Chapter Text
The Centaurs took their wins where they could get them, and a road win in Boston was a good one. Good enough for Wiebe to tell them to enjoy themselves, get some sleep, and he'd see them at nine for the bus to the airport. Good enough for most of the guys to end up in the hotel bar by nine-thirty, still loose from the game, somebody's playoff beard getting roasted, Dykstra trying to get the bartender to put his road trip playlist on and being politely refused.
Rozanov and Hollander stayed for one drink.
Bood clocked it without meaning to — he'd gotten good at tracking the room without looking like he was tracking the room, which was a skill you developed after enough years as the longest-serving guy on a middling roster. Rozanov finished his beer and said something to Hollander in a low voice, and Hollander nodded and stood up, and they said their goodnights and that was that. Forty minutes after the final buzzer and the two best players of their generation were in an elevator heading upstairs, Hollander's hand briefly at the small of Rozanov's back as the doors closed.
"Night," a few of the guys called after them.
"Good game tonight, boys," Hollander said, and then he was gone.
The table was quiet for a second.
"I'd go to bed early too, if my wife were here." Haasy said, into his beer.
"You don't have a wife," Dykstra said.
"I know. That's why I said I would." Haasy looked up. "If my wife was at home and I'd just won in Boston, I would also go to bed early to call her."
"Okay, we get it, Haasy."
Barrett drained the last of his pint and pushed back his chair. "Speaking of." He stood up, tugging his jacket off the back. "I'm gonna—"
"Yeah, yeah," Bood said, waving him off. "Give Harris our love."
"He says hi by the way. He wanted me to tell you Chiron chewed through another phone charger."
"That dog," Hazy said.
"Roz is gonna be devastated," Dykstra said.
"Don't tell him until after the Tampa game, we need him focused," Bood said.
Barrett laughed and headed for the elevator, and then it was just them — Bood, Haasy, Hazy, Choo, Dykstra, Tanny, Chouinard — and the bar was comfortable and the win was still warm and Dykstra had accepted defeat on the playlist question and was now just humming Manitoba folk songs to himself, which was arguably worse.
Bood waited until the second round arrived.
"Okay," he said. "Did anyone else see what happened on the bus?"
He told it the way he'd have told it to Cassie — start to finish, no editorializing, just the facts. Hollander coming down the aisle. Rozanov taking up two seats. The pause.
"He sat on him," Bood said.
Haasy made a noise like he'd been waiting for this.
"Like — sat on him," Bood repeated, because he felt it bore repeating. "Just. Lowered himself down onto Roz's legs and got out his book."
"His book," Choo said.
"His book. The paperback he's been carrying around since Calgary. He just opened it to his page and started reading."
"What did Roz do," Tanny said.
"He said Shanya in that voice—"
"Oh, that voice," Hazy said.
"That voice," Bood confirmed. "And then he tried to argue about it for like two minutes."
"What did Hollander do."
"Turned a page."
The table was quiet for a moment.
"He turned a page," Dykstra said slowly.
"Just — " Bood mimed it. "Page."
"Didn't say anything?"
"Nothing."
"And then?"
"And then Roz gave up. And they just stayed like that. Hollander reading, Roz on his phone. The whole rest of the ride."
Another silence. Haasy was grinning into his beer in a way that suggested he was having a personal moment.
"I was behind them," Bood continued, "and I heard Roz go — malysh, look at this, and he shows Hollander his phone. And Hollander looks at it and goes, did that dog dump out the trash?"
"Classic Roz video," Choo said.
"And Roz goes, yes, but look at its face. And Hollander goes, it knows exactly what it did." Bood paused. "And then, without looking up, he goes — it has your face, actually."
Tanny put his drink down.
"It has your face," Haasy repeated.
"Roz went excuse me like he'd been personally insulted. Hollander turned another page."
