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Hockey started as a game, is the thing that you have to remember. It started as a game.
—
Ilya Rozanov gets on ice skates and a rink for the first time when he is eight years old. It’s part of his escape from home, an escape that he would return to again and again and again in the future. His mother wanted him out of the house as much as possible—even at eight years old, he understood that it was for his own sake, that it was for the better, and that it came at the cost of herself—so she signed him up for skating lessons just to give him something to do. Neither of them were expecting him to begin to love it in the way he had.
But expected or not, he stepped foot onto the ice and something about that moment wrapped a tight fist around his heart and it has yet to let go. As the years passed, as he got better and better, he soon came to the conclusion that there were no moments in his life where he was happier than when he was on the ice. When he was skating down the rink with a stick in hand and the puck at his feet, when no person and no problem in the world could catch up to him.
It was like everything else in his life melted away when he stepped onto the rink, leaving only a narrowed focus on the game, on the next play, on the next goal. For the time he would be playing, he was able to let go of everything but the game. The sensation of the ice under his skates. The stick gripped tight in his hand. The puck scraping against the rink. There was nothing but him, and the game.
It started as an escape. A game to win in order to get away from games whose rules he could never understand. An experiment in a long line of extracurriculars that Irina rotated him through—though this is the only one that really, truly stuck. It was just an after school activity, one that he happened to be strikingly good at.
There was comfort and safety in running away from home and onto the ice, at first. There was joy in it, at first. It was fun, at first.
—
The thing with Sasha starts as a game too. It starts with hesitant, unsure, terrified flirting. It starts with wide eyes, bitten lips, and a risky jump into freefall—a fall from which Ilya isn’t sure if he’s ever really safely landed. Ilya is good at figuring out when people are attracted to him, and Sasha checks all the boxes. So he takes the jump.
It starts with the chastest of kisses. With I dare you. With a touch of a hand to a cheek. With brushing Sasha’s long hair behind his ear. Then a light, teasing kiss to the crook of his neck. Pressing their bodies just a little closer.
It’s not serious. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just to try it out, to figure out what feels good, to have a moment of release and freedom in a life that constantly feels so suffocating.
It’s a game—just to see how much he can get away with. How much Sasha will give him; how much he will allow himself to take. It’s an experiment. They’re both young and horny and curious. It’s a game of chasing after each other, and then retreating when things start to get too scary. It’s a challenge; a game of being brave.
It’s dangerous, but that’s part of the allure for Ilya, in some ways. It could ruin his life, but that only makes him want it more. It’s a kind of rebellion against their fathers, a kind of fuck you, this is my life that they’re screaming with every furtive kiss but never out loud. He has always been more than a little self-destructive. It’s an old habit.
—
Other old habits: smoking cigarettes, whether or not it’ll rot his lungs; wanting things that he can never, ever have; and disappointing all the people around him.
And some new habits: hiding the cigarettes, stomping them out on the concrete parking lot of the Boston Raiders’ ice rink as soon as someone turns the corner; leaving dance clubs without a partner on his arm only to later jerk off to the memory of people he shouldn’t want; and chasing after Shane Hollander again and again no matter how many times he swears he’s going to break it off.
—
“This is a terrible idea,” Hollander says, as if he doesn’t want it just as bad as Ilya does. But Ilya will let him pretend, let him act as if he isn’t desperate for it, because Ilya knows all too well how much safer that is. “We are in public. We are at a fucking awards ceremony.”
Ilya hums; one hand is on the back of Hollander’s neck, the other hand is already sliding down his chest, and further, further, further down, and Hollander isn’t batting him away. His protests are fumbled and weak because he wants this, and they both know it.
“Yes, terrible idea,” Ilya says, and drops to his knees. “We should stop right now, yes?”
The bathroom tile of the restroom at the convention center is hard underneath him and his knees are going to ache like hell tomorrow, but it is June of 2016, which means that Ilya has given up telling himself that he wants to break this off. He needs to, probably, but he does not want to, and he never has.
They have been doing this for six years now, which is six years longer than it should have ever been going on; it has been months since they’ve seen each other, which is months longer than Ilya can rationally handle; and right now, he doesn’t really give a shit if they’re at the NHL awards ceremony because the most important thing to him is that Hollander is hard where Ilya is mouthing at his suit pants and his protests have gone quiet.
“Don’t you dare fucking stop,” Hollander says hoarsely. One hand tangles in Ilya’s hair and tugs just a little, just enough to let Ilya know that he’s there and with him, and the other hand starts fumbling at his belt. “Fuck.”
There’s something about the fact that they’re in public that’s making Ilya want this even more. There will be very, very real consequences if they get caught, consequences that Ilya can’t bear to think about right now. But despite all that, Ilya wants this, and he wants it now.
He’s confident enough that no one is going to be coming to find them right now and that no one is going to walk in—they’re giving out the award for lifetime achievement, which Ilya couldn’t give less of a shit about right now but that everyone seems to care deeply enough about that they won’t leave their seats—and so, while he can, he’s going to take anything that Shane Hollander will give him.
And with Hollander’s hand still in his hair while Ilya practically frantically, unceremoniously takes him into his mouth, he thinks, I would give him anything he asked for.
Which fills him with such a sudden rush of terror and arousal that he chokes on Hollander’s dick. Which Hollander is never going to let him live down, probably. He swallows around him and tries to swallow down the feeling too, tries to disregard it, tries to pretend it’s nothing but the haze of sex fogging his head.
But when Hollander comes down his throat with a muffled whine bitten into his own forearm, the post-sex clarity leaves him only with that same sickening thought. I would give him anything.
There is something terrible about it, about this whole fucking situation, and it’s getting to be much too late to take any of it back. For the rest of his life, Ilya thinks, Hollander will own some part of him that no one else can touch or see. There will always be some ruined part of himself that has Hollander’s name branded into it. And it is much too fucking late to unwrite this story.
