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Unlike some of his teammates, Ilya doesn’t actually mind the cold all that much. Winter is his favorite season, some days. The Boston snowfalls don’t scare him, don’t even really phase him.
So when the first snow starts falling thick and heavy and doesn’t show any sign of stopping, effectively canceling their game and any other plans he might’ve had for the night, Ilya just puts on a movie and curls up under a blanket. His apartment complex hires someone to shovel their sidewalk, and the roads will be clear by morning, probably. Massachusetts is familiar with this kind of winter and has dealing with it down to a science.
He’s not too concerned about it. He just settles in for a long, quiet night of movies and maybe a hot drink or two. Inside his apartment, he’s warm and comfortable and—and he’s alone, but that’s okay, that’s always okay, because Ilya Rozanov doesn’t do relationships, because the only person he would do that with is in Montreal and doesn’t feel anything about or for his company, and because this quiet isolation in the winter is just fine with Ilya.
It’s not until evening that Ilya recognizes that—despite the safe, quiet, warm bubble of his apartment—the world outside is freezing over. The world outside is freezing over, crumpling under the weight of eight inches of snow and counting, and things like other people still exist.
The phone calls start coming in around the time he’s making himself dinner. The texts start coming in after the first few phone calls that he ignores. The emails have probably been coming in even longer than both of those, but Ilya makes it a rule to not check his email on snow days like this, when the world is coated in silence and something just a little whimsical.
It’s not until the fifth phone call from his coach that Ilya actually even notices anyone trying to contact him. As soon as he had accepted that Hollander was not, in fact, going to contact him today—not after their last hookup, not after what Ilya had said and what Hollander had not, I lo—he had thrown his phone on the other side of the couch and done his best to ignore any flashes of the screen.
Ilya doesn’t get the chance to say a word before Coach LeClaire is saying, “You better have a damn good explanation for this, Rozanov.”
Ilya blinks at the open, dark window. “For what?”
There’s a thick, tense silence on the other end of the phone line. Ilya waits. He’s holding his breath, and it takes a conscious decision to exhale. And then the tension snaps: LeClaire says, “You haven’t looked at the news yet today, have you?” and Ilya stops breathing again.
“What—” Ilya can’t finish the sentence, all his secrets suddenly rushing to the front of his mind in a blur of white noise and Hollander, Hollander, Hollander, Shane, Shane—
“There’s a man,” LeClaire says slowly, tasting out the words like they’re poison, “that has just gone to several tabloids, saying on the record that you had sex with him in your rookie year. He has…pretty incriminating evidence.”
And everything, suddenly, is as silent as snowfall. The white noise in his head just stops. Cuts off. Like the volume has been clicked off on the world. LeClaire is still talking, saying something about something, but Ilya isn’t hearing it, isn’t processing it. The language is suddenly completely foreign to him again, like he’s freshly eighteen and a rookie and keeping up with the game on the ice but not the game that the media is playing with him.
“Ah,” is all that Ilya can say, and he knows that he speaks, but he doesn’t think he’s hearing even his own voice. “I see.”
And then he hangs up.
He sets his phone down on the table. The granite countertop is cold, and he presses his palm flat against it as if to ground himself. It reminds him a little of the ice of the rink, of being shoved to the ground, of his hands crashing against a sharp cold he can feel even through his gloves. And then, in his head, in suddenly very present memory: he’s a kid again, eighteen and coming off a bad game where his head was slammed into the ice more than once, and he’s letting some guy at a bar take photos of him sucking his dick in a bathroom, a fucking idiot trying to wreck his own life.
There hadn’t been trust, between him and that stranger. There hadn’t been anything. There had only been Ilya, angry and tired and reckless; as if surviving brutal tackles on the ice somehow made him invincible off the rink too, like he had to try in order to ruin his life and like self-destruction wasn’t something that came naturally to him, like the immolation of his career would somehow fix the thing in his head that wanted out.
Ilya had been young, and stupid, and hurting. He wanted the hurting to stop coming from inside and wanted someone else to hurt him more. He wanted the world to tear him apart because he couldn’t stop doing it to himself. He wanted out of the life he was quickly caging himself into.
He hadn’t considered that, one day, his life might change. He hadn’t considered that, one day, he might be this settled into his own skin, this stable and comfortable in his career. He hadn’t considered that, one day, he wouldn’t be young and stupid and hurting anymore.
But the consequences of that night had just…never come. He thought the next morning, maybe, or the next day. When he came out of the gray and the fog of that episode, he had been terrified and on edge for weeks. Just—then nothing happened. No news broke, the photos weren’t released, and Ilya never heard from the guy again.
Until now. Now, when Ilya is realizing he hadn’t even known the man’s name at the time. Now, when he’s suddenly coming to haunt him again at the worst possible time. Just days after seeing Hollander, just days after I lo—
The man himself doesn’t matter. The story he had sold to some hockey gossip podcast does matter. His motivations—money, attention, boredom—don’t matter. The photos he had attached to his interview do matter.
There is something sick in Ilya, a bile or phlegm or horror or fear. Something in him is snapping. Something in him is shutting down.