The table erupted. Not loud — they were in a hotel bar, there were civilians — but the kind of controlled eruption that was somehow louder for being contained. Dykstra slapped the table. Hazy covered his face. Choo made a sound that was mostly air.
"He's been doing a bit," Haasy said, when he'd recovered. "This whole time. He's been doing a bit."
"That's what I'm saying," Bood said.
"The whole season—"
"I know."
"He just sits there and watches—"
"Haasy. I know. That's why I'm telling you."
Haasy subsided, but he was still grinning, the slightly unhinged grin he got when something had genuinely delighted him. Bood had seen that grin during Haasy's first career goal, during the nine-game winning streak last season, during Roz's playoff overtime winner. It was his everything-is-good-actually face.
"Okay but," Hazy said, leaning forward. "Roz's face. When Hollander said it."
"Oh, the face," Bood said.
"What face," Tanny said.
"You know the face Roz makes," Hazy said, "when Hollander says something."
Tanny frowned. "I didn't know there was a specific face."
"There's absolutely a specific face," Bood said. "Like — proud. But also like he's trying not to laugh. Like he's heard this before and it still gets him."
"Like a dad," Dykstra said.
Everyone looked at him.
"What? That's the face. It's a proud dad face."
"That's somehow the most and least romantic thing you could have said about it," Choo said.
"It's the fond face," Haasy said decisively. "He looks fond. Every time."
The table considered this for a moment.
"Okay here's the thing," Bood said. "How long has he been like this? Because that wasn't a one-time thing. That was a guy who is completely comfortable doing that. Which means he's done it before. Which means—"
"He's been this whole time," Hazy finished.
"Around Roz," Choo said. "The question is whether it's only around Roz."
The table went a little quieter.
"I can't tell if he actually likes us," Dykstra said, after a moment.
It landed without drama, the way things did when they were true. A few guys looked down at their drinks.
"Same," Tanny said.
"I always feel like I'm being assessed," Bood admitted. "And I can't tell if I'm passing."
"He gives really good hockey advice," Haasy said, a little defensively, like he felt he had to offer something on Hollander's behalf.
"Yeah, he does," Bood said. "But like. Personally. As a person."
"I tried talking to him," Choo said. "In September. In the gym. I asked him how he was settling in."
"And?"
"And he said, well, thank you, how are you. Very politely. And then waited."
"He does that," Hazy said. "The waiting."
"I can never tell if it's genuine or if he thinks I'm an idiot," Dykstra said.
"It's genuine," Haasy said immediately.
"You don't know that."
"I — okay I don't know that, but I feel it."
"Troy says he's just quiet," Bood said.
"Troy's boyfriend talks to him for work," Hazy said. "That's a different version of him."
"Roz married him," Choo pointed out.
"Roz loves him," Haasy said, like this was both obvious and somehow insufficient to address the point.
"What I mean," Choo said patiently, "is that Roz has good instincts about people. Always has. And Roz chose to marry this guy."
"Roz chose to marry him and has been giggling about him internally for years," Bood said. "We're just — finding out about it now."
Haasy pointed at him. "Exactly. There's a version of Hollander we haven't seen yet. And I think Roz has been sitting on it."
"That's not — " Dykstra started.
"I know what I said."
Bood looked around the table. These were his guys. He'd been with most of them through losing seasons and emergency plane landings and Dykstra's playlist, and he took it seriously, the fact of them all being in the same room. He took it seriously when someone wasn't quite in the room yet.
"Okay," he said. "Here's what I think. He had a rough year, right? Before he got here. Everything that happened with Montreal, the outing, all of it. And last season he was—"
"Careful," Hazy said.
"Careful. Yeah." Bood turned his glass. "But it's different this season. The thing on the bus — that wasn't careful. That was just." He paused. "Him."
"So what do we do," Tanny said.
"We pay attention," Bood said. "We notice. And when it happens again, we — I don't know. We don't make a big deal of it. We just let him know it lands."
"We should have a group chat," Haasy said immediately.