Ilya has a problem. An addiction to this. Wanting Shane Hollander—it’s a habit he hasn’t been able to break since he was seventeen.
The thought that scares him more than that, though: I wouldn’t ever want to even if I could.
—
Maybe it wasn’t always going to be like this.
Maybe there was some point at which Ilya could have walked away, and things wouldn’t hurt so badly now. Maybe there was some choice he could have made differently, one that would change everything. Maybe there’s another timeline out there that could have been, one in which Ilya hadn’t thrown himself headfirst into the freefall that is wanting Shane Hollander. Maybe there’s an alternate universe where he did the right thing—for both of them—and walked away before he broke his own heart.
But as it is, he did not make whatever choice that might have been. Instead, he got his stupid fucking hopes up and he asked Hollander to stay the night. He made them a meal. He heard Hollander say his given name, like it was the only sound that his mouth knew how to say with vulnerability, like a prayer no one was ever supposed to hear, like a goddamned confession, and he watched as Hollander ran from it. Ran from him.
Maybe it wasn’t always going to hurt this bad. Maybe, with one different moment, Ilya wouldn’t be sitting alone on the couch and trembling with the weight of what he refuses to name as heartbreak.
But here he is now. His hands are shaking uncontrollably. His heart is in his throat and he can’t seem to choke it down, can’t seem to take back the tenderness with which he had said Hollander’s first name, can’t seem to undo any of it, can’t seem to unmake all the terrible feelings he had poured into that stupid tuna melt.
He can’t take it back now. He can’t take any of it back. Not the name on his tongue, not the affection in his touch, not his reckless and raw heart in someone else’s hands. So he just sits in silence and trembles with the wanting of things he cannot have, and he tells himself that he doesn’t fucking need Shane Hollander.
Fuck. He needs a goddamned cigarette.
—
“You’re supposed to smoke over there.”
Ilya looks over at the boy who had approached him, blinking widely. He stares for a moment, processing the words. It takes a moment, because the boy in front of him is Shane Hollander and Ilya, for some reason, is finding this fact incredibly distracting.
“What?” Ilya asks, and then immediately feels stupid.
“The smoking area is over there,” Hollander says, gesturing. Ilya follows his pointed finger towards a barren area of the parking lot lined with a large snowbank leftover from plowing. He makes no point to move over there; he instead lights the cigarette between his lips.
“I’m surprised you smoke,” Hollander says. It’s not necessarily judgmental at its core, but Ilya can’t help bristling a little. Who the fuck is he to judge? Ilya can smoke cigarettes and win championships just the same.
Ilya looks away from him. Exhales a breath of smoke pointedly. “Okay.”
“I wanted to meet you,” Hollander tells him, putting his hand out in introduction as if Ilya does not, cannot, know who he is. “Shane Hollander.”
“Yes.” Ilya holds the cigarette tight between his lips, reaching out to shake Shane Hollander’s hand, and possibly this is the moment that he realizes that this will be the rest of his life.
This will be the rest of his life: he and Hollander, exchanging a warm handshake and trembling in the bitter wind. The moment is all at once so much bigger than he thinks it should be, and yet so much smaller. So much simpler. It is just a handshake, a single stolen moment in the grand scheme of their careers, their lives. It is also the start of Ilya’s downfall, probably. It is the start of the beginning of his life.
—
There is another moment, too, when Ilya looks at Hollander and realizes that this—he and Hollander—is the rest of his life. For better or for worse. It’s at his second World Junior Championships, after Canada’s win.
They have one win apiece, Ilya knows, but the realization is vague and distant. More important than that thought is Hollander’s grasp around his hand when they line up. More important than the mental record of their wins and losses against each other is the sudden, lurching understanding: Hollander will always catch up, won’t he?
We will climb to the top, higher and higher and higher, and he will always meet me there. I will be the best, in a way that no one else can touch, but he will always push us both further. He will always be there against me, and I will always be there against him.
Ilya once thought that being the best in the world meant being alone at the top. What he is realizing now is that, when he becomes the best in the world, Shane Hollander will be right there with him.
For some reason, for some gut wrenching reason, Ilya doesn’t actually hate that thought. It doesn’t even scare him, not really. No—if anything, it enthralls him.
—
Maybe it was always going to be like this, because there is nothing in the world that is more motivating than playing against Shane Hollander. There is nothing at all that brings out the same fire and adrenaline that playing against Hollander does. There is nothing in the entire fucking stupid game that makes Ilya more passionate than competing with Shane fucking Hollander—there is nothing that makes him have more fun.
It motivates him. It disgusts him. It horrifies him. It pushes him. It terrifies him.
He wouldn’t give this up for anything. He wouldn’t trade it, or undo it, or change it. He’s fucking addicted to it, to this level of playing that Hollander pushes him into. And, on top of that, he’s fucking addicted to the way Hollander makes his breath catch in his throat and his heart lurch violently, brilliantly, colorfully out of his chest. He’s fucking addicted to the feeling of competing against him.
It’s dangerous. It’s so fucking dangerous. It’s a terrible idea, really. It’s a horrible, risky, shameful thing; this whole deal with Hollander. Ilya hates himself for it, and he loves Hollander for it even more.
—
The moment that Ilya finally allows himself to admit that he is falling in love with Shane Hollander is not actually an especially groundbreaking one. It doesn’t take the earth out from beneath his feet; the sky does not shatter above him. It barely seems like an epiphany—it’s barely even a realization.
It comes a little belatedly, Ilya figures, considering that he’s probably been falling for Hollander from the start. But it comes nonetheless, eventually. Maybe it’s less about the dawning of the feeling and more about the embracing of it. He’s known for a while, maybe; except now he’s finally looking the monster in the eye and calling it by its name.
Hollander is looking at him through the video call, and he looks fucked out and wrecked even though Ilya isn’t even there to touch him, and he’s sleepy with the haze of post-sex, his eyes beginning to slip shut without his permission.
