Chapter Text
When Shane was six he’d gotten sat down by his teacher and his parents and told to work through a list of questions with a strange woman in a suit. He’d answered their questions as best he could, his mom had always said honesty was the best policy, but they were hard so he kept turning around to ask Mrs. Kline if she could help.
This had the opposite effect; they all looked at him sharply, saying he was being mean, and that if he didn’t want to answer, all he had to do was say. It was Mrs. Kline who leaned over and explained while all the other people seemed to talk over his head.
“Oh, baby,” She’d hummed, hand touching his head but never with any pressure, “they can’t see me, Shaney.”
Because to everyone but Shane, Mrs. Kline had died of a heart attack six months ago.
***
Most ghosts moved on without help, Shane found. He’d catch them out of the corner of his eye, floating behind a person, lingering like a shadow. It was one of the reasons he hated hospitals and always asked for private rooms. It never stopped it completely, the wailing of the recently deceased ringing in his ears all night. When he’d cracked a rib at sixteen, he’d had to be sedated because he kept trying to raise his hands to his ears and tearing out his IV. It was only his mother’s intervention that got him out of a psych hold.
His parents knew, at least enough to know not to mention it when Shane was around. They knew he talked to the air and knew things he shouldn’t about people he never met. When he was thirteen and his neighbor died, his mom got really into crystals to try and keep Mr. Richardson out of the house after Shane made the mistake of meeting his eye at the visitation. It didn’t help, Mr. Richardson kept wailing at him to call his daughter. When Shane finally broke down and did, she called him a monster and threatened to call the cops. Still, it got her to the house and Mr. Richardson went with her so Shane could finally sleep.
But it was always there, the threat of someone not like his parents finding out what he could do. Or worse: that they’d shove some pills down his throat and he’d learn it was all in his head.
Yet on most days, he could keep his head down, eyes averted, and keep to himself enough that the ghosts lounging around him were background noise.
All of this to say that when he walked into the combine he was unsurprised to see faint outlines of ghosts hovering over parents and coaches and a few unfortunate kids. A grandmother knitted a sweater she’d never give her grandson, a father cheered on a son even when he tripped himself, and a coach shouted out corrections to his student who couldn’t take the advice.
Yet even among their large number, Irina Rozanov stood out under the lights, pale skin and wearing a white nightdress with hair as blonde as her son's. She was unmoving, staring off into space until her son stepped close. Like a flower, she looked up at him and Shane got the sense of light she must have had in life at the way she looked at him while he stared off at the other players.
His first mistake was going to talk to Ilya Rozanov before their game. His second was immediately, stupidly, meeting the eyes of Rozanov’s very much dead mother hovering at his side.
“Ты меня видишь, мальчик?” She demanded and Shane kept his focus back on her son, trying to get out some bland answer while she hovered near him, demanding. “посмотри на меня!”
“I’m Shane Hollander.” Shane said, watching Rozanov watch him with a confused side-eye, cigarette hanging from his mouth. “You’re an amazing player to watch.”
“Что вы говорите?” She demanded and Shane looked anywhere but at her face. Her son just gave a half-hearted, “Okey.”
Shane stood there, ignoring the ghost who had stepped into his face and was repeating the same question, slowly as if he were a child. The stress was already mounting and she was not helping, with a stuttering exhale, he lied “Anyways, I–I should go. They’re waiting on me. But good luck in the tournament.”
He held out his hand, pushing through the ghost’s midsection, a move which got him an incredulous laugh and her muttering, “Ах ты маленький молокосос.”
She repeated it again as Shane waited for Rozanov to move the cigarette to free up his hand. When they touched, his mother kept repeating, “молокосос, Ах ты маленький молокосос!”
“I don’t speak Russian!” Shane hissed and Ilya Rozanov looked at him with a curled lip that people did when they were making fun of him.
“That is why I speak English.” He said with a smirk.
Flinching, Shane muttered, “Sorry, that’s not–my parents are waiting.”
“You will not be so nice when we beat you.” Rozanov chirped but Shane just kept walking because his head was pounding and he wanted to sink into the leather seats of his parent’s car and pretend none of this ever happened.
The draft was worse. She seemed to lock onto him in the crowd, walking beside him and trying to talk. She seemed to cycle through every English word she knew which was mostly just “See me? Talk son! Ilya, son talk! Me?”
He was so shaken that he hadn't even realized he’d lost to Rozanov until he was in front of a camera flashing up two fingers and trying to hold back his tears. His parents were smiling and clapping, happy with the deal but Shane could feel some growing gulf in his stomach rolling like he swallowed the sea.
“Вы хорошо справились.”
Shane couldn’t turn, but he did tilt his head so that he could see the pale shape of her over his mother’s shoulder. Rozanov's mother was smiling for the first time, head cocked and watching him with slightly narrowed eyes but not mean, just observant. The Montreal GM was still talking so Shane couldn’t speak, but he did give her the smallest nod, and then she was gone. Probably back to Rozanov who was talking on the balcony above them.