"Why do we need a group chat?"
"For evidence. For coordination. Because if Hollander does something funny and I have to wait until the next practice to tell someone I will lose my mind, Bood."
Bood thought about it for approximately three seconds. "Fine."
Haasy had his phone out before the word was finished.
The chat appeared on Bood's screen thirty seconds later. Hollzy Appreciation Society. He stared at it.
"Haasy."
"It's a good name."
"If he ever sees this—"
"He won't."
"Haasy."
"It's a good name, Bood, and also," Haasy looked up from his phone with the calm confidence of a twenty-two year old who had recently scored seventeen goals, "it's what we're going to call him eventually. So we might as well start now."
"We are absolutely not calling him that to his face," Choo said.
"Not yet."
"Not — Haasy, you cannot just decide a man's nickname."
"Roz is Roz. Barrett is Baz. You are Choo. These things happen."
"Those things happened organically."
"This is organic. I am organically deciding it right now."
Bood watched Dykstra, Hazy, and Tanny all quietly save the contact with the new chat name on their respective phones, saying nothing. He saved it too.
"When do we tell him," Tanny said. "The nickname. When do we use it."
"When we know he won't hate it," Bood said.
"How will we know?"
Bood thought about Hollander sitting on Rozanov's legs on a team bus, turning pages, saying it has your face actually in a voice like he'd been planning it for twenty minutes.
"We'll know," he said.
Hazy looked unconvinced. Choo looked skeptical. Dykstra had gone back to humming.
Haasy looked like he was already writing the speech.
Bood finished his drink and thought about calling Cassie, and about how he'd describe this to her, and about how she'd laugh at him, and about how she'd probably say something correct and slightly annoying like sounds like he just needed time, Zane, and how he'd probably say yeah and mean it.
Outside the bar windows, Boston was doing its Boston thing. Tomorrow they'd fly to Tampa. Hollander would be on the bus, and on the plane, and at the next practice, and the one after that.
Bood could wait.
He was good at waiting.
The bar was loud in the comfortable way bars got after a road win — not rowdy, just warm, everybody's shoulders a little lower than usual. Bood was telling a story about something Dale had said on the plane. Dykstra was attempting to negotiate with the bartender about the music. Haasy was laughing at something on his phone with the particular abandon of someone who was twenty-two and had just had a good game and had not yet learned to be tired.
Ilya was watching Shane.
He did this. He couldn't help it. After years of not being allowed to, he still sometimes caught himself doing it with the slightly stunned quality of a man who kept forgetting he was permitted.
Shane was sitting beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched, nursing a ginger ale and watching the room with his listening face on. This was a specific face — neutral, attentive, a slight stillness around the eyes that most people read as polite patience. Ilya had learned, years ago, to read it differently. Shane was not being politely patient. Shane was filing things away.
The conversation had turned to the Boston game, someone recapping a third period sequence, and Ilya was only half-listening because Shane had shifted slightly beside him, the specific shift that meant he was about to say something, and Ilya had learned a long time ago to pay attention when Shane Hollander was about to say something.
Shane leaned in, close enough that his mouth was near Ilya's ear, and said, very quietly, "Comeau couldn't have made that backcheck. His cardio was always embarrassing. I used to watch him in practice and think, this man is being paid millions of dollars."
Ilya pressed his lips together very hard.
"Drapeau once told a reporter he was in the best shape of his career," Shane continued, in the same pleasant tone, "and I was standing right there and I genuinely had to look at the floor."
"Shanya," Ilya said, which was not a reprimand.
"I'm just saying." Shane picked up his ginger ale. "The backcheck would not have happened."
Ilya looked at the side of Shane's face — the clean line of his jaw, the total composure, the complete absence of any indication that he had just said something brutal — and felt the particular helpless fondness that had been making a home in his chest for going on for years now. Bozhe moy. Almost a decade and and it still did this to him. Shane Hollander, who had grown up parallel to him, who the league had spent a decade using as a measuring stick against Ilya and Ilya against him, who had taken Ilya completely apart anyway and then just — kept him.