And Ilya just watches, for a long time. Hollander is struggling against sleep, until he isn’t anymore. His lips part for breath, just slightly, and his eyes are so lightly closed, and the glow of his screen glints against his glasses. He looks beautiful like this. Soft. Relaxed. Vulnerable and open for Ilya’s eyes only.
He thinks, terribly, I want this.
He thinks, terribly, This. The quiet and the steady and the gentle and the honest and the raw vulnerability of Shane Hollander. I want all of it. I want him.
He thinks, terribly, And I want this all because I am so, so in love with him.
—
Or: there was a moment before that, really.
The year is 2017 and Boston and Montreal are neck and neck in the standings, and the crowd is absolutely electric with the once-in-a-generation lightning strike of their skill, the rivalry, the heat and rush of the game.
The year is 2017 and they’re on the ice; together, again, at the top of the world. They’re bent over, waiting for the puck drop. Their eyes meet, and Ilya does not smirk, does not taunt, does not bait him into rolled eyes. He can’t when all words have escaped him. Hollander looks at him, and there is something there that catches Ilya’s breath in the hollow of his lungs.
He thinks, I love this, and I love him too, and the breathlessness of his own smile catches him with all his armor down. As if Hollander has managed to cleave through every last defense that Ilya has ever built up around his heart. As if Hollander is seeing the best of him and the truth of him all at once, and he is not flinching. He is not looking away, not anymore, and Ilya fucking loves him.
Hollander wins the goddamn face-off and Ilya almost laughs, he’s grinning so wide.
—
And remember: hockey started as a game. It was an escape, because it was fun.
—
Love is something he admits to in his head only, at first. And then it’s something that’s whispered in Russian—in a language that Hollander cannot speak and cannot understand; in a way that is ultimately safe, even if it is brave. It feels more true out loud in Russian than it feels even in the privacy of his head. It is also infinitely more terrifying.
—
But before all that, too. It has always been terrifying. It shakes him through and through, down from his heart to his core; and even for someone who has spent his entire life on shaky foundations, this seems to make the very Earth tremble under his feet.
Hollander makes him feel—
Hollander makes him—
Hollander makes him want—
Hollander is—
He’s leaving.
Ilya tries, desperately casual in his tone even as his heart is fucking shattering in the pit of his stomach, “Hollander.”
Stay. I can take it back, I can rewind it, I can undo it. I can unsay your name and unexpose the heart I bared to you today. I can take it all back and we can pretend it never happened—Shane, your name on my lips like it belongs there, your name whispered on my tongue in the heat of a moment where I just wanted you too hard and too much and too fast, I can unsay it, the way it sounded like a confession, I can unmean it—
And we can take back “Ilya” too, my own name like a burden which you are finally breathing out, like a secret you’ve been keeping your whole lifetime, like you’ve been waiting to say it for longer than we’ve even known each other, like—
“Hollander.” His hand out in a half-gesture for him to stay, a half-hearted hope that this won’t ruin things, but—
But Ilya knows. He knows that he broke the rules, that he changed things unexpectedly, that he took something he cannot have, that he felt something he cannot have. He broke the fucking rules and Hollander is panicking because of course he is; because no matter how painstakingly careful Ilya was in trying to keep him comfortable, Hollander is ultimately a skittish, terrified, flight risk who hates change.
And Hollander says he can’t do this, can’t bear the weight of what Ilya has confessed to him without even confessing, that he can’t handle Ilya. With that, the world rearranges itself. It rearranges itself around this terrible pain in his chest, completely realigning all of the wanting and pining and hurting he thought he could maybe put behind him, because he sees how Hollander looks at him, and he thought maybe Hollander might want him too hard and too much and too fast, just as Ilya—
Hollander gets the fuck out of Ilya’s house, and he’s left alone, and the world has been entirely reorganized around the focal point of Hollander’s unspoken but clear, concise, inarguable rejection.
—
Some other moments of reorganization: uprooting his life to move to Boston, MA and quit smoking and become the best in the league; never texting Hollander ever again, unable to stomach even looking at the old texts; being placed on an All-Star team where Hollander is captain and looking at the old texts anyway, like some kind of sick joke or self-torture; the very existence of Rose Landry.
And some other rejections: Russia’s national hockey team, completely shut out by a team that shouldn’t have even challenged them; Ilya’s father straightening his bowtie and murmuring so lowly, “I am embarrassed you are my son, when you play this badly;” his brother hissing accusations and slurs at him all throughout his childhood, before and after Irina, before and after Svetlana, before and after Sasha; his mother, who is so kind and so beautiful and so sad, giving in and leaving him behind.
—
He dreams of Irina sometimes. She’s lying on the bed with one hand resting on her stomach and the other hand hanging off the mattress. She could be sleeping. She could be dead. It’s hard to tell.
In the dream, Ilya is still an adult, and for some reason, the panic and terror he felt as a child isn’t there just then. He’s had such feelings long since carved out of him. He approaches the bed slowly, in the dark of the drawn blinds and the nighttime, like he is nothing more than a shadow.
He reaches her on the bed, and stares down at her frozen body. She is so terribly silent and unmoving, but still the panic is not there. He’s numb to the moment, somehow, and he just stares down at her. He loved her for the twelve years she was with him, and while he loves her still in the dream, the love is no longer a beating heart but a hollow grief. She is with him there on that bed not as a memory but as a haunting.
Then she opens her eyes. Sudden and lurching. Ilya stumbles backwards, and there—there is the sheer panic.
She says, words hoarse and lined with something indescribable but horrifying, “It was too late when you found me that morning, wasn’t it?”
Distant from himself, responding with a voice that he can barely recognize as his, Ilya says blankly, completely on autopilot, “It’s too late every time I go after you.”
“You are always so afraid of taking things that you end up being too late to keep them,” Irina tells him. It sounds less like wisdom and more like an accusation. “Don’t you ever want something that does not leave you, and that you do not let go of?”
