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Ilya checked his phone, unable to stop his lips curving up in a smile. A loud clatter from behind startled him enough to look up — Dubek had managed to fumble his helmet and drop it to the ground. He was met with immediate jeers and chirping, rolling his eyes as he picked it up.
Tension was high in the locker room, and it was only a short morning practice. Maybe tension wasn’t the right word. The air felt electric with anticipation; competition. Ilya felt it behind his teeth. It was always like this at the Bell Centre.
Ilya checked his phone again. The last text still hadn’t spontaneously disappeared. An address, sent from Jane. Hollander’s actual apartment, not his freaky sex condo. Ilya had stared at the message enough that he had it memorized now, could probably recite it faster than his own address in Boston, but still. He kept being struck with the urge to check, just one more time, that it hadn’t been deleted somehow. It was a fucking compulsion. It was pathetic. It was —
“I have no time to see Emily recently,” St. Simon complained. He said it the French way, Émélie, which Ilya thought sounded much nicer. She was a nurse at Boston Children’s, and Ilya always knew when her shifts weren’t lining up with the team schedule at all based on how morose St. Simon got. “I am forgetting what the touch of a woman feels like.”
“Back to the touch of your right hand, huh?” Marlow leered playfully.
Victor sniffed. “I am lefty.”
“You’re stuck with the touch of the Metros tonight, sorry bro,” Carmichael clapped his shoulders. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and Comeau will pin you to the boards.”
“Eugh,” St. Simon’s face twisted in disgust. Ilya heartily agreed. “He is ‘ideous.”
“Yeah, if I’m gonna be getting up close and personal with Montreal, Comeau is like, last choice,” Marlow agreed. “Bottom two on the roster, for sure.”
Stebbins snorted, adjusting his pads. “And who’s topping it?”
Marlow paused, thick eyebrows furrowing in thought, like this was a legitimate question he should consider seriously. Ilya looked on in disbelief. Where was this intellectual bend when watching tape, when it’d actually be useful?
“Hollander,” Marlow declared, with entirely too much confidence. He was met with a round of boos, although Ilya noticed plenty of the team abstained, taking on that same thoughtful look Marlow sported. Ah, fuck. If this is what that look led to, then Ilya needed them to leave the deep thinking behind. He wanted his team of idiots back.
“Hollander?” Dubek asked incredulously. “Dude, talk about sleeping with the enemy.”
“Dude, I’m not actually gonna fuck him,” Marlow retorted. “But honestly, if I was gonna pick a guy to experiment with…”
His sentence trailed off into what was a very uncharacteristic quiet in Boston’s locker room. A handful of the guys looked grossed out (pussies), some were just staring Marlow down in disbelief, and entirely too many looked like they were actually thinking about ‘experimenting’ with Shane. Hollander. Whatever.
Ilya tasted metal as he bit his tongue too hard. Fuck. He was captain, he should step in, tell these fuckers to zip it, but would that be obvious? Why would Rozanov be jumping to defend Hollander’s honor?
“I mean…Hollander’s got a nice ass,” Stebbins offered, as if to support Marlow, who was entirely unfazed by sending the room into silence. Ilya’s eyebrows shot to his hairline before he could control his expression.
Marlow pointed at him, vindicated. “True facts!”
“And Hollander’s, like, kinda pretty too,” Carmichael chimed in. Seriously? Carmichael? Ilya had to listen to him salivate over pussy every goddamn day for the past six years, and now he was going to start waxing poetic about guys too? The fuck. “Pretty like a girl.”
St. Simon snorted. “‘Ollander does not look like a girl, you dumb fuck.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Carmichael’s voice raised as he shoved at Victor. “He’s got a cute face, that’s all. He gets called ‘pretty boy’ all the time, it’s not just me.”
“Nah, I feel you man,” Cliff pounded his chest once to emphasize his agreement. Ilya was torn between snorting and hissing like a feral cat. “It’s the freckles, he’s cute. And great ass. Hollander’s my top choice, bet.”
“Probably only person in the league to not have broken nose,” St. Simon mused. “Gives him good, strong profile, non?”
“We’re talking about fucking profiles now?” Carmichael whined. “Dude, shut the fuck up.”
“I will not,” Victor replied cheerily. “I am in agreement, Hollander is best choice.”
“Yeah, he’s my pick too,” Brad Hammersmith chimed in, a smirk pulling up one corner of his mouth. Ilya always thought Brad was a stupid fucking name. “Hollander looks like he’s the one taking it up the ass, for sure. And a hole is a hole, ya know?”
Ilya felt his lips curl back, baring his teeth, blood pounding hard in his ears as his fingers curled into fists —
“Alright!” Marly clapped his hands together, mouth twisted in distaste as he eyed Hammersmith contemptuously. “Fun’s over. Hammersmith made it fucking weird.”