"Come upstairs with me," Shane said, still watching the room.
Ilya's brain briefly stopped working.
"Now?" he managed.
Shane turned to look at him then, and his expression was still composed, still level, but his eyes were doing the thing they did that was only ever for Ilya, warm and a little dark and privately amused at the effect he was having. He knew exactly what he was doing. He always knew exactly what he was doing.
"Now," Shane said.
"Yes," Ilya said, immediately.
The corner of Shane's mouth curved. Just slightly. "That was easy."
"It is always easy when you ask."
The tips of Shane's ears went pink. Ilya catalogued this with tremendous satisfaction.
They said their goodnights — Shane doing his round of good game tonight, boys with the handshakes, which Ilya knew he meant specifically and individually and which the guys probably read as generic politeness — and then they were in the elevator and the doors closed and Shane exhaled.
It was a small thing. The exhale. Ilya felt it like a barometer dropping.
"Good night," Ilya said.
"Yeah." Shane leaned back against the elevator wall. "Good game."
"You had two assists."
"You had a goal and two assists."
"I am better than you."
"Marginally. This season. Statistically." Shane looked up at the floor numbers ticking past. "Don't make it weird."
Ilya made it weird by taking his hand, which Shane allowed with the long-suffering patience of a man who had married someone like this entirely on purpose.
Their room was a standard road hotel room, which meant it was fine and slightly beige and had a bathroom Ilya would not examine too closely and a bed that Shane would perform a thorough visual assessment of before committing to it. He did this now — stood at the foot of the bed, looked at it with the focused attention of someone doing load-bearing calculations, then sat on the edge and bounced once, experimentally.
"Adequate," he said.
"High praise."
"For a road hotel, yes." Shane reached up and pulled off his tie — they'd done the post-game media, the suits, all of it — and dropped it on the chair with the casual accuracy of someone who had performed this exact motion in hotel rooms for over a decade. Ilya watched him. He thought, not for the first time, that he could watch Shane Hollander take off a tie in a hotel room for the rest of his life and not get tired of it.
This was not a feeling he had expected when he was younger. He had expected love to be dramatic and consuming and painful, because that was what he had seen of it. It was those things, sometimes. It had been those things, when they were secret and stolen and terrified. But mostly now it was this — Shane in a slightly beige hotel room finding the mattress adequate and Ilya unable to look away.
"The Comeau thing," Ilya said, shrugging off his jacket.
"Mm."
"You have been thinking about this."
"I think about a lot of things." Shane undid the top button of his shirt. "Comeau's cardio has been a grievance of mine for several years. I just don't usually say it out loud."
"You said it to me."
"You're my husband." Shane said it simply, like it still sometimes surprised him, the way it still sometimes surprised Ilya — the sheer fact of it, that this was the word now, that it was just true. "I say things to you."
Ilya sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at him. Shane was unbuttoning his shirt with the methodical focus he brought to most tasks, not looking up, and Ilya thought about the bar — Shane's mouth at his ear, Shane's voice perfectly level delivering something that would have made Bood inhale his drink, Shane's expression afterward like he'd commented on the weather.
He thought about the bus. Shane on his legs, Shane turning pages, Shane saying it has your face actually without inflection. The guys had laughed at Bood's story. They'd been warm and loose from the win. And Shane had sat beside Ilya with his ginger ale and his listening face and quietly, privately, been funnier than all of them.
They just didn't know it yet.
"You should say things to them," Ilya said.
Shane looked up.
"The guys," Ilya said. "What you say to me. The — Comeau's cardio. The things you notice." He paused, trying to find the shape of it. "They would like it."
"I'm fine with the guys."
"You are professional with the guys. This is different."
"Being professional isn't—" Shane stopped. Looked at his shirt buttons. "I'm not being cold."