Ilya stares at her from his place across the room, his back pressed against the wall. She is still lying down, her head turned only enough to look at him with piercing steel blue eyes. He gets his eyes from her, he remembers. His father did not forgive him for that. For taking after the soft angles and blues of his mother and not the harsh realities of the men in his family.
“I’m scared of it,” Ilya whispers.
In reality, it is April of 2017, but in the dream, he feels so much smaller than his real age. He feels like a child, coming to his mother’s bedside and crying that he is so afraid of something that he cannot speak about. He is just a scared, trembling child who wants his mother to hold him. He is crying and he wants his mother to tell him that he’s going to be okay, that he’s good here, that he’s safe here, that she’s got him. She’s always got him.
Instead, dream Irina looks him in the eye and says, “You didn’t call the police, that morning. It took too long to call for anyone. You froze up, yes? And you were too late. You were late, because you were too busy being afraid.”
—
It’s always been scary, the risks that Ilya is willing to take for Shane Hollander. It’s always been scary, the solidifying leash and collar of the attachment that’s been growing and growing and growing. It’s always been scary, the wanting of something he can never, ever have.
Ilya is very familiar with wanting things he cannot have. It is a default state of being for him, this state of want. But none of those things before have been so close to him as Shane Hollander. None of them have hurt this terribly when they finally are beyond the reach of his fumbling grasp.
It’s always been scary, wanting something this deeply and being unable to admit it to even himself. It’s always been scary, going after it anyway. Again and again, hotel rooms and penthouses and bathrooms and empty rooftops.
But, like a fucking fool, Ilya thought they were in this together too. It’s so fucking stupid, in retrospect, because Ilya knows what he is to Hollander—a curiosity, an adrenaline rush, an orgasm—and he knows that this can never, ever be anything other than that.
It’s so goddamn dumb: just because they chase after each other neck and neck in rankings and standings and dreams, just because they are the only ones who can keep up with each other on the ice, just because the world narrows focus down to just the two of them when they’re on the rink, just because of Ilya’s Hollander-related tunnel vision, just because of all of that and more, does not mean that Hollander is with him in this. In these feelings. In the burden of them.
It’s always been scary, but Hollander has always also been worth it. It’s always been scary, but nothing makes Ilya feel more alive than him, than the stolen, scattered thing they have. It’s always been scary, but Ilya thought maybe they could be brave together, just like how they stand as kings on the top of an otherwise insurmountable mountain together. He thought maybe they could be in this feeling the same way as they are in everything else: latched together by fate and feeling.
It’s always been scary. And it’s always been worth it. But still: Ilya has never felt more goddamn afraid of his own heart than he does in the moments after Hollander leaves him.
—
It is something that he has been told his whole life: he is too much. He asks for too much, he demands too much, he wants too much, he acts as too much. The only person who has always matched him step-for-step, the only person who has never resented him for his impossible ambition and all the dreams he’s made realities, the only person who has given and taken just as much from Ilya as Ilya has from him, even if unknowingly—it’s over.
Which is to say that Hollander reached his breaking point, the point at which Ilya became too much. Things got too real, got too vulnerable, and Ilya was suddenly too much to deal with safely, too much to handle without getting hurt.
There has always been risk in what they share. This painfully casual thing with no name and no promises has always carried danger. Ilya probably knows this better than Hollander does. They did it anyway, because they’re young and stupid and have desires there are no words for. They did it anyway, because it was never meant to hurt like this. They weren’t supposed to allow it to.
But the thing is that Ilya constantly has one hand on a self-destruct button and Hollander consistently has one hand on an abandon ship button, and, really, what they have between them has always had a deadline. It was always going to be over before it ever even started.
—
Their relationship has always been composed of stolen moments, borrowed time, and painstaking secretkeeping. There’s never been a promise between them to be exclusive, or even that they mean something to each other. Not really. There was no single moment in which they said this is what they wanted. If anything, the opposite happened. They’ve been avoiding any conversation of the like for nearly a decade.
—
But here, before it all started, and before it went wrong: Ilya’s first memory of Shane Hollander is watching him on the ice at the Junior World Championships. He had caught the end of the Canadian practice time, and his eyes didn’t leave Hollander once. He was the best on the team, easily; he was skating circles around the rest of them, in Ilya’s humble opinion.
Hollander makes hockey look like an artform. He creates openings where there are none, he defies physics with the angle of his skates, he takes shots that should be impossible until they aren’t, because he’s the one taking them. He’s just as fast as Ilya, and his skates cut into the ice with the most satisfying of sounds; an orchestration or symphony devoted to the sport.
They call Hollander one of the most creative players in a generation. They credit him as one of the youngest players with the highest hockey IQ. His sense of positioning, his anticipation of plays, his work ethic; it all adds up to Shane Hollander being the best of the best. Ilya wants to defeat him so badly; he wants to win against him in every competition that he can. Hollander’s drive pushes Ilya forward too, in a way that is fun and exciting and hasn’t existed since the sport became a need and not a passion.
And playing against him—it’s a rush of adrenaline like nothing else. No one else in the world has ever kept up with Ilya in the way that Hollander is able to keep up with him. No one else in the world has ever been able to read his every move and match his every touch of the puck. No one else in the world has ever made hockey feel this exciting, this fucking fun. Not as if an escape from something, not as if running away from something, but instead running towards something.
Competing with Shane Hollander brings something out of Ilya that Ilya loves. It draws out the deepest kind of love for the sport that he’s ever felt, and it draws out the best of himself.
So he falls in love with Hollander’s hockey, first. How could he not, when he makes Ilya want to run directly towards a sport that has been nothing more than a form of running away for so long? How could he not, when playing this game with him is like looking directly into the sun? How could he not, when competing against the best of the best makes Ilya the best, too? How could he not, when he makes Ilya fall back in love with the sport that used to mean everything?
—
So forgiving Hollander is easy. Leaving behind them that moment with tuna melts and I can’t is unnaturally easy. It shouldn’t be—Ilya should be bitter and tired and scared of getting hurt again. And he is, to some degree, but still: forgiving Hollander for being afraid too is easy. It was always going to be.
