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It’s the beginning of February, the Centaurs have just beaten the Dallas Riders 3-1 in the Riders’ home stadium, Ilya has persuaded Shane to come have a few celebratory drinks at a local gay bar, and the two of them are arguing. Again.
“I am not super gay,” Shane says for what has to be the fifteenth time tonight.
“You are so super gay,” Ilya retorts, gesturing with his beer bottle in the air as if that’ll make his point for him.
Barrett—one of the half-dozen Centaurs’ players who got roped into Ilya’s plan for a big night out—sighs. “For fuck’s sake,” he says. “This argument is getting real fucking stale.”
It’s nearly midnight now and Shane should definitely be in bed. Sleeping. Well, maybe not sleeping, but then sleeping, eventually. But their plane isn’t until two p.m. and Ilya has been having such a fun time all night Shane hasn’t been able to bring himself to be a downer.
Ilya catches Shane watching him and winks. It’s a little lopsided, with his tipsiness, and not particularly sexy. Shane wants to eat him like a warm blueberry muffin. Like a bowl of hot ramen.
“Seriously,” Dykstra chimes in. “It’s like, the third time since Christmas you guys have gotten into a mess over this. Nobody fucking cares.”
“Also, super gay is not a real thing,” Barrett adds.
“This is important conversation,” Ilya says. “Important topic between me and my husband. Is none of your business.”
“It is when we have to hear about it every fucking week,” Bood tells his cocktail glass, and a murmur of agreement goes up from the guys.
“If you don’t like it, you didn’t need to come,” Ilya sniffs. The night out had been Haas’s idea, actually, but Haas is off grinding with some very hot twink on the dance floor, oblivious to this whole thing.
“Or you can just settle the argument once and for all,” Barrett says. A few heads turn to look at him, like hens turning towards the sound of feed. “There’s a strip club like three blocks over. Do a practical experiment. For science. And our sanity.”
“God, please,” Dykstra groans, his forehead pressed against the sticky wooden bar.
Ilya looks at Shane, raises an eyebrow. Well, Shane has never backed down from a challenge.
—
The place is called the Leopard Club and has a light-up neon sign of a panther in its window that flashes against the blackness of the night.
“That’s not a leopard,” Shane says. “It has the wrong number of toes.” Ilya laughs and kisses the back of Shane’s neck as he guides him in through the door.
It’s just the two of them, because all the straight guys begged off because of their wives—“If Cassie knew I went to the strip club while she was home with two little kids, she’d murder me,” Bood said—and the gay guys didn’t want to leave the gay bar—“If I wanted to see girls’ tits I wouldn’t have been gay in the first place,” Barrett said.
It’s not overly packed inside the club. A Tuesday night, after all; there’s maybe a couple dozen guys in various states of drunkenness perched at small tables throughout the club, and a few girls in bikinis wandering around, some with trays of drinks in hand. There are red strobe lights on, which Shane hates, but they’re less aggressive than some he’s seen before.
Ilya looks at him, raises an eyebrow, a silent you sure about this?
Shane strides forward and picks a table.
Ilya follows a moment later, crowding in so he can sit next to Shane with his hand on Shane’s thigh, even though there are plenty of seats.
“So, what do we do?” Shane asks after a moment. He’s never been to a strip club before. He’s been invited—mostly when he was on the Metros, by teammates when they had an especially big win and wanted to get super wild with the celebrations—but he always said no, brushed it off as an optics risk. They never pressed him, though he caught an eye roll, once or twice. Of course, after he came out, the invitations stopped coming.
“We watch the pretty girls,” Ilya says. “If a server comes over, we order drinks. And if someone else comes over, we might get a private chat. Or dance.”
He glances at Shane, and Shane nods. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, that’s—cool. Yeah. Chill.”
Except five minutes later he’s basically buzzing out of his seat with anticipation, and he knows Ilya can tell. “So impatient,” Ilya says. “Like a puppy.”
Shane glares at him. “I am not a puppy.”