"I know you're not being cold." Ilya kept his voice easy, because this was not a fight, he wasn't trying to make it one. "You are never cold. You are careful."
Shane didn't answer right away. This was also a Shane thing — the pause before he said something true, the moment where Ilya could almost see him deciding how much to give.
"Old habit," he said, finally.
"I know."
"Montreal was—"
"I know." Ilya looked at him steadily. "You don't have to explain it."
Shane sat down next to him. Their shoulders touched, same as in the bar, except here it was different — here they were in a slightly beige hotel room with Shane's tie on the chair and nobody was watching and they had nowhere to be until nine. "I just think people have a version of me in their heads. The — good role model thing. The responsible one. Half-Japanese kid who worked twice as hard for half the room, so he'd better not—" He stopped. "I got used to managing it."
"You don't have to manage it here."
"I know." And he did know, Ilya could hear it, the knowing was not the problem. The problem was seven years of before, which didn't just stop because the after had started. "I'm working on it."
"I know. I see you working on it." Ilya bumped his shoulder. "I only mean — the things you say. The way you are, when it's just us." He paused. "They are going to love it. When they get to see it."
"You can't promise that."
"I can promise this." He said it simply because it was simply true. He had watched this team absorb Barrett's sharpness and Dykstra's inexplicable music and Haasy's entire overwhelming personality. He had watched Bood hold this group together through losing seasons like it was a vocation. He had watched Wiebe run a locker room where people were just — allowed to be people. He knew these men. "They are already on your side. They are just waiting for you to let them be."
Shane was quiet for a long moment.
"Drapeau's ankles were also bad," he said. "I don't know how he lasted as long as he did."
Ilya put his face in his hands.
"Like structurally," Shane continued. "I used to watch him in warmups and think, there is no way—"
"Malysh."
"I'm just saying. There were issues."
Ilya looked up at him through his fingers. Shane was looking back with that expression — level, composed, and underneath it all quietly lit up with the fact that he was enjoying himself, that he was here, that the tips of his ears were still pink and he hadn't tried to hide it.
Moy pomidor, Ilya thought, and didn't say it because Shane would complain, and held it privately with all the other things that were only his.
He reached over and took Shane's hand instead.
Shane looked down at their hands. Then, without looking up, he said "I used to think about this."
"Drapeau's ankles?"
"Road trips." A small exhale. "Having someone to go upstairs with. I used to watch the other guys leave the bar and—" He stopped. Shrugged. "Anyway."
Ilya understood anyway. He had his own anyways from the same years, the same hotel bars, the same careful leaving-separately. Years of watching Shane from afar and having to look somewhere else.
"And now," Ilya said.
"And now." Shane looked up. The pink had faded from his ears but something else was there instead, something warm and certain. "Now I'm here telling you about Drapeau's structural issues, which is apparently what romance looks like for us."
"Is best kind of romance," Ilya said firmly. "I would not change."
"You wouldn't."
"No. I love when you are petty. Is very—" Ilya searched for the word. "Sexy, when you are petty."
Shane blinked. "Sexy."
"Yes. You sit there very calm, very composed, and then—" Ilya made a precise gesture. "You say something devastating. Very quietly. Like little assassin." He shook his head admiringly. "Solnyshko. My little assassin."
"Please never call me that."
"Okay. My little—"
"Ilya."
"My freckled little—"
Shane kissed him, apparently deciding this was the only available method of stopping him, which Ilya had been counting on. He made a triumphant sound against Shane's mouth and Shane made an exasperated one back and they were both, underneath it, laughing.
This was the thing. Even now. Especially now.
So many years and stolen moments and the league trying to make them into a scandal and Shane's old team and all of it, and still — this. Still laughing. Still Ilya finding every freckle like it was the first time and Shane pretending to be annoyed about it and neither of them fooling the other for a single second.
They had nowhere to be until nine.
Ilya intended to make thorough use of the time.