—
And after it started, after everything went wrong: playing with Hollander is nothing short of fucking joyful.
Ilya has never felt more centered in himself and more at one with his body and mind than when he’s on the ice and his world has narrowed into the game and nothing else. He has also never had more fun doing all of this than when he’s playing with Shane Hollander.
He thought he could never feel more intensity in this game than when he’s playing against Hollander, but that intensity is nothing compared to playing on the same team as him. It’s nothing compared to the sheer depth of passion that playing with Hollander brings out of him.
For so long: hockey was an escape, a form of running away; hockey was a necessity, because it was the only thing he was good for and the only thing he even really knew how to do. He was nothing without hockey, and so he pushed on with it. There was no alternative, not unless he stopped running away, and that was never an option.
But here, on the ice with Shane: hockey is like falling in love all over again. Head over heels, palms and knees scraping against the rink, breath kicked out of his chest, heart pounding in his head. It’s like falling in love. He wants this—the game, the joy, the adrenaline, the competition, the highs and lows, the ambitions and failures, the wins and losses. He wants to be doing this because he fucking loves it.
So he falls in love with Hollander’s hockey, first and second and third and fourth, and again and again and again. It gets complicated sometime in between being in love with the sport Hollander plays, and being in love with Shane himself.
—
Hotel rooms have always been a strange liminal kind of space for Ilya. He honestly spends more time in hotel rooms on the road than he does in his own apartment, the one that still doesn’t really feel like home but that can’t really be called anything else, even if just for lack of other options.
He’s very familiar with packing his life into two bags and settling into a room for two nights and then getting back on the road. He’s familiar with the bad water pressure in hotel showers, and the uncomfortable tightness of sheets tucked in too tightly to the mattress, and the terrible lighting provided by ornamental lamps, and the thin walls that allow you to hear HGTV in the room to the left and sex in the room to the right.
It’s all a familiar, familiar game to him. He knows how to manage this life. He knows how to compartmentalize the reality and the dread of it.
What he does not know how to compartmentalize: Shane Hollander stepping into his room as if he’s being chased, as if he needs to scatter from some threat and the only safe place is Ilya’s hotel room.
Foolish, Ilya thinks, because being in his hotel room is its own kind of threat to the delicate balance of both of their lives. Despite the foolishness of it, though, Hollander flees into his hotel room as if it is the only place he has left to run.
“What took you so long?” Hollander snaps. “I was standing at your door for five minutes.”
It has been probably one minute, if that, since Hollander knocked at the door. But Ilya doesn’t point that out. He arches his eyebrows instead, says, “And you did not leave?” and relishes in the flush that burns from Hollander’s cheeks down to the hollow of his neck. Ilya wants to tear off his shirt, trace that blush with his tongue, right down to the V of his hips.
“Fuck you,” Hollander says, but there’s very little heat in it. Ilya smirks at him and that blush deepens pink. Ilya wants to devour him, wants to break his own heart with the craving for him. He knows that he’ll never get enough to feel fulfilled, not when they are who they are and they can only be so much else when they are outside of hotel rooms.
Ilya hums. “Maybe soon, if you are good.”
“Fuck.” Hollander’s voice is a ghost of sound, a hoarse and desperate murmur already, and Ilya fucking adores how easy Hollander is to rile up and to then work into simple, pliant submission. “Can I—”
Ilya wraps a hand in the collar of his shirt and drags him into a rough kiss. Hollander deepens the angle immediately, and Ilya pushes him flat up against the back of the hotel room door, gasping heavily into his mouth. Hollander whines high in his throat, one hand on Ilya’s waist, already pushing under the hem of his shirt, and the other hand tugging at his hair.
Here is a secret that very few people understand: if Hollander is hungry for these stolen hours, then Ilya is downright starving. They play it as if Ilya is in control of this situation, of their game, but Ilya is all too aware that Hollander is the one ultimately taking him apart. Ilya is just better at biting back his noise and staving off his climax.
Ilya pulls back from the kiss, a line of spit trailing between their mouths. Hollander licks at his lips, eyes heavy on Ilya, and Ilya feels his cock twitch almost violently.
“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya murmurs. He puts a hand on Hollander’s shoulder and he gets the hint; he sinks down to his knees without any joke and without any protest. He’s mouthing at the outline of Ilya’s hardening dick before Ilya can even ask him to.
“Shit,” Ilya continues, voice lowered in Russian and in arousal. Hollander is digging his fingers into Ilya’s hips, pressing hard enough that Ilya hopes they’ll bruise. They’re always so careful about marks but, fuck, the idea of Hollander leaving claim on Ilya’s body is hot. “You’re doing so well, sweetheart, so good for me.”
Hollander whines again, the vibrations against Ilya’s dick absolutely maddening, and Ilya wants to hear him beg. With other partners that Ilya’s had, there’s a sense of power to this moment, a sense of control and authority that comes with having a man on his knees in front of you begging to touch you, to touch himself, saying he’ll take whatever you give.
But with Hollander, there’s—it’s different, somehow. It’s hot and sensual, always; and Hollander is always a pretty little picture on his knees, something out of Ilya’s most explicit wet dreams and most perverted fantasies. Even with, and maybe a little because of, Hollander’s inexperience, sex with him has kind of ruined Ilya for anyone else, and for the rest of his life.
At the same time as it is unbearably hot, there’s so much trust in the way Hollander looks up at him—watering eyes and drool at the corner of his mouth—and so much raw vulnerability in how Hollander offers up control of his own pleasure to Ilya’s instruction—please please please let me come oh my God I can’t I’m gonna—that Ilya barely even relishes in the control aspect of their dynamic. That’s just not the point in the way it has been with other partners.