“My little puppy,” Ilya coos, chucking him under his chin, and then in the same movement, like it’s nothing, reaches out to tap a passing girl on the elbow.
She pauses, turning to him. She's got a tiny waist and a scar that wraps around her shoulder like a silver snake, and she’s wearing high heels that make her sway noticeably as she walks. “Excuse me," Ilya says. "I need someone to help me test how gay my husband is."
The girl looks between them, a smile dawning on her face. "Oh boy," she says. "You gonna pay for it?"
Ilya presses a hand to his chest, mock-offended. "Of course."
"Well, I'm due on stage in five minutes, but I think I know the right woman for you."
Asha is wearing a bright blue bikini that looks very good against her dark skin and she's getting her masters in sexual psychology at the University of Texas. "This pays better than a research gig," she says, sprawling comfortably across their table in a way that puts her private areas dangerously close to Shane's hand. He moves it away, to be respectful, and Asha shoots Ilya a look that Shane can't parse.
"I know," Ilya says. "Believe me, I know. But he doesn't."
Asha grins. "Well, this'll be fun for me," she says. "Okay, honey, what's your name?"
Shane hesitates for a beat and she quickly says, "You don't have to tell me."
"I'd rather not," Shane says honestly. "We're, uh, public figures. I guess."
"Well, I may not be a medical provider yet, but rest assured I will offer you stripper-patient confidentiality," Asha says. "So what's the deal? He thinks you're gay, you think you're bi?"
"No," Shane says quickly. "I'm definitely gay. It's just—he thinks i'm super gay, and I think I'm just normal levels of gay."
Asha raised an eyebrow at Ilya. "Super gay? What does that even mean?"
"He couldn't even get it up for Rose Landry," Ilya says.
"Eh," Asha says. " I mean, maybe he just wasn't into the way the director shot her, or something."
"Oh, no," Ilya says gleefully. "You don't understand. He dated Rose Landry for real. Real life. He tried to fuck her and could not."
"Ilya," Shane hisses, smacking him, but Ilya, too drunk to censor himself, only laughs.
"Oh, honey,” Asha says. "You really are super gay."
Shane flushes even deeper. He must look like a fucking beet, under these rosy strobe lights. "It's—I'm not—"
Asha takes pity on him. "Let me ask you something," she says. She points to her chest. "Are these things doing anything for you? Anything at all?"
It takes Shane a moment to realize she's talking about her breasts. "Um—I mean—they seem nice? Like, uh, they say symmetry is beautiful, and they're very symmetrical, and, uh—"
Asha laughs. Ilya, beside Shane, has been giggling under his breath for at least a minute straight. Shane smacks his thigh without looking at him, but Ilya doesn't even seem to feel it. "Okay," Asha says. "And what about his chest?"
Shane looks at Ilya. He's wearing a very tight white t-shirt, under which Shane can almost see his nipples, as well as the shadow of a hickey he sucked into Ilya's breastbone the night before. "Well, yeah," he says. "Of course I like it."
Asha nods, leaning back on the heels of her palms. "Right," she says, as if she's proved a point.
"But that's not a fair comparison," Shane can't help but point out. "He's my husband. If he had—breasts—" He realizes, as he's saying the word, that he says it like some other people might say needles, or Brussels sprouts— "Then I would like them. Like, if Ilya turned into a woman overnight, I would still want to— you know."
Asha smiles at him. Ilya has stopped cackling and is now looking at Shane with the kind of lovesick expression he normally only busts out post-orgasm, or when he catches Shane color-sorting their athletic socks. Which are mostly black, admittedly, but they're shades of black, and as Shane's stylist had told him once, shades matter.
"I'm pretty sure that just means you're in love," she says.
While Shane is trying to come up with a response to that, she turns and gestures behind her to the crowd of ladies. "Are you attracted, at all, to any of my coworkers?"