When he opens his phone and navigates to the first social media app he can find, the article is the first thing he sees. Twitter is going off the rails. Theories, analysis, debates, hatred, anger, betrayal, denial. He’s trending.
So. This is how it ends, Ilya thinks vaguely. What it is that he’s thinking about that is ending now, he doesn’t really know. But something has shifted, and it is irreparable. His career, maybe. His relationship with his family, maybe. His friendships, maybe. His dynamic with his teammates, maybe.
And he thinks of Hollander, of I lo—of the things Ilya said that Hollander didn’t say. He thinks of how he was so careful with Hollander, so terribly careful. How they snuck around and hid and pretended it all meant nothing, until Ilya couldn’t pretend anymore.
He thinks of how they kept up an act and a mask, until Hollander was folding Ilya’s fucking laundry while Ilya slept, because he got bored waiting for him to wake up after a simple hookup, how it was the first time Hollander stayed the night, how he looked in the morning light like he belonged there. He thinks of I lov—he thinks of—silence—he thinks of—
He thinks of self-ruination. He thinks of old habits, and how hard they die. How they don’t die at all, not really. Not in any way that matters.
Professional athletic careers do not last forever, is the thing. Sometimes they last longer than others, a flame that leaves a legacy. Sometimes they leave only smoke. Sometimes they burn quick and bright and then flare out like a firecracker. And sometimes—
Ilya takes a breath. Presses his palm harder against the granite countertop and closes his eyes. Imagines he’s on the ice. He had the puck, had the winning shot in the palm of his hand, and he had been tackled. Shoved to the ground and landed hard on one hand, the wind knocked out of his chest as violently as a gunshot.
And then he gets up. He stumbles to his feet. Pulls himself up. Finds himself steady on his skates again.
He starts moving, and once he’s on his feet and he’s skating for a goal, for a victory, for his life, there is no one in the world who can go faster than Ilya Rozanov.
Opening his eyes and then calling LeClaire back, Ilya doesn’t let him say anything before he’s already talking. No one is faster than him. No one can catch up to him once he gets a foot on the gas pedal. No one can reach him, no one can take him down.
“Is me. In the photos.” Ilya licks his lips, the night still heavy and hot in his memory and mouth. It leaves a sick taste on his tongue now, though, something soured and ruined. He takes a breath. He asks, “What do I do now?”
LeClaire is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that Ilya wonders if he spoke in English, and if LeClaire understood him.
Then, a heaving exhale that takes years off both of their lives. “Our PR team is recommending we just ignore it, for the moment. Unless things get worse. Don’t say anything. Don’t act different. You have no comment. You don’t wink, you don’t laugh, you don’t get angry. And by fucking God, Rozanov, you do not do it again.”
“Okay,” Ilya says, because what else is there to say? “I will do that.”
LeClaire sighs again, and it sounds like a last breath. “I can’t protect you from this, Rozanov. There’s only so much damage control we can do. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Ilya says. He does know. He probably knows better than LeClaire does.
“Okay. Stay off social media,” LeClaire instructs. “Don’t look at it. It’s not going to be worth it.”
Ilya nods, though LeClaire can’t see him. It’s an instinctual, numb movement. “Right.”
“Don’t say anything to the media,” LeClaire repeats. “But—the team is going to know. They’re going to ask. You should…be ready. For that conversation.”
The sick thing in Ilya rears its head again. It threatens to choke him, threatens to come up as vomit or as a scream. They have practice tomorrow. Ilya will have to walk into the locker room and face his team, knowing that they’ve all seen photos of him on his knees in a dim, sticky bar’s bathroom.
“I am captain,” Ilya says. “I will be strong.”
LeClaire is quiet again. There is something he wants to say, but he’s not saying it. Ilya doesn’t know if he wants to hear it.
“You will be,” LeClaire echoes. “You are our captain. Don’t…”
Don’t fuck it up.
“I will be strong,” Ilya says again. Like saying it again will make it more true than it was the first time. Maybe it will. Maybe he will be able to just talk himself into it.
“Okay. Have a…good rest of your night, Rozanov. Try to get some rest.” There is defeat in LeClaire’s voice. There is resignation. There is exhaustion. And there is the tiniest, most terrible hint of a fear that hits Ilya harder than any of the rest of it.
The fear has never felt more real than it feels now. For so long, it had been almost like a game. How much can Ilya get away with in public, how much would Hollander let him get away with in private—
And years ago, years and years and years ago: Shane Hollander…will you disappoint them?
Ilya remembers the faceoff. Remembers the hockey stick in his hand, hard and familiar and steady. Remembers Hollander bent over in front of him, their eyes meeting for just the briefest flicker of a moment. Remembers the slightest of smirks he himself had worn, the slight curve of his mouth, the lick of his lips—and the puck, the grin, the hockey stick ready in his hands, an extension of his body, the sound of the blades of his skates cutting into the ice.
He remembers Hollander, rushing towards him. He remembers chasing after him, always chasing after him, always looking to reach him. He remembers catching up. Outpacing him. Shooting, scoring. Remembers all the games that they’ve played, all the games that they’ve each won and lost.