No, Ilya is focusing on the way Shane’s breath catches in his throat; the way he pants for air when he starts to lose it; the way he grasps at the bedsheets in some semblance of strength; the way he looks at Ilya with his expression so unguarded; the way he blushes so pretty down his whole chest; the way he rocks his hips into thin air, so desperate for any kind of stimulation on his cock when Ilya kisses hard at his inner thighs.
No, it’s not the domination that’s doing it for Ilya. Or, it’s not solely that, anyway.
The thing that gets him off the most, on these nights in dim hotel rooms with tightly tucked in sheets and next door’s mumbled HGTV, is the fact that Shane Hollander not only trusts him with handing over this side of himself, but he’s also goddamn desperate to give it to Ilya. He’s desperate for all these stolen, dangerous moments, and for things he cannot have. He’s almost as hungry as Ilya himself is, and it’s so private and raw and it’s all for Ilya Rozanov.
The thing that gets him off the most is the fact that Shane Hollander wants him. Wants to kiss him hard; wants to get him off however Ilya asks, whatever Ilya asks. Wants to hand his beating heart on a silver platter over with both hands and wants Ilya to bite down. Wants to be ruined, wants to be taken apart, wants to be unraveled at every carefully pressed seam and stitch of him.
It’s so fucking stupid because Ilya has had sex with dozens of people, both men and women, but he’s never felt as wanted as he does when it’s Shane Hollander risking his career just to mouth at the wet spot on Ilya’s briefs.
He’s an object of desire for so many people in so many ways, but here in this hotel room, Ilya is more than that. The way Hollander looks at him is more than plain, objectifying desire. It’s spilling over with lust and need; it is also so obvious in his wide eyes that this he knows is a dangerous, inadvisable choice he is making, and he would make it again and again because this is Ilya, and what more reason or convincing could he ever need?
Ilya can’t get enough of it. He gets Hollander to come three times in two hours and he still can’t get enough of the way Hollander looks at him when he gives in and lets pleasure wash over him in ripples. He watches Hollander tremble with overstimulation and he still can’t get enough of the fucked out bliss watering in his eyes as he forgets everything but this moment and Ilya. He still can’t get enough of his own last name rough on Hollander’s tongue, and he can’t help but fantasize about what it would sound like for his given name to slip out in the throes of passion one day.
It’s so fucking stupid.
—
It should be criminal, the amount of pure want that lives within the two of them. It is a wanting that is too heavy to bear alone, but it is also a wanting that can never be spoken aloud and shared. It is a wanting that is all-consuming, that is addicting, that is captivating. It is a wanting that takes Ilya’s heart in its fists and clenches tight; it is a wanting that is coiled up tightly in the carefully compartmentalized boxes of Shane’s head. It is a wanting that undoes Ilya, that unravels them both; a wanting that makes Shane come untouched in only minutes.
Ilya could probably have anyone in the world if he actually tried. But instead the only thing he’s trying at is finding the bravery to tell Shane Hollander he loves him. He loves him, and he wants to stay with him at his cottage this summer, and he wants to be able to just exist with him in the same space with none of the expectations of their rivalry and none of the hurry and rush of illicit hookups. He wants to be with Shane, in all the ways that matter.
He could have anyone. But here he is, two days before the Stanley Cup finals: quiet with his head on Svetlana’s shoulder, trying not to seem so goddamn shattered at the idea of going back to Russia for the summer when there is a boy with freckles and sunlight in his eyes who wants him at his cottage in Canada.
Here he is, when everything he wants is so close to his reach but so far from his grip: trying not to feel so terribly fragile given the pain of his own loneliness and his own cowardice, his own inability to chase after the things that actually matter.
Here he is, waiting for someone other than him to be the first to be brave and to teach him how to do it too: not even pretending that he’s interested in sex with Svetlana right now, daydreaming only about what Shane Hollander’s home is like, and if Ilya could ever fit into it.
—
And then Scott Hunter—
—
It feels like a promise, Ilya muses. A promise that he and Shane are not alone in this secret they’ve been keeping for so long. A promise that someone—even if it was Scott Hunter—was brave enough to go first, and so maybe one day, the rest of them can be brave too. A promise that maybe things can actually change, can actually get better.
—
The thing you have to remember is that hockey started as a game. It wasn’t always slurs in locker rooms and mocking laughter on the ice and angry, berating insults after losses. It wasn’t always punches and fights and the kind of masculinity you have to unlearn in order to live truthfully. It wasn’t always fear and shame and hiding. It wasn’t always tearing off pieces of your heart to make yourself more palatable to your teammates, to your brothers.
Once, there was just ice, and skates, and a hockey stick, and a puck. Once, they were just kids and there were no great, impossible expectations to live up to and there were no rivalries to warp them into people they themselves don’t like and there was no hiding at all. Once, there was just ice, and a dream, and a game to enjoy.
—
Ilya’s first memory of Shane Hollander actually happens—and this is a secret—before the World Junior Championships. It comes a couple months before they meet in the finals, before the cigarette and the handshake, when Ilya is just starting to investigate what it would take to get him into the NHL and out of Russia. He’s researching the draft and requirements to submit his name for consideration, and he stumbles across the name Shane Hollander.
From there, he finds game footage and stats and post-match interviews. He consumes all of it almost obsessively. He doesn’t understand the English commentary very well, but he understands the language of hockey as if that were his first tongue rather than Russian.
What he realizes: Hollander plays with freedom. He dances on the ice, skating circles around his opponents, shooting the puck between knees and around angles that shouldn’t be possible. He plays not like he needs it, but like he loves it. Like he wants nothing more in life than to be in the game and on the ice. It’s not an escape for him, it’s not running away from something terrible, it’s not finding solace in the only place that will shelter him.
No, Hollander is forcing hockey to take him in with just the evidence of his skill. He demands hard work from his teammates and attention from scouts and compliments from commentators. He barrels his way down the rink on breakaways and he leaves no room for anyone to ever question his right to be there on the ice, leading his team to victory after victory. He’s the perfect model of a once-in-a-generation player.
