Archive of Our Own

After they came out, Shane was ready for people to be weird.

It was weird with other guys in the league, weird with reporters, weird with angry fans who thought his relationship had tanked their fantasy teams and their sports betting parlays, weird with sponsors and their very enthusiastic pride campaign pitches, weird on all the social media that he avoided like the plague.

What he hadn't expected was for things to be so fucking weird with other gay people.

"--and so I was like, girl, I am a gold star Kinsey six, I am not going to be any help in this situation."

Shane was standing in a loose circle with Harris and a couple of his friends from college, nodding along while one of them told a story about a coworker who'd recently gotten a bikini wax that ended with second-degree burns. It seemed like a deeply strange topic of conversation, but Shane was being chill. Troy and Harris had decided to throw a housewarming party right before the official start of training camp, and now Shane was talking to Harris and his college friends while Ilya was on the other side of the room chatting with Cassie and bouncing Milo in his lap, and Shane was being so chill.

"I mean, you all know what I'm saying, right?" Joel, the guy who had been telling the bikini wax story, gestured around at the group of them but also shot a pointedly arched eyebrow at Shane, like he was looking specifically for Shane's reaction.

Shane had spent his entire adult life delivering measured responses to disingenuous questions from sports reporters, but this wasn't about his TOI or his face-off percentage, so he found himself at a loss. "I'm, uh, not sure what that means?"

Harris looked sheepish, and was quick to jump in and explain. "It's just, like, a way of talking about how gay you are. A gold star is a gay guy who's never had sex with a woman."

That seemed like a sort of private thing to share, but Joel had been telling a story about his coworker's bikini waxing habits, so maybe he was just like that.

"Oh, okay," Shane said. "And what's the other thing?"

He felt like he was asking a lot of questions. At least he already knew what a bikini wax was. One time, Jackie had said that her favorite part of being pregnant was that it was an excuse to skip her monthly bikini wax appointment. Shane had been somewhat confused and then extremely mortified, but now that information had come in handy ten years later while talking to a bunch of gay guys at a housewarming party.

Topher, Harris's other friend, tilted his head to one side. "Oh, the Kinsey scale?" he said. "It's a way to rate how gay or straight you are. So, a zero is completely straight and a six is completely gay."

"Why does it only go to six?" Shane asked, because apparently all he did was ask questions now. Over Topher's shoulder, he could see across the room that Ilya had passed Milo back to Cassie. Now he was talking to Troy and a couple women Shane didn't recognize who must have also been Harris's friends. Harris knew, like, a lot of people.

Topher shook his head. "No idea. It's named after some sex researcher guy."

"Anyway," said Harris. "Telling someone that you're a gold star Kinsey six just means you're--" He waved his hand a little bit. "Very gay."

Joel grinned. "Yup," he said. "That's me!"

For the first time in the conversation, Shane was glad that Ilya was on the other side of the room. He would be way too delighted to learn that there was a technical term for being super gay.

"Huh," Shane said. "Okay."

Joel set his wine glass down on the counter and clapped his hands together. "Alright Shane, now that the lesson is over, time to share with the class!"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I know all about these two." He gestured at Harris and Topher. "Absolute gold star six club, no notes. But what about you?"

Harris frowned and said, "C'mon. Stop."

Joel waved him off. "We are trying to teach your friend how to gay gossip. This is stuff he needs to learn. It's basically community outreach!"

And, well, great. So much for letting Harris get him out of this, because Joel had unknowingly activated Shane's somewhat pathological need to prove he could learn anything it had been decided that he needed to know.

"Uh … well, not a gold star," Shane said. He felt like he was both confessing a secret and also telling them something they would already know if they'd read literally one corner of the internet at the end of 2016, but whatever.

He thought for a moment about what it would have been like if he'd learned about the Kinsey scale during his very tentative googling the summer after the draft. He would have told himself he was a one, maybe. Then he would have had to grudgingly concede to a slightly higher number every year, until he was 25 and absolutely fucking clinging to the possibility of being a 5.9 with white knuckles and a flop sweat.

"But yeah," he said eventually. "I guess I'm probably also a six."

"Okay! What about your husband?" Joel said the word 'husband' in an exaggerated way that dragged out the first syllable and turned the end of it into a 'Z' sound. "Obviously not a gold star, but where is he on the Kinsey scale?"