A chair in a hotel room. Watching Hollander touch himself, the most private of motions, the vulnerability in his face and in the moment, in the way he bared his body for Ilya to see—and three days ago, I lov—the things Ilya said, the things Hollander didn’t.
Will you disappoint them?
Ilya opens Twitter again. He scrolls just a little bit, blankly staring at all the people talking about him. About those pictures. About his mouth wrapped around some other man’s dick. About his eyes wide and blurred with wet tears and grainy photography. About the mess of drool at the corner of his lips. About the fucked out bliss—or maybe it’s emptiness—on his face, a complete portrait of an eighteen year old fool trying to drown all his issues in sex with strangers.
The photos are everywhere. The articles are everywhere. No one from his team—no one from any team, no one from the league at all—has said anything official, neither supportive nor otherwise. Ilya has forty-three missed calls and eighty-nine ignored text messages.
He takes a long breath. He’s feeling remarkably calm for what’s happening, and surprisingly controlled. He didn’t think it would feel this empty or numb when the truth finally came out. He didn’t know what he would feel, really.
This moment is something he’s thought about often. Something he’s wondered about with equal parts temptation and terror, desire and horror. This is something he’s considered and debated and denied himself for years—years of pining and sneaking around and hiding and hurting himself and others.
But now that it’s actually happening, now that it’s real, he’s finding that he kind of—he feels nothing. No relief. No fear. No freedom. No anxiety. Just…a numbness that he can’t seem to break through. Like he’s laid down in the fresh snowfall, in the freezing temperatures, for hours. Like he’s just…nothing. Like he’s the ice itself. Melted down into thin puddles and then frozen over and then scraped off the roads and into piles at the sidewalk curbs. Shattered, though still in hard, slippery, cold shards.
Maybe he’s underreacting out of shock. Maybe the real pain will come later.
Maybe this is nothing compared to I love—to Hollander, silent. Maybe he’ll never feel anything as intense as he felt in those moments again. Maybe he’ll never feel anything at all ever again. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
Shutting his phone off, he sets it carefully on the counter. He takes a seat, heavily settling into the chair. He runs his hands through his hair, and stares at the giant window across from him. It overlooks the city, at the buildings with little lights in the window, just the tiniest signs of warmth and life in the late nighttime. The streetlamps below have flickered on, and they illuminate the snow, still falling. Still coating the world in a sheen of glittering white. The plows have been making their rounds through the city all day, churning up both dirt and snow, but it’s been at least an hour since they’ve come down this street.
Ilya takes another long breath. He steels himself for the rest of his life. Readies himself for it to end, and for it to begin again in a new shape. He doesn’t know what it’s going to look like, and he hates the uncertainty of it all, he hates the unknown of it all—but he’s alone in this and so he’s going to just have to figure it out. He’s just going to have to be strong. He’s the captain of the Boston Raiders, for now. He’ll just—he’ll adapt, and he’ll outpace anyone who tries to chase after and tackle him.
He feels almost painfully calm about this. That rubs him the wrong way, a little. But he doesn’t know what else there is to feel, what else there is to do. He could panic about it all, but what use is that? Where does that get him? It gets him nowhere. It gets him only down a spiral that he isn’t sure he’ll be able to crawl out of.
Okay. So. He’s calm. He’s been outed to everyone; both the public he performs for and the people he loves in private. There are explicit pictures of him being passed around online. Hollander did not say anything in return to his stumbled, stuttered, blundering I love—
He’s fine.
It’s only to overturn this realization, of course, that Hollander calls. It’s the one call, out of everyone in his life, that Ilya had really, actually, truly wanted, but now—suddenly it’s the one that he’s dreading the most.
He picks up anyway, because when Hollander calls for him, Ilya comes. Ilya always answers. Always picks up the phone. For all the time Ilya has spent chasing after Hollander, for all the time that he has spent pursuing him, for all of the time that Ilya has been wanting him and letting Hollander pretend he didn’t want it all just as badly—for all of that, sometimes, every once in a while, Hollander will call first.
And Ilya will answer. Because, really, with all of this or even with less, Ilya would not give it up for the world.
He may have ruined things last time they saw each other. He may have said things that were true but weren’t ever meant to be heard. He may be hurting, he may have hurt Hollander too. His pride may have been cut down a size, his heart may have been scooped out, hollowed, and emptied by Hollander’s bare hands and his silence, but—but Hollander is calling, and so Ilya is going to answer.
He picks up the phone, and there is silence again. There is that same silence that has been sitting between them since Ilya’s fumbling confession. There is that same tension and fear. Ilya can practically feel Hollander’s eyes on him, burning into his expression. Hollander always stares at his mouth, never making eye contact, and Ilya licks his lips subconsciously as if Hollander were there in front of him and staring in that intense, precise, fiery way he does.
Finally: “Hi.”
Ilya can’t help it. He laughs incredulously. All that, all this, all the silence, all the rings of the phone, and this is what Hollander has to say to him.