Ilya has always known that he himself is good at this game. He’s fast and smart and physically built for it. He’s cocky and annoying and he likes getting under people’s skin, but at the end of the day, he has the skill to back it up.
But he doesn’t play the game because he loves it with this kind of abandon. He plays it because he doesn’t know any other way.
Hollander, on the other hand, plays like he loves it. His every move is intense and focused and driven; his very presence on the ice is so great and all-consuming that Ilya cannot look away. He’s clearly put the work into his skills; he can back up any shit talking, just like Ilya can, but he doesn’t ever bother with that. He notoriously plays a clean game.
There are expectations on his shoulders that cannot be shrugged off. All of them must be weighing on him: the commentators saying he’ll either be in the Hall of Fame or that he’ll crash and burn upon first step onto the ice; the not insignificantly sized monetary bets on the draft order that put his name first in line; the previously practically unknown concept of an Asian kid breaking into the NHL and succeeding; the role model he is and must always continue to be, or else lose everything.
But he doesn’t bring any of that onto the ice. He just proves himself, again and again and again. He plays, and he clearly enjoys every second of skating. All of it—the pressure, the grueling physicality, the long days and evenings of training; and the celebrations, too, the wins and the achievements and the trophies and the medals and the dreams come true. He wants it all, and he loves it all, even in the face of the hard and scary parts.
All of which is to say that he plays every game like he’s breaking free of all the intensity—like he’s still having fun.
It reminds Ilya: hockey started as a game. Once, there was just ice, and a dream, and a rush of joy.
—
Ilya likes the freefall feeling of an adrenaline rush; he likes fast cars and bright, shiny things and he likes dopamine and grease and he likes speeding through yellow lights and he likes taking the winding turns of Storrow Drive faster than anyone should. He likes when the nighttime goes by too fast to remember it and he likes loud clubs with pounding music that leaves a ringing in his ears afterwards and he likes his vodka straight, at 150 proof.
He also likes Shane. He likes holding his hand while they drive down the parkway towards the cottage, the only sound being their occasional laughter at the sheer impossibility of the moment. He likes that Shane carries his bag into the house, even though Ilya can do it himself, because he’s worried about Ilya’s fucked up ribs. He likes that they nearly knock a lamp over in their rush to fall onto each other, and that Shane stops them to fix it and say, For two weeks, let’s be honest with each other.
He likes sitting still and quiet by a fire pit and watching the flames dance in the dark. He likes the colors of the fire reflected in warm kaleidoscopes on Shane’s skin. He likes the wind, soft against his skin, barely a cold brush compared to the gentle carding of Shane’s hand through his hair. He likes the sunrise over the water, watching it with a cigarette, and he likes that Shane brings him coffee and sits with him while they welcome the coming day. He even likes that goddamn bird.
Canada is boring, and Shane is boring too, and Ilya has never desired anything more than to stay in this simple, stable, gentle domesticity forever.
—
It cannot last forever, what they are sharing right now. It has to end eventually. Ilya is only at the cottage for two weeks, and after that, they have to go back to being rivals on the ice who cannot be seen being friendly in public together. It cannot last forever.
But, oh, God—an “I like you,” sleepy with the first hours of the morning and vulnerable with its honesty, and, “I like you, too,” just as mumbled and honest—fuck, Ilya wants.
—
And that I like you, and that I like you, too—maybe it could change everything.
—
“I don’t ever want the problem to go away,” Ilya tells Shane, and something shifts, something rearranges about the whole world, and about his short, tiny life.
They can’t go back after this. If they were to try to return to that compartmentalized pining, that transience of a hotel room hookup, it would shatter him. Him and his weak, raw, loving heart. He wouldn’t survive it.
To be fair, he isn’t sure he’ll survive this either, this thing where they like each other—his mind murmurs the word love and his mouth sets firmly in a line, lest he ruin everything—but even if this kills him, at least they’ll have tried. At least he’ll have had it all for a moment, the great wide horizon in his hands and Shane Hollander in his beating heart.
If they give up on it now, if they never give this a chance, if they never give themselves a shot, Ilya doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for it. Shane might have ruined him for anyone else under this sky—not just the sex part, but the soft slowness of life, too. The trust. The tenderness. The hollowness of being in love finally feeling fulfilled.
—
And maybe there is a world where he can have all this, and more. Maybe there is a world where he can carry Shane Hollander’s heart on his own sleeve, and it would be okay. Maybe there is a world where they can be together—here, in this daylight dream of a summertime, it feels almost possible. Maybe there is a world, if they try for one.
—
One night while at Shane’s cottage, Ilya dreams of his mother again.
In the dream, he’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom in his childhood home in Moscow. Irina is standing inside, hands gripping the counter so tight that her knuckles pale, and she’s staring at herself in the mirror. On the sink counter just by her right hand is a bottle of pills. Ilya can’t read the label on the bottle from where he stands, but it doesn’t matter what they are exactly; he already knows what they can be used to do.
The harsh lights of the bathroom cast her in strange, severe shadows. She looks almost gaunt standing there, her face and heart completely hollowed out by experience and life. Ilya stands at the doorway, studying her face, studying the grip of her hands, studying the steady, flat line of her mouth, and he says nothing.
She tells him, not looking away from the mirror, “You’ve grown up, Ilyushenka.”
Her mouth doesn’t move, the words instead formed by her reflection in the mirror. Ilya tries not to flinch at it, at the reminder that she’s gone and that there is so much about him that she’ll never see and never know, but he can’t help the way he stiffens where he stands. Still, he stays silent, just watching her. In the mirror, he sees her reflection straighten up and look over at him, but the body in front of him doesn’t move.
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” Ilya finally says, but the words are in English, a language that his mother had never spoken or understood. “Mama, I—”
At the sound of the foreign language, of their inability to reach and understand each other, the person in front of him turns to meet his eyes. There’s something haunting in her gaze.