Hammersmith squawked like a parrot. “What?! How am I the one—”
“Yeah, no, dude, you totally did.” Dubek countered immediately.
Carmichael shook his head sadly. “Took it way too far, man.”
“The fuck? You were all just agreeing that if you had to fuck a dude, it’d be Hollander, but somehow I’m the fucking villain?” Brad was turning an interesting shade of red, adjacent to purple. Fascinating. Ilya would have to look up the name of this color in English later.
“For the record, I did not say I wanted to fuck Hollander,” Connors chimed in. Ilya felt a sudden rush of warmness towards him. Of course Connors wouldn’t let him down, Ilya had practically bottle fed him when he joined the Raiders, raising him up as his fucking own— “I’d take Pike over him. Dude’s hair looks mad soft.”
Never mind. Connors was an utter disappointment, and Ilya was disowning him.
“You’re off the team, Connors,” he announced, watching every head in the room turn back to him. Ilya puffed his chest, cloaking himself in the bravado that usually came so naturally. Why was he acting weird about this? Talking shit was his element. “Only talk about wanting to fuck good players. Why Hollander is best choice; maybe his skills will rub off on one of you.”
Hammersmith pointed accusatorially at his captain. “Okay, why can he say that about Hollander, but I can’t—”
“Shut the fuck up,” twenty loud-as-fuck hockey players chorused, voices echoing off the walls and ceiling. Hammersmith seemed to shrink under the fluorescents, finally.
“It’s no fun if you’re gonna get homophobic with it, man,” Marlow shook his head in disappointment, clapping a hand on Hammersmith’s shoulder and giving him a shake that was a bit past the edge of friendly.
Brad’s dumb face screwed up in confusion. He looked constipated. “Seriously? How was that homophobic? Why is it homophobic to say Hollander looks like a bottom?”
The locker room groaned. Ilya had never seen so many grown men cringe at once.
“I don’t know if it’s homophobic, dude, but it’s definitely something,” Stebbins shrugged.
“Felt hate-crime adjacent,” St. Simon chimed in. Hammersmith’s face darkened, and it looked like he might actually lunge for the Frenchman.
Ilya had officially entertained this too long.
“Okay, okay, shut the fuck up!” he called out over the rising noise of the locker room, clapping loudly. “Enough chit-chatter, get on the fucking ice, you lazy fucks!”
He was met with a mixed bag of ‘Shut up, Roz’ and ‘Yes, Cap’, but Ilya ignored it, leading the charge out to the ice. He threw one more directive over his shoulder
“No more talking about Montreal players — unless it is about how we destroy them tonight.”
Marly laughed loudly, using his absurdly long stride to catch up to Ilya and throw a companionable arm over his shoulders. “Phrasing, Rozy.”
Ilya smirked, using his tongue to push his mouthguard into place. “What?” he asked, all faux-innocence. “I am competitive.” Cliff snorted.
“Sure.” He hesitated for a second, then nodded slightly, like he was giving himself permission to continue. “I’ve seen you checking out Hollander’s ass during warm-ups, Roz. I don’t think the ice is the only place where you wanna ‘destroy’ him.”
“Shut the fuck up, Marlow,” Ilya sing-songed, shoving his guards off with less grace than usual, hopping the boards quickly. Not like he was running away from anything, no. But the cool air whipping around him as he pushed off on his skates was relief, as always.
Marlow circled in front of him, skating backward as he kept enough space to avoid collision. Ilya could tell his eyebrows were raised even through his visor.
“Whatever you say, Cap.” He threw up a lazy salute, then pushed away with a spray of ice. It dusted over Ilya, just like Marly had intended.
“Fucking asshole!” Ilya shouted after him, wrinkling his nose. “Just for that, we do suicides!”
“Aw, Captain!” “We have a fucking game, Rozy, are you crazy?” “He’s lost it.”
“Let’s go, you fuckers!”
That night, maybe Ilya should’ve taken more care to keep his eyes to himself. Especially when he could feel Marly’s smug gaze tracking him as Roz gleefully observed Hollander’s warm ups, circling his knees on the ice with elbows planted firmly down, fondly reminded how the man looked face-down ass-up, split open on Ilya’s cock. It warmed something in his core, made his limbs tingle with anticipation. He would spend three periods chasing Hollander down the ice, then at least three hours pinning the man to his own bed after. He’d put them on a clock, not let Hollander get up until Ilya had his fill. If that was even possible. Maybe he’d just have to keep Hollander locked up in his room always, waiting and soft and open for Ilya at all times, needy mouth bitten plump and thick thighs spread…
It wasn’t the first time Ilya went to the face off with a semi. Wouldn’t be the last. He looked up under his eyelashes, devilish grin firmly in place, to find Hollander already staring him down.
“Ready to get your ass destroyed, Hollander?”
That perfect mouth dropped open. Ilya won the face off.
He played better horny. Or maybe that was just a Hollander thing.
…