“Hi,” Ilya says back.
“I—” Hollander cuts himself off. There are words there, words that matter, words lingering in the unsaid and unbroken space, words that Ilya maybe needs to hear, but Hollander is not ready to say them, and so Ilya will never know.
Ilya’s breath catches in his throat, and it’s a deliberate, forced motion to exhale again. “It’s not about you. No one knows about—about you. The pictures. They are old. They are not with you.”
“I know,” Hollander says quietly, somewhat muffled and distorted by a static over the bad cell signal. “I know. We were careful. I know.”
“Okay.” Ilya is quiet for a moment. He can feel Hollander’s eyes through the phone call, staring, staring, staring. “Why call then?”
Hollander exhales, audible and nearly tangible on Ilya’s lips. And there—the memory. The last time they kissed, the way Ilya had breathed into his mouth and smiled against him. The night before Hollander chose to stay. The night before he had folded Ilya’s laundry, and Ilya folded under the weight of his wanting and said something so humiliating, so vulnerable, that it now makes him want to claw his blushing cheeks off with only his fingernails.
“I just…needed to know,” Hollander murmurs.
“If it is true?”
“No,” Hollander says. “Not that.”
There’s something frustrated in his voice, something that tells Ilya he knows what it is that he wants to say but he can’t bring himself to say it. He’s frustrated by his lack of words, his rare lack of eloquence. He sounds like Ilya, when they’re mid-press conference and all English just escapes him, his tongue suddenly unable to curve around the syllables of this stupid language.
“It is,” Ilya says, unprompted. He doesn’t feel like lying anymore. Everything is out in the open now. “It is true. What they are saying. It meant nothing. That man. But it did…did happen. Rookie season. I was upset.”
“Okay,” Hollander says, as if it is easy. As if it doesn’t hurt. “I—Rozanov, I know you were with other people. I’m not stupid. You’re Rozanov.”
He says Ilya’s name like it hurts. Like it’s uncomfortable in his mouth. Like it’s dirty. He says Rozanov like some people would say a slur.
Ilya is maybe going to be sick. He is maybe going to cry. He’s not actually sure which one is worse.
“Right,” Ilya says, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I am Rozanov. I am just slut. Whore. Homosexual. I am not best player in league. I am not hockey player at all. I am lazy. I am easy fuck. I do not make records. I do not win Cup for my team. I am just some fucking—”
“Stop,” Hollander breaks in, and there’s something wrecked about his voice. As if hearing Ilya talk about himself that way hurts him.
But that doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t, because Shane Hollander does not care about Ilya Rozanov. Whatever they have done together, whatever they had been—Shane Hollander does not feel sympathy or love towards Ilya Rozanov. Lust, maybe. Wanting, maybe. But there is not the kind of love that makes a person sound like he sounds right now.
“Why?” Ilya snarls. “Is what they’re saying. What everyone is saying. Why should I not say it?”
“It’s—” Hollander stops again, and that frustrated sound is back to clog his throat, to stop him from saying something that matters, something real. “You’re more than that. You are. You’re—you.”
Ilya is quiet at that. The silence is suffocating and he cannot breathe, he’s been caged into some sauna and he’s overheating under the air pressure, but he can’t—he doesn’t have the words. Not in English, not in Russian. He just doesn’t have the words for what he’s feeling about this situation, about this exposure; and he doesn’t have the words for all the churning emotions Hollander sets alight inside of him.
He is an oil spill and Hollander is a match. He is an ocean and Hollander is a tsunami. He is a snowstorm and Hollander is the wind. He is a metal rod and Hollander is the lightning drawn to him. He is a geode and Hollander is the chisel. Hollander is chipping away at all his guards, slowly unearthing the shining thing inside of him—and Illya is dulling his blade as he does so. Illya is disarming him.
This is the breaking point, maybe. This is the faultline that is going to crack open. This is the frayed string that is about to come undone.
“I needed to know if you were okay,” Hollander says, finally. And the string snaps. The faultline cracks. The mountains come crumbling down. “I saw the news and I needed to know how you were handling—it. I just. I care. About that.”
About you, Hollander doesn’t say. Ilya wants, desperately, to hear it anyway. He thinks he knows what Hollander is trying to say, but he can’t—he can’t keep just assuming things. He can’t see Hollander folding the clean laundry from the hamper and he can’t just assume that he belongs in Ilya’s space, in his home, in his heart. He can’t be wrong again. He can’t hear Hollander’s silence. The absence. The negative space after I love—
“I am fine, Hollander.” It does not feel like a lie, but it does not feel all the way true either. “I am…coping. I will keep going. I am captain, for now.”
“For now?” Hollander asks, which Ilya thinks is probably the wrong thing to focus on, but this is Shane Hollander, so of course the hockey part is the part that he’s narrowed in on. “Are they taking that away from you?”
Ilya sighs. “Don’t know. Haven’t really talked about it. I will face team tomorrow. When snow clears.”