The woman who looks at him now is not the woman he remembers. The woman who looks at him now barely even registers as his mother: the beautiful and kind and funny woman who had loved him; the soft and gentle mother who stays in his heart and his dreams even now as an adult. The woman who looks at him now is someone haunted and tired and broken down by a world which has never been kind to her.
“You’ve always looked so much like me,” she says softly, and for the first time in all the times he’s heard those words, it doesn’t fill him with the warmth of a compliment. “You grew up so strong, Ilyushenka.”
In the corner of his eye, there’s movement from the reflection in the mirror. His mother, beautiful and kind and funny, reaching out for him. But her fingers cannot break through the mirror to touch him. She cannot find him. Ilya takes a tiny step forward, as if to meet her in the middle. But she cannot get any closer, and the woman who physically stands in front of him wears an expression so closed off that he can’t reach her either.
“I am sorry I am not there to see it,” Irina tells him, in Russian. “I am sorry I am not there to see you.”
Ilya wakes up to tears on his cheeks and the sheets tangled around his legs. Shane is sleeping next to him, his expression soft and relaxed in sleep. Ilya stares at him for a long time, just trying to convince himself that this is real. He touches his hand to Shane’s face, caresses the line of his cheekbones. His skin is so smooth where he runs a thumb over his freckles. Beautiful, like this and always.
Shane shifts slightly in his sleep, unconsciously leaning closer into Ilya’s hand. His breath catches in his throat and Ilya has to blink back more slow, warm tears. Irina would have liked Shane, he thinks, and he really, really wants to believe she would have liked who Ilya became too.
This is something that is harder to believe some days than others, but right now, in the silver dim of the moonlight in this private cottage in the middle of nowhere with the man he loves so much, Ilya thinks maybe it could be true.
—
Some other dreams that Ilya has, in the privacy of his mind: kissing Shane Hollander on center ice and not giving a fuck if other people are watching or seeing or understanding them or if they’re not; meeting Shane’s parents and his friends and being loved by them because Shane has chosen him and no one else; never going back to Russia, spending his summers here in the quiet peace of the cottage by the lake; having nothing to hide ever again.
—
Maybe it wasn’t always going to be like this. Maybe, with one different decision, everything would be different now. Maybe they would have gotten here faster, or maybe they wouldn’t be here at all. Maybe they wouldn’t have spent so many years hurting each other so badly, so naively, so mistakenly. Maybe they wouldn’t have spent so many years believing that there was no other option than to hurt. Maybe they wouldn’t have ever hurt at all.
But at the end of the day, this is how it goes: “You’re supposed to smoke over there,” and “I might open the door,” and “This won’t leave this room,” and “I want to,” and “Ilya.”
This, too, is how it goes: we didn’t kiss, why didn’t I kiss him, and “I can’t, we can’t,” and eyes on me, Rozanov, and “We just weren’t compatible,” and “Would you want to be, if we could?”
And most importantly, maybe, it goes like this: “I’m glad you’re here.”
—
I’m glad you’re here.
As in: I’m glad you’re present in this place, in this time, in this world. As in: I’m glad you made it too, that we survived everything just to get here and find each other at the top, at the end of it all, and at the beginning of it too. As in: I’m glad you’re here in this game and in this life, and that I get to know you through all of it.
As in: I’m glad you’re with me in the freefall of this absurd, forbidden feeling. As in: I’m so glad I’m not alone. As in: I’m so glad that it’s you that’s with me.
—
“You are planning very far ahead,” Ilya murmurs, words and breath warm against the bare skin of Shane’s collarbone.
Shane hums, leaning back against the pillow so Ilya has a better angle to kiss at his neck. “I mean—I care about this. I want this.”
“Me too.” His words are more of a murmured kiss than a real sentence. He scrapes his teeth against Shane’s pulse point; feels Shane shiver underneath him. “Okay. We have a plan. I have never really had a twelve-year plan before. This is nice.”
“You think you’re playing for another twelve years?” They are about a decade into their careers already, and, God, when did that happen? When did they let so much time pass by?
Ilya nods sagely. Kisses his cheek. “You will play for ten before you get old and tired. And then I will play for two more years. To beat you.”
At that, Shane laughs. “I’ll beat you to the Hall of Fame, then. I’ll be inducted and you’ll be spending the game on the bench because you’re too old to put up a fight.”
“Ah, but my record will be longer.”
Shane laughs again, clear and bright, his hands going to Ilya’s cheeks. He pulls Ilya closer and kisses him slowly, tenderly; and really, why did they let so much time pass by without this?
—
This: lounging in bed long after the sun has come up, just relishing in being in each other’s quiet presence; lying on the couch with only their feet touching, stealing glances at each other every once in a while and not bothering to hide it when they get caught; making breakfast together, a compromise found in pancakes with protein powder for Shane and a touch of vanilla for Ilya.
This: sex in the daylight with all the windows open instead of in dimly lit hotel rooms in forbidden hours of the night; kisses in the lake, cold lips and cold hands and cold water and the warmest laugh in the entire fucking world; touching Shane all over, unafraid to ask for what he wants, what he needs, unafraid of Shane saying no, because Shane wants him.
This: something that used to hurt so terribly much, something that feels so deeply healing now; something that once was so full of pain and longing and unfulfilled want, something that tonight is full of tender joy and comfort and safety; something that once felt it would be the death of him, something that makes him feel absolutely invincible now.
—
Maybe they can’t have it forever. Maybe that’s not the point at all. Maybe they have it right now, and they should both stop thinking so damn hard about being afraid, and they should just let themselves feel this feeling for as long as they can. Maybe just for right now, or maybe for as long as the sky is far. Maybe this much, right now, here, is enough.
—
This: I love you, in Russian; I love you, in English; I love you, I love you, I love you, and I love you.
This: a game to intrinsically tie their fates together; a dream to push them headfirst on a joyride into that terrifying future; a rush of complete, trusting adoration now untainted by the rest of the world; and the great or impossible or genuine love for being alive, here, and like this.
This: does it kill Ilya, too? No—not anymore.