Harris reached over to swat Joel on the shoulder. "Oh my god. Shane, you really don't have to answer that."

It felt like kind of a personal thing to share about someone else, but he didn't think Ilya would care, and these were Harris's friends, maybe it was okay to get a little personal. Also, Shane was being chill. He was out now, and he was standing around at a party with three other gay guys talking about what gay guys apparently talked about, and everything was totally chill.

"Yeah, no, it's fine," he said. "So, if the scale goes from zero to six, that means a three is completely in the middle, right?"

Topher nodded. "Yeah, a three is someone who's 50/50 bisexual."

"Okay, I guess I think Ilya is like a … two?" Shane said. "I don't know. You should really be asking him."

"Huh," said Joel. "I didn't expect that."

Shane didn't know what Joel had expected. And he, like, didn't really care either? So he was hoping that would be the end of it, but Harris's expression turned sour, and he said, "Really, Joel? What's that supposed to mean?"

Joel shrugged. "Clock me being biphobic, I guess, but that seems like kind of low number for someone who decided to get whole-ass lifetime commitment gay married."

And then Shane was confused again, because Joel's tone was kind of all over the place. He sounded apologetic; not like he was sorry for what he said, but more like he was sorry … for Shane?

It always took a little longer than what he knew was normal for Shane to get inside other people's heads, unless it was to figure out which direction they were going to deke on the ice. But eventually he realized that Joel thought Ilya's level of attraction to men in general had some kind of relationship to his attraction to Shane in specific. Which was objectively deranged. A scale didn't exist for how attracted Shane and Ilya were to each other. A number from zero to six? More like six million.

Meanwhile, Topher was making a considering face. "Hmm, maybe a Kinsey scale gap is the new age gap."

And that was … wow. A lot of words that Joel and Topher had both just said. Shane was not going to ask any more questions. He was going to pretend to have an allergic reaction or a muscle cramp, and he was going to extract himself from this conversation like a bad tooth and--

"Alright, that's enough," Harris said. "You guys need to knock it off." He sounded pained in the same way he had last week when he told Ilya to stop following a Gilbert Comeau's Biggest Flops account on Instagram. Shane felt bad that Harris was having to scold his friends like they were misbehaving hockey players, so he decided it was time to go rejoin his husband.

The day after the housewarming party, Shane ended up on the treadmill next to Troy in the gym at the practice facility.

He honestly preferred working out at home, but he was trying to find ways to spend more time with his new teammates. So he'd ridden over with Ilya when he came in to do a session with PT. Ilya was doing wrist strengthening exercises after a lingering sprain from last season, because one of the best parts of living together full-time was that Shane was finally able to exert his preferred level of micromanagement over Ilya's injury rehab. Well, there were a lot of best parts. But that one might still crack the top ten.

Shane was cooling down right as Troy started to warm up, so it was easy to make conversation. "Hey," Troy said, "thanks for coming last night. I hope you guys had a good time."

"You have a really great place. I meant to ask, did you end up deciding to rent or buy?"

"Well, my financial guy said it made more sense to buy, but Harris--"

The thing about Troy was that Shane was glad he was a nice guy now, glad he was a good friend to Ilya, and even more glad that Ilya had him as a linemate. But there was a nagging and uncharitable part of Shane that thought Troy was kind of … weak.

Because Shane had spent a lot of seasons as a closeted player in the league, and he never resorted to calling anyone a fag as camouflage. Troy had done things to stay closeted that Shane never would have been able to get away with. And after he'd pretended to be an evil homophobe in Toronto for a few years, he got traded into the welcoming arms of Ottawa, met a cute guy, and came out to a locker room that could double as a cheering section at a fucking pride parade.

Okay, maybe it had been a little more complicated than that. But Shane could tell Troy stories that would probably make him puke. Troy never came out to a team that still tried to force him to get a lap dance at a bachelor party so he could 'double-check' if he was actually gay. He never played on the same line as a guy who acted like nothing had changed but stopped inviting him to his kids' birthday parties.

"--anyway," said Troy, who was still talking. Hopefully, Shane had been making affirmative noises in the right places. "I wanted to just put his name on the deed but he said that was crazy and we could talk about it again in a couple years."

"Right," Shane said. "That makes sense."