“Right,” Hollander says, a little awkwardly, a little abashed. “Rozanov—”
He cuts himself off again. There are so many unsaid things, and Ilya is choking on them. On what could be, what could have been. What will not be, because Ilya said something that Hollander did not say back.
But—will you disappoint them?—Shane Hollander, somehow, can still surprise him. Somehow, this boring, reliable, terribly true man can still pull tricks that Ilya would not have predicted in a thousand lifetimes at his side. On rival teams, on the same team, on opposite sides of a wavelength, or right next to each other in thought and body—a thousand lifetimes of it all could pass, and Ilya would not get tired of this boring, beautiful, safe, brave man.
Hollander says, “Rozanov, I’m—” and he stops, and he says— “About the other day—” and he stops, and he says— “I am—” and he stops, and he says—
“I am afraid.”
Ilya is holding his breath, stilling his heartbeat. He says, “You are afraid.”
“Yes,” Hollander says, and it sounds just as breathless as Ilya feels. “What’s happening to you now—and I’m selfish. I’m selfish.”
“Selfish.” Ilya stares out of the window. Imagines a world in which Hollander is selfish. In which Hollander has not been chopping himself up into pieces for the sake of other people for years. In which Hollander has not been cutting his heart into different shapes and smaller sizes just because people want him to. A world in which that is true comes to his imagination as blurry nonsense.
“You were outed,” Hollander breathes out, bitter and angry and reproachful, “and all I can fucking think is how fucking glad I am that it wasn’t me.”
With that, Ilya remembers how to breathe again. Remembers how to make his lungs and his heart work in sync even though Shane Hollander is talking to him at this very moment.
“Ah,” Ilya says. “But I am glad it wasn’t you, too.”
Hollander is quiet. So Ilya continues, unsure of where Hollander wants this conversation to go but knowing that he can’t let Hollander hang up the voice now. This is the cusp of something, something that can maybe undo the silence if Ilya can just find the right words in the right language to fill the void.
“You would handle this much worse, yes?” Ilya asks. “So I am glad it was not you.”
“You’re glad,” Hollander repeats incredulously. “Rozanov—”
“Shane.” Ilya’s voice catches on the name, a breath in the low of his throat; it feels so perfect in his mouth and yet sounds out loud as if to be the most painful secret in the world. It’s just a name. Just a name. He says, “Shane Hollander. What happened is done. It is what it is. I will be fine. You will be fine. We—”
He stops. Presses his palm against the countertop again; will you disappoint them?
“I understand that we were not anything. And that we will not be. I—misunderstood. Assumed. And so maybe you were right to be afraid.”
With that, Ilya takes a shaky breath, and he hangs up the call. He doesn’t give Hollander a chance to agree with him or to argue with him. He doesn’t think he can handle either.
He drops the phone onto the counter and his face into his palms. He lets out a long, tired groan. He regrets hanging up already, he regrets letting those photos be taken and saved, he regrets ever admitting to the depths of feelings Hollander was not ready to name. He regrets admitting them to himself.
Hollander does not call again that night. Ilya falls asleep on the couch, curled up under a blanket and watching the snowfall in the dim glow of the building across the street’s windows. At some hour, all those little squares of light had blinked off, leaving Ilya as the only person left in the world. Ilya and the snowfall. That is all there is.
And then it is morning. He wakes up to the sunrise breaking through his east facing windows, broken up in shadow only by the apartment complexes lining the streets. The snow is in piles at the curb of the sidewalks, plowed over with dirt and gravel and rock salt. The pure, white, shining restart to the world is gone; it has been overturned and dirtied by the snowplows.
He’s not late for practice that morning, but it’s a close thing. He gets to the locker room only just early enough to put on his gear and get out to the rink. There is not enough time for anyone to interrogate him about yesterday’s news.
He leaves it all out on the ice. Everything left in him is laid out in his game. He is hollow. He is an oil spill in the ocean, if the ocean were to have lost its pull towards the moon. He is a geode, if he were to have been carved out and left empty of its gems. Ilya Rozanov is coal, and no amount of pressure in the world could ever turn him to diamond again.
The team files into the locker room after a tense, angry, confusing practice. No one talks in the locker room. Ilya keeps his eyes to himself. He focuses on undressing and on putting street clothes back on. For once, he isn’t the center of attention and he isn’t the focal point of the boisterous conversation typical to the Boston Raiders locker room. He trains his eyes on his hands and takes it all one motion at a time.
Then: “Hey, Rozanov.”
Ilya freezes. Takes a breath. Pulls a sweatshirt over his head, leaving the hood over his hair. “What?”
It comes out gruff, angrier than he means it. He doesn’t want to sound so protective over nothing—nothing yet—but he can’t help it. He’s on the defensive already, his hands curling into fists at his side. He keeps his eyes trained on his stall.
“Is it true?”
“The photos.”
“It sure did look like you, man.”
Ilya licks his lips; feels them cracked and dry under his tongue. “Does it matter? You believe it was me. Would anything I say really change your mind?”
Silence answers him. It’s a thick and crushing silence. Different from the silence with Hollander, different from the silence with LeClaire. This silence is heavy, pushing down at the shoulders that are hunched up to his ears. This silence is angry, bitter, betrayed. Ilya takes a breath and he swears that the rattle in his chest echoes throughout the locker room.