Shane feels awkward, oogling the women just trying to do their jobs, but he does his best to follow her instructions. There's one muscular girl working the pole on stage; if Shane squints his eyes, he can kind of imagine her ass is Ilya's. And there's a very pretty girl a few rows away giving a lap dance to a beefy trucker guy type, which he kind of likes, but he's maybe paying more attention to the guy's big hand splayed low on her belly, and not enough on the actual lower belly.
"Er," Shane says, because he doesn't want to be rude and being hot is these women's jobs. If someone told him he was bad at being good at hockey, he'd be offended.
"Right," Asha says. "Okay, mystery man, my verdict is in: your husband is right. You are super gay."
"Yes!" Ilya cheers, pumping a fist in the air. Shane sighs.
"Maybe I'm just into Ilya," he says, even though he doesn't really believe it. "It's not like I dated any other guys."
“Well, maybe try going to a gay strip club and see how you feel about the people there," Asha says. "But I can promise you, you're not going to get anything else out of being here tonight."
Shane sighs again, and glances over at Ilya, who is already looking at him. Shane has competed enough against his husband to recognize that look in his eyes. Triumph. Fuck, Shane hates losing.
"Thank you very much, Asha," Ilya says. "You have been extremely helpful. Here is your tip."
He passes her a wad of green bills. Shane can't tell what denomination they are—fucking American currency, why don't they color code it like every other civilized nation—but Asha's eyes widen. "Woah, I don't think—"
"Please," Shane's generous husband says, waving a hand through the air. "You did great service to us. And American school, it is expensive, yes? This maybe buys one textbook."
"A lot more than that," Asha says, but tucks the bills into her bikini and leans down to kiss Ilya on the cheek, giving him a great view of her chest as she does. Something hot flares in Shane's stomach.
Asha leans down to kiss Shane's cheek, too, and then she says, "Well, if you're ever back in Texas and want to talk gayness again, you know where to find me." With a wink, she's off, leaving Shane and Ilya in a booth that suddenly feels very dark and hot with sex.
"So you like this?" Shane says. He waved a hand around them when Ilya furrows his brow. "This really does something for you? Not in the abstract. In your pants, right now."
"In my pants," Ilya repeats, grinning. "Yes, Hollander, I find these girls very hot, and it does something in my pants. But is different than it used to be.”
"How so?"
"Well, it used to be I would want to take one of them to the back room and fuck then," Ilya says. Shane knows he's saying it just to make him jealous; it still works. He clenches his jaw and shifts in his seat, trying not to make it obvious.
"And now?" he asks, deliberately casual.
Ilya is smirking at him like he isn’t fooled at all. Shane wants to smack him, or yank his jeans down and blow him, right here, in front of everyone. “Now, is more like looking at piece of pretty art in museum," Ilya says. "I like the way it looks, but I would never want to do anything to it. It is just—two-dimensional. And you are 3D."
Shane swallows hard. His heart flutters like a cicada in his chest. "I think that'd be considered objectifying women,” he manages.
"Probably," Ilya agrees tenderly. "Hotel?"
"Hotel," Shane says. In the end, they make it a race for the door.
-
Two weeks later, in Ottawa, Ilya takes Shane to a strip club called The Gyrating Steer. They sit three rows back with Moscow Mules and watch the onstage performances get progressively more salacious as the night goes on.
"So," Ilya asks, as a dancer clenches the pole between his ample ass cheeks. "What's the verdict?"
Shane tilts his head, eyeing the curve of the stripper’s bicep as he uses it to single-handedly hold his weight. "It's a very nice art museum," he says, and Ilya laughs.
"So you agree you are super gay?"
Shane hums, considering. "No," he says finally, and before Ilya can do more than squawk in outrage adds, "I think I'm normal gay, but I am Ilyasexual."
If he wasn't three drinks deep, he wouldn't have said it. Ilya will probably bring it up for the next fifteen years when he wants to tease him. But when Ilya laughs, his smile is so wide, and his eyes so warm, that Shane can't bring himself to regret it. Any of it. Anything at all.