convenient
Ha. Imagine if she’d actually sent it.