“If you—” and that’s one of the rookies from this year; a good kid, a good player, the fifth round draft pick, and Ilya once thought he’d never say a bad word against anyone— “if you need us to say it isn’t you. We can—we can say that.”
Ilya’s heart clenches in his chest. “Say whatever you want. It doesn’t change anything.”
“So what’s the truth then?” That’s his vice-captain. His vice-captain for the past four years. The second-in-command, the one who pulls the team together when Ilya can’t. The one Ilya has trusted with his beloved team, his game, his future. That’s his vice-captain saying, “Roz, don’t tell me you’re actually…I mean, all those girls—all these years—”
Ilya takes a breath. “Yes. All these years. Bisexual for all of them. Has it ever once fucked with my playing?”
Silence greets him, and it is just as oppressive as it has been this whole time. No tension has been released, but suddenly Ilya feels an almost hysterical laugh bubbling in his chest. He tightens his mouth into a straight line and clenches his jaw. He turns around to face the rest of the team. They’re all standing in a semi-circle in front of him in various states of anger or—or concern? Maybe frustration?
Ilya repeats, “Has fucking men ever once fucked with my playing?”
“No,” someone murmurs. Whoever it is sounds as ashamed and cornered as Ilya feels.
Ilya nods sharply. He has his captain’s voice on, his fighting voice; that deep, threatening sound from the no-doubts-accepted low of his throat. He doesn’t have to yell to intimidate. To garner respect. He is the best goddamn player in this league.
He looks around the semi-circle. Clenching his fists tighter in order to keep them from shaking, he meets them each in the eye. “So what is problem?”
Silence again. Ilya is so fucking tired of silence. He needs noise, needs music, needs the thrum of a bassline, needs the pounding of his heart in his throat. He needs to scream.
“So is there a fucking problem?”
His yell is hoarse with hurt, with frustration, with exhaustion. He’s had to defend himself on the rink before, he’s had to fight for every scrap of everything he has. But he’s never had his team face him and look at him like this before. He’s never had to defend himself in a way that left him feeling so vulnerable, so naked.
“There’s no problem,” someone mutters. Someone echoes it. Someone else echoes it again.
And Ilya nods once, sharply. He hauls his gym bag over his shoulder, and he stalks out of the fucking room.
Leaving the facility, he’s hit with a blast of cold air and he’s suddenly all too aware that he left his winter jacket in the locker room. But he can’t bring himself to turn around and get it, can’t bring himself to face them again, them and their daggers for eyes. He can’t bring himself to be brave for one minute longer.
There are things in this world, Ilya knows, that people like him are not meant to be allowed to keep. There are things that he is not meant to be allowed to hold onto forever. There are things that are made for letting go of. There are people who are meant to be let go.
Maybe the Boston Raiders—a team that is his, all his—are one of those things. Maybe Team Russia is one of those things. Maybe Shane Hollander is one of those things. And those thoughts hurt him so much more than he’ll ever be able to admit in words.
“You’re going to get sick, walking around here without a jacket.”
Ilya blinks. Looks up from where he’d been digging around in his bag for his house keys and finds—
“Hollander?”
Shane Hollander hunches his shoulders up a little bit, his hands in the pockets of his own jacket. He looks at Ilya carefully, like he’s trying to figure out if this is okay or not. This is not something they do. They do not do spontaneous visits; they do not do visits at all. They do not seek each other out when they need comfort that doesn’t call for sex.
“Hi,” Hollander says anyway, because he is here and apparently this is something they do now. “Can we—?”
Ilya swallows hard. His stiff, frozen fingers wrap around the keys in his bag and he draws them out quickly, moving to unlock the door and drag Hollander in. “Come inside. Before neighbors start talking.”
The elevator ride up to his apartment is quiet. Not the oppressive quiet from the phone call, and not the suffocating, heartwrenching quiet from the night Ilya handed him something bigger than Hollander was capable of holding and keeping safe. No, this is just quiet. It’s a soft quiet. A gentle quiet. Like the snow that flurries before a blizzard.
“We play Boston this weekend.” Hollander sounds as awkward as he always does, and Ilya hates how endearing it is to him. “We flew down today to avoid the weather later. The rest of the team is at the hotel.”
“And you did not need to be with your team at the hotel?”
Hollander shrugs. “They’ll survive a day without me.”
“And I will not?”
Hollander shrugs again. Ilya nods sharply. He thinks maybe he needs Hollander more than the Montreal Metros needs him right now. He also thinks he would rather die than admit that.
“Your coach know where you are?” Ilya asks. “Does anyone?”
“No.” They step into his apartment, Hollander following him so easily and comfortably. He’s been here so many times before, made it into his own home, practically, except for all of the ways he hasn’t allowed himself to stay. “No one knows. They think I’m on a walk.”
“In this weather.”
“Well, unlike some people, I have a jacket.”