They both jogged in silence for a minute, their feet making a soothing thump thump sound as they hit the treadmill. Then, Troy said, "I saw you were talking to some of Harris's college friends last night."

"Oh. Yeah."

"It was really nice to meet Harris's friends after I came out. Kind of helped me get a crash course in being gay, you know?"

"Uh, right."

"I thought there was so much I needed to learn because I'm such a hockey meathead, but maybe I'm just extra clueless. Like, Ilya seems like he's always known that kind of stuff, right?"

Shane sucked down a gulp from his water bottle to keep himself from saying something snappish, like: I don't know, man, maybe use your brain for a fucking second? Ilya grew up in Russia. One time he told me that he didn't know there was a word for being bisexual until the Bears asked him to make a Twitter account.

Thankfully, right at that same moment, Shane's cooldown clock hit zero. So, he decided he could weight train at home, wished Troy a good workout and got out of there.

twinker bell 💅 💅 💅 @vicioushardy
Okay, so now that those two gay hockey players have been out for a minute, can we talk about how they're kind of a disappointment? I don't know, I guess I just thought they would be … gayer. Like why do they both look like they would have hate-crimed me in high school.

Harvey Milk's Campaign Manager @SFDylan93
So you're telling me an overcompensating masc top and a shy Asian bottom came out and then also got married five minutes later? Like, pick a heteronormative struggle, please!

I'm Still at the Trixie Motel @x4vi3r
I know y'all love a good Asian bottom stereotype but Shane Hollander did not single-handedly invent new kinds of reverse crunches to get himself that demonically sculpted eight-pack so you could fail to recognize he's in the most hyperbolically masc4masc relationship of all time.

carter vaughan split my defense @_mattloveshockey
It's so much fun to be a gay die-hard hockey fan in the time of Hollanov. Every day I come on here and my timeline is just life's rich tapestry of wrong opinions and bad takes and I love that for me.

Caleb 🏳️‍🌈 🏒 @calebindavie
I don't know, I'm a gay lifelong hockey fan and I was so excited to have two married players in the NHL but everything I learn about their relationship is just so depressing.

Caleb 🏳️‍🌈 🏒 @calebindavie
After they got outed, some guys who had played with Hollander in Montreal said he came out to the team years ago and it was like an open secret in the league. It sucks that he probably had to stay closeted because Rozanov couldn't let go of his hetero Russian sex god persona.

Right before the regular season started, Shane did a photoshoot for BioSteel. It was a campaign that had been booked since the beginning of the year, so a normal stand-and-pose with no rainbow explosion, thank god. The one annoying part was that he had to drive back to Montreal, a well-worn trip that he could do in his sleep but definitely would not miss.

When he arrived at the studio they sent him straight to hair and makeup, where he was ready to zone out for a while and think about how he could help Luca fix his drop pass. Usually, the women who did his makeup were chatty and the guys left him alone. But this time when he slid into the chair, the makeup guy's face absolutely lit up with excitement.

"Hi, I'm Kilmer!" he said. "I usually don't do this, but I just have to say that I'm so excited to meet you!"

And, well, people had been telling Shane that they were so excited to meet him in a way that he could not reasonably be expected to reciprocate for his entire adult life, so he knew how to handle that. "Thanks," he said. "I hope I'm able to live up to the hype."

"Oh, I'm sure," said Kilmer, and then he winked at him. Shane realized it was a stereotype to assume that this guy was gay just because he was a makeup artist, but sometimes stereotypes existed for a reason. Also, it was dawning on him that most of the guys who did his makeup had probably been leaving him alone because they'd assumed all straight hockey players were homophobes.

Kilmer started applying primer and color corrector, and asked if Shane was looking forward to the shoot. Shane gave him an admittedly inane answer about how he liked that BioSteel was a Canadian company and that they used fruit and vegetable powders for their color dyes. Shane's phone buzzed in his pocket while Kilmer was swatching a couple of different shades of foundation, giving him a chance to pull it out for a quick look.

Ilya: Are the drink packet people getting you nice and hydrated? Know how much you like to get very wet.
Ilya: 💦👅 💦👅 💦👅

He rolled his eyes and tucked his phone away again.

"Hmm, was that your husband?"

Shane looked up to see that Kilmer was holding a loaded makeup sponge. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Sorry about that."