Despite himself, Ilya snorts. He tosses his gym bag at the front door and toes his shoes off; Hollander does the same. The first thing he does once he’s inside is close all the window shades. The second thing is to go into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and to get them both a drink. Ginger ale for Hollander; water for himself.
Hollander takes it without comment. He holds it so tight that the can crinkles in his hand and ginger ale bubbles over the lip of the can. He takes a sip quickly, before it can drip onto the floor. Ilya watches his mouth move over the lip of the can, and he swallows hard. He turns away, averts his eyes. Hollander doesn’t need this right now, not with the silence he had given Ilya in return for—
“How was practice?” Hollander asks, as if that is what he actually wants to know. As if the question is about practice and not about what happened in the locker room.
“Fine,” Ilya tells him.
He turns away, pulling out a chair at the kitchen island and sitting down. It’s the same place he had been sitting last night when they called. There’s a strange sense of déjà vu in sitting here, with Hollander pulling out the chair next to him and staring at his mouth. This—Hollander staring at his lips to avoid his eyes, the sound of ginger ale bubbling, Hollander staring at him, the water glass as cold as the ice rink in his hand, Hollander staring—is exactly as he had pictured it last night.
“The team,” Ilya starts slowly, “they could be worse.”
“Yeah. They could be my team.”
Ilya cracks a small, ironic smile at that. “They were talking about it?”
“All day,” Hollander admits, looking down at the can of ginger ale. There’s a lost expression on his face.
Ilya hums. “They say they hate me, but they cannot stop thinking about me. Obsessed with me, all of you.”
“That’s one word for it.” Hollander takes a sip of his drink. Then he looks up, and he meets Ilya’s eyes, and Ilya feels sick looking back. There’s an unfamiliar vulnerability, an unguardedness to his gaze that’s never really been there before. “Rozanov—the other day. What you said. Before I left.”
“We do not talk about it,” Ilya says immediately. He’s on the defensive again, on the run in the ice rink, ready to throw a punch if he needs to. “We do not need to. It was—misunderstanding.”
Hollander swallows. “You didn’t mean it then.”
Ilya takes a breath. Thinks about the locker room again. The tension, the silence, the anger, the betrayal. And suddenly he’s just so tired. “Does it matter? Does it matter if I meant it? You did not want to hear it.”
And there’s the silence again. Not the soft silence. The hurting one.
“I wasn’t ready,” Hollander says, finally. “Prepared. I wasn’t—expecting it.”
“I should not have said it.”
Hollander looks back down at that can. Ilya wants to crush it in his fist. He wants Hollander’s eyes on him, he wants Hollander’s attention, he wants that heavy, expectant gaze on his mouth. He wants the intensity, the rivalry, the aching want that cannot be extinguished, he wants to be consumed.
What he and Hollander have been doing for all these years has always been dangerous. Risky. And there was a certain thrill to that, a certain kind of adrenaline that came with sneaking around.
But at the same time, something about Hollander was safe, too. Unlike with the man in those newly released photos, there has somehow, for years now, been a kind of trust between them. A kind of camaraderie. They both had so much to lose. Yet, they trusted each other to keep it safe. There is passion and heat and fire to it all, yes, but in the illicit hookups that caught Ilya’s heart in a fishing net, there is also a sense of sanctuary.
“Your laundry was clean, but it was still in the hamper,” Hollander blurts out. He talks to the aluminum can more than to Ilya, but Ilya doesn’t take his eyes off of him. Doesn’t once look away. “Your laundry was in a mess in the hamper even though it was clean and it was driving me crazy that you didn’t just put it away after taking it out of the dryer.”
Running his tongue over his lips, Ilya says, “Sorry. I should have.”
“No,” Hollander says quietly. “No, that’s—that’s not what I’m saying. It’s—I’m saying that we’re different.”
“I am messy. You are neat freak.”
Hollander rolls his eyes, unhurt even if a little annoyed; Ilya can recognize that motion even if he can’t see Hollander’s face. The lights are dimmed in the kitchen, leaving them both cast in a strange, dark shadow, leaving Hollander just as physically hidden as he is emotionally exposed.
Like this, Hollander is beautiful. Ilya wants him so terribly, but there are games he cannot win in this world no matter how hard he fights and there are people he cannot keep no matter how hard he clings to them—perhaps because he clings so hard to them. Perhaps people leave because his clawed grip in their hearts becomes much too painful to bear. Perhaps clawing deeper does not fix this.
“No,” Hollander tells him. “Well, yes. Kind of. But—my point is that you left your clothes out and my first instinct wasn’t to be annoyed at the habit. It was just…to fold them for you. To fill in the blank that you left open.
“And then you said you love—like there wasn’t a question about it. Like there was nothing to worry about, except that you needed me to hear it right that moment and you were afraid I didn’t know. You weren’t worried that I was folding your clothes, without asking, like an insane person. Or that we are who we are. Or what other people would think. Just—you needed me to know. You love me.”
“Yes.” Ilya doesn’t bother sugarcoating it. “But it does not matter.”
“It does,” Hollander snaps, then flinches, seemingly surprised at his own intensity. “It does matter. It does matter, because you were so fucking brave and I ran, Rozanov.”