Kilmer waved him off and started applying foundation all over Shane's face. "So look," he said. He dropped his voice to a hush, which was a little strange because they were the only people in the room. "I have to ask. You and your husband, is it, like, a gay for you situation?"

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"I know, I know!" Kilmer said. "It's very cliche, but I can't resist a good gay for you. I guess I just didn't think it happened in real life."

Shane thought about just saying yes or no and hoping he'd picked the right answer. But that would probably lead to more questions, so. "No, sorry, I don't understand what 'gay for you' means."

"Oh, right, okay! It's usually a romance novel thing. Like, a popular trope, I guess. It's when a guy has been totally straight his whole life, never even thought about men like that, but then he meets this one particular guy, and falls in love with him and he's the one exception. So he's, like, 'I'm still basically straight, but I'm gay for you.'"

"Huh. That's … interesting?" It did not actually sound interesting. Shane was aware of romance novels conceptually, as like … a section that existed in a bookstore. He was pretty okay with letting that be the sum total of what he knew about that.

"And like, I know your husband had kind of a track record with women before you guys came out," Kilmer said. He glanced over to meet Shane's eyes in the mirror and gave him a sly look. It was an expression that had become annoyingly familiar over the last couple of months, like Shane was just dying to laugh with random strangers about how Ilya fucked around a lot before they officially got together. "So, anyway, I figured maybe that was what happened with the two of you."

There was a small kernel of truth in what Kilmer was saying, even if the conclusion he arrived at was laughably wrong. Ilya was attracted to everyone. He liked women and men and people with other genders that Shane knew existed but didn't really understand. If aliens invaded tomorrow, Ilya would be saying by next week that the ones with the blue antennae were kind of hot. The thing that was singular and precious and probably belonged in a romance novel was that Ilya could fuck anyone, but he only loved Shane.

This guy was clueless, but Shane was a polite person. He was polite to drivers and flight attendants and people who asked him for selfies at the doctor's office and makeup artists. Everybody knew that.

"Uh, no," Shane said. "That's … not what happened."

The Centaurs had a game in LA early in the season, with an off day before they flew out that evening to play Phoenix the day after. Which worked out, because there was just enough time for Shane to have a late brunch with Rose. At her house instead of a restaurant, because they'd learned the hard way over the summer that the paparazzi swarm when they showed up together in public was almost back to the size of the one that had followed them when they were dating.

After Rose greeted him at the door and led him back to the kitchen, Shane stopped in his tracks because a blond guy wearing a sweater and cut-off jean shorts was leaning against the island and thumbing through his phone.

"Oh, hey," Rose said, "I don't think you've ever met Dusty! He's in condo renovation hell so he's crashing in the guest house for a little bit."

Shane nodded in his direction, wondering if he was supposed to recognize him, but not really having a clue. "Nice to meet you," he said.

Dusty stood up and put his phone down, looking way, way too delighted. A familiar alarm bell started blaring in Shane's head. "Are you kidding me?" Dusty said. "I can't believe I get to be the one to officially welcome you to the club. The other guys are going to be so jealous."

Right. Dusty Palmer had been one of Rose's costars on a TV show about time-travelling high schoolers, and he was also her first gay ex-boyfriend. Because Rose had enough gay ex-boyfriends to fill out the starting lineup for a hockey team, and everyone knew Shane was one of them now. So that was fun.

Rose groaned dramatically. "Oh my god, stop!" she said. "You make it sound like there's a group chat." Then she turned to Shane and gave him an apologetic look. "Anyway, sorry," she said. "I remembered right before you got here that I have to return a call really quick. I swear, it'll just be a second, and then we can eat."

Rose stepped out of the room, and Shane and Dusty sat down at the kitchen table. The food was already laid out, and Shane was relieved to see that there were only two place settings. Hopefully, this meant Dusty would be going back to the guest house soon. Because what else was he going to do, hang out and watch them eat?

"So," Dusty said. "Rose told me all about the wedding." He leaned forward a little bit when he said this, like Shane's wedding had been some kind of secretive affair and not an actual headline on ESPN.com. "Congratulations."

"Oh, thanks. It was really great that Rose could make it, even with all those reshoots she had to do in Atlanta."