Finally, Ilya looks away. Stares at his reflection in the water. He says, truthfully, with nothing left to lose, “Well. You make me want to be brave. Even after all this. And I make you afraid. Because of all this.”
Hollander shakes his head; just the slightest of motions, barely perceptible in the dark. “It’s not you that I’m afraid of.”
“What I…represent, then. That is right word.”
“I guess.” Hollander tilts his head up to the ceiling, closing his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe.”
With him looking like that, Ilya wants to kiss his neck, wants to kiss his lips, wants to move closer, wants to take over him like a wave over the shore, wants to be the eye in his storm, wants to be the focal point of his tunnel vision. He wants to kiss him hard and wet and messy and real and human and—and he can’t, because he said I love—and Hollander said nothing—and—
“What is happening right now,” Hollander says, slowly, deliberately, “terrifies me. What people are saying. What my teammates are saying. My coaches. The fans. But I’ve been thinking—and—what you said. What you said. It makes me feel like it all could be worth it. If that much is true.”
Ilya swallows hard, his mouth suddenly going dry and arid. “What I said. It could matter. If you want it to.”
“Do you want it to?”
A beat. “I do not want to lie to you anymore. Do not ask me to do that.”
“I don’t want you to lie either. I won’t. I won’t.”
“I have come out, now. People know about me. You cannot associate with me.”
“I wasn’t really associating with you anyway.”
The reality is beginning to set in now. But at the same time, it is in the dark of this evening, a dark punctuated only by the glow that the streetlamps cast through the windowshades and the pools of dimmed mood lighting, that reality is so far away. It cannot touch them here. They are invincible, perhaps. This is the sanctuary that they give each other. The real world can be dealt with tomorrow.
Ilya says, “Everything is changing.”
And Hollander says, “I’m not.”
Ilya cracks a small smile. “Ah. My good, reliable, boring Hollander. But you are changing in some ways, I think.”
“My—feelings haven’t.” Hollander takes a shaky breath, eyes still closed. “What I want from you hasn’t. All this—these photos, the tabloids, the talk—is happening, but what I want from you hasn’t changed at all. I’m just—I’m realizing—being afraid—and alone—what’s worth—”
He cuts himself off and goes silent again. The tension has shifted somehow. Ilya, not knowing what he wants to hear now, murmurs, “Hollander…”
“You called me Shane. Before.” Hollander’s voice is low as an ember, as a streetlamp’s reflection in the ice. “You called me Shane.”
Ilya looks over at him. Careful. Analyzing. Unsure of what he’s finding. “You have never called me Ilya.”
And with that, Shane Hollander opens his eyes. He looks over at Ilya. His pupils are blown dark and wide, his expression is raw and vulnerable, his hair windblown still and his lips just slightly wetted. He says, “Ilya.”
Ilya sucks in a breath. “Say it again.”
“Ilya. Ilya.”
“Shane,” Ilya breathes out, low and ragged. “Shane Hollander, am I worth it?”
Am I worth being afraid? Am I worth the risk? Am I worth it all, just for the potential of one day when you will no longer be young and hurting? Am I worth today’s fear, just for the dream that tomorrow we will be unafraid? Am I worth any of the fight?
Shane stares at him for a breathless, tense moment. A thousand alarm bells are going off in Ilya’s head: this was too much, he was too much, Shane is going to run, is going to freak out, is going to leave him again, is going to—
And there is silence. The silence of snowfall. Snowfall, and a soft landing.
Shane whispers, “Yes.”
That’s all the permission that Ilya needs. He reaches a hand over, puts his palm to Shane’s cheek something like he is finally touching the waters of an oasis, like he is reaching salvation. And Shane—Shane leans into the touch, falls into it, slips into the press of Ilya’s hand, leaves a kiss at the heel of his palm. Ilya leans forward and they meet in the middle in a kiss that matters, that counts, that changes both everything and nothing.
Shane shifts, changing the angle and deepening the kiss, his hand tangling in the hair at the nape of Ilya’s neck. He presses close—Shane still kisses so passionately, so eagerly, fumbling and desperate, like even after all these years, it still feels like the first time.
But he knows Ilya so well by now. He knows how he likes to kiss and how he likes to fuck and—and there is still so much to learn about each other; how they sleep at night, how they look when they wake in the morning, the order they do the dishes, the way they fold their shirts, and—
Ilya cannot wait to begin. There are things in this world that people cannot keep. The sunrise and the sunset, which both fade away, lingering until they don’t. The nighttime, which always wakes up again. The snow, which melts into slush into water into dry earth. The freezing winter, which always gives way to spring.
But—but despite that, despite the temporal nature of life, despite the fear of loss, there is someone who remains. Bravely and honestly. Just for this isolated, shared moment, maybe; or maybe for as far as forever.
Either way, right now, there is someone who is choosing him, in all his terribly vulnerable mess. Who is saying that he is worth the mess. Here, now, there is someone who is choosing to stay. And there is nothing more Ilya could ever begin to ask for.