"And hey, listen," Dusty said. "I just wanted to say, my hat's off to you. Guys who can handle long-term hook-ups with closet cases are God's strongest soldiers."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Oh, I just mean--" Dusty sat back and drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. "A while back, I hooked up with a closeted football player for a couple months. And it was hot, but it was also kind of awful? Like, you know, he never kissed me, and half the time he wouldn't even touch my dick. The high school jock fantasy was just not enough to make that a fun time for me."

Shane could tell that his face had gone slack, and Dusty seemed to realize he'd put his foot in it a little bit. "I mean," Dusty said. "I know being a gay athlete is a whole thing. That it can be risky, or whatever. I probably should have been more empathetic."

"Are you," Shane started to say. "Do you think that--" And then he stopped, because there was a small but not insignificant part of him that wanted to … brag? Like, Sorry dude, can't relate. The jock I hooked up with was a fucking Russian teenager in the country on a work visa, and he kissed me and said he wanted to see me naked and sucked my soul out through my dick.

Dusty held his hands up like he was trying to concede. "I know you guys are married now, so obviously he got past it eventually," he said. "I was just saying, I can appreciate that trying to coax a guy out of the closet is hell."

Shane stared at him blankly, and was in the middle of deciding whether he needed to defend Ilya's honor by explaining who exactly had been the massive closet case in their relationship when Dusty apparently decided to just keep talking.

"Anyway," Dusty said. "How long are you in town? And, uh, not to just shoot my shot like this, but are you guys open?"

Shane was pretty sure he was going to regret it, but he was about to ask Open to what? when, thankfully, Rose returned from the other room. "Sorry about that!" she said. "They want me to do another ADR session for that spy movie from last year, but it's not in my contract, so my agent is telling them they just have to do a voice match."

"I'll leave you guys to it," Dusty said, standing up and walking backwards toward the French doors that let out to the yard. "It was so nice to meet you, Shane. I'll make sure to add you to the group chat."

Rose slid into the seat that Dusty had vacated and started dishing grapefruit salad onto her plate. "Sorry about him," she said. "I know he's kind of a lot."

Shane shook his head. "No, it's fine. But if you give him my phone number I will kill you."

Shane: Hey Scott, it's Shane Hollander. I wanted to ask you a question, if you don't mind?

Scott: Yeah, what's up?

Shane: After you came out, were other gay people really weird about it?

Scott: Oh yeah, extremely weird. It's better with Kip's friends now, but when I first came out they were a lot. It helps if you think of it like chirping. Except most of the chirps are about gay sex. But yeah, way too many conversations about whether I was on PreP.

Scott: Kip says you don't have to answer when someone asks if you're on PreP unless you're trying to have sex with them, so keep that in mind, I guess.

Shane: The only person I'm having sex with is Ilya so I don't think that's going to be a problem.

Scott: There is a really obvious joke to be made here about being on PreP and deciding to start hooking up with Rozanov and I think I deserve some credit for my restraint.

Shane: Okay, so if you think there is a single joke I have not heard about how my husband used to be kind of a manwhore, please tell me. I'm dying to hear it.

Scott: See, you sound like Kip's bitchy friends already! You'll be fine.

After they let themselves into their hotel room in Phoenix, Ilya flopped down on the bed and said, "So, you did not have a good time seeing Rose?"

Shane looked up from where he was taking things out of his suitcase, unsurprised that Ilya had noticed that he'd been a little off when he met the rest of the team at the airport and also that he'd waited until they were alone to ask him about it.

"No, Rose was great," he said. "Her friend Dusty is staying with her right now, though, and he's kind of a dick? I don't know. It was confusing." Confusing enough that he'd texted Scott Hunter for advice in the car on the way to the airport, an exchange that had left him with more things to google than answers.

"Is Dusty the one she made friends with when they both quit the secret celebrity juice fast in the desert thing?"

"No, he's the actor who played her best friend on the time travel show."

Ilya chuckled. "Ah, one of the other gay ex-boyfriends," he said knowingly. "You did not enjoy sizing up the competition?"

"No, shut up." Shane abandoned his unpacking to go lie down on the bed next to Ilya. "He tried to bond with me by telling me about how he used to hook up with a closeted football player." He scooted over to press their bodies closer together, so he could soak up the warmth of Ilya like a heating pad.

Ilya looked over at him. "Sounds hot," he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, no, he made it sound terrible," Shane said. Deciding that they still weren't close enough, he nudged Ilya to lift his arm so that Shane could rest his head on his shoulder. Ilya wrapped his hand around the back of Shane's neck and started rubbing his thumb back and forth. "But I was thinking," Shane said once they'd settled in together, "it's actually not the first time something like this happened."

Because Shane had forgotten about Harris's friends by the time they had left the housewarming party and about the makeup guy by the time he left the BioSteel photoshoot. But now he was slotting those two conversations alongside the one he had with Dusty, and so he told Ilya about both of them. He decided not to mention his lingering unease around Troy. Or his attempt to get advice from Scott, but that was mostly because he was embarrassed that he'd had to google what PreP was.

"Anyway," Shane said, "I guess I thought, I don't know. I was always paranoid about even talking to another gay person because I was afraid they'd be able to tell about me. But now I don't have to worry about that anymore, and all of these conversations are still so … weird."

"New things are uncomfortable for you sometimes, even if they are not bad."

Shane tilted his head up so that he could nuzzle his nose against the spot where Ilya's neck met his shoulder. "I guess so," he said. "You've always more comfortable with this stuff than me. Like, even before you were out, you made friends with Harris, and you hung out at the Kingfisher."

Ilya snorted. "Yes, but that's because I like making friends and going to bars, and you do not like doing either of those things."

"I mean -- okay, yeah, I guess that's kind of true."

Ilya pressed a kiss to the top of Shane's head. "Sweetheart, I love you very much," he said. "I would not change a single thing about you, and you are my absolute favorite person in the whole world. But you are kind of an asshole, and you do not like most people. I'm sorry that gay people are not the exception, but I am also not surprised."

"Ugh," Shane said, because being known so well was sort of terrible sometimes.

"I think part of it is that these gay people are weird to you because you are famous and they are not? You are not very good at making friends with people who are less famous than you. Except for Pike, obviously."

"Oh my god, stop," Shane said. He kicked one of Ilya's feet and then hooked their ankles together. "That makes me sound like even more of an asshole."

Ilya wasn't exactly wrong. Shane had friends, but he'd noticed over the years that he didn't have friends the way his teammates did. They stayed in touch with guys from high school, and had golf buddies, and did things with couple friends who their wives had met however wives meet people.

Shane still needed to keep making his argument, though, because he was just like that. "Dusty is a famous actor," he pointed out. "And he straight-up asked me if you used to be too much of a closet case to touch my dick."

"Dusty was Rose's best friend on a dumb TV show like fifteen years ago, he's barely famous. Also, sounds like he thinks about your dick too much and he is going to die soon, so don't worry about him."

"Alright, calm down."

"No one is allowed to think about your dick except me!" Ilya protested.

Shane rolled his eyes. "I can't believe that I'm the one having to break this to you, but I've got bad news for you about the internet."

"Hmm." And then Ilya said, carefully, "Is okay if you are not always happy. Having everyone know about us. Being out. I know it is not what you always imagined, and then it did not happen how you imagined it."

Shane pushed up and swung himself over so he could straddle Ilya, hands on his shoulders to press him down on the mattress. "Are you fucking kidding me?" Shane said, and then he leaned down to kiss him, just once, because there was still more he wanted to say.

"I'm so happy," Shane told him, basking in the smile that spread across Ilya's face. "I'm happy every day, about the absolute dumbest shit. If I wasn't so happy, it would honestly be kind of embarrassing. Sometimes when we get to the hotel and they hand us two key cards for the same room, I feel like crying. That's how fucking happy I am."

Ilya wrapped his hands around the back of Shane's thighs. "Wow, you're right, this is very embarrassing for you," he said smugly, like he hadn't almost cried when he came back from changing the paperwork to make Shane his emergency contact with the Centaurs' HR department.

"Yeah, well," Shane grumbled, "I heard you're a tortured closet case who was dragged kicking and screaming into a Kinsey gap marriage, so maybe I'm not the one who should be embarrassed."

Ilya brought one hand up between Shane's shoulder blades, pushing down until Shane collapsed onto his elbows and their foreheads were pressed together. "Do you want to keep talking about your weird gay people?" he asked.

Shane grinned. Because why waste time thinking about people he didn't care about and the stupid shit that came out of their mouths? Why bother when Ilya was right here? "No," he said. "I really don't."