When Shane risked a look up, he realized the eyes he’d caught were not hers, but her son’s. Ilya Rozanov watched him, looking sharply away but Shane found himself caught by the way his mother seemed to be cycling through hand gestures beside him. He didn’t know most of them, but from the way her face was all twisted up, they probably weren’t kind.
When she gave a particularly big one, throwing her whole body into something with a first and her thumb, he honestly laughed. His party all turned to him, surprised. “Sorry, it’s just been such a big night.” He apologized. The GM brushed it off, but his parents watched him with that little crinkle between their brows he knew meant they were worried.
Mrs. Rozanov must have seen him, because then she was leaning out over the banister and making the gesture again and Shane coughed to hide his smile and then excused himself to go get a drink.
That night, it was her familiar pale shape that he saw first, not her son’s, in the small hotel gym. As they raced, she smiled and watched and when Rozanov, who was fresher and hadn’t been biking for the last thirty minutes, crept ahead, she called out “Не дайте ему победить!”
She clapped even when he stumbled off the bike, following them to the floor in a frankly impressive crouch which both he and his mom could do but which his father never could. It was strangely intimate in the warm bubble they’d made.
“Whoo! What a fucking day, huh?” Rozanov huffed out, covered in a layer of sweat. Shane wasn’t much better, panting and wishing he’d thought ahead enough to bring his own water bottle. “Is everything you dreamed of?”
“Almost.” Shane muttered and then watched Rozanov’s mother reach out as if she might brush away a loose curl which had fallen into his face.
“Тебе нужна стрижка.” She huffed, pulling on a curl, right as her son gave a sly smirk and a laugh before saying, “I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not.” Shane smiled back. His mother went a long way to softening any jealousy Shane had felt that day during the draft. Here, Rozanov was just another kid, one who lost his mother and would never know how much she clearly loved him.
“Montreal is…is nice, yes?” Rozanov asked and they went back and forth a bit, Shane not sure where the other kid was going until he asked “Boston is night nice?”
“He scared.” She spoke and Shane was so startled that he spilled water all over himself. When he finally realized that she'd spoken, broken and heavily accented but very clearly English, he realized she was watching her son intently.
“Hollander?”
Shane snapped back to him, realizing Rozanov had handed the water bottle back. “Yeah, I think so. People like it there.” Shane took a drink, then another when Rozanov told him to, and then ignored the little fissure of shivers which raced up his arms when they touched. Instead he avoided her eyes, and asked “I thought I saw you with your father tonight. You must get your looks from your mom.”
The sly smile he'd been wearing vanished and Rozanov hid his face by taking a long drink. His hand came up to rest over his chest, as if checking something, and then he muttered, “Sure, guess so.”
Shane felt his face flushing. He was so fucking bad at talking, he always said the wrong thing. “People say I look like my mom. I think it's just that we both look Asian.”
Shane wanted to kill himself. Why did he say that?
Even Rozanov's mother was looking at him with a raised brow and Shane could feel his already flushed cheeks somehow grow warmer.
“Okay.” Rozanov said. “So we will, uh…we will be seeing each other a lot?”
“Oh, sure, Montreal and Boston play all the time.” Shane said and they talked for a bit longer before they parted. For an instant, Rozanov's mother reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t actually feel the pressure, but he could feel the faintest chill that had shivers break out on his arms.
His last glimpse of the pair as he left the gym was of them crouched together, Rozanov looking off into the distance and his mother watching him, hand outstretched as if to cup his face.
When Canada won in the second Prospect Cup, Shane had been flying so high that he hadn’t even realized Rozanov’s mother wasn’t with him until they were doing the handshakes. It was only in passing, Rozanov down a hall, phone to his ear, back to the doors did he spot her. Under the fluorescent lights, her tears were bright and when she caught sight of him, her face was empty and broken open. Defeated.
Shane had run before Rozanov could turn and see him but that look lingered long after they’d driven home.
When his mother told him about the CCM shoot, he almost told her about Rozanov’s mother. She wasn't angry like some of the ghosts he'd seen, she just seemed sad, but Shane felt uncomfortable standing there knowing something it was clear Rozanov was unwilling to share.
Shane knew that because he went looking. He’d scoured player sheets, beyond just their stats, looking for some mention of a mother. He'd bought a Russian-English dictionary and went word by word through Rozanov’s Russian page, but nothing was said except that he had a mother who died when he was young. It had to have been before he was sixteen, that was when the page was published, and Shane thought about his mom and how lost and directionless he would be without her and he got so upset he'd nearly thrown up.
So when he skated onto that ice, it was with three phrases of Russian memorized and a goal of learning her name.
Shane tried to keep a straight face but Rozanov kept laughing and that set off his mother who despite her demure appearance had a laugh like a sailor three times her size. It was loud and involved snorting and sent Shane into hysterics which seemed to set off Rozanov again.
When they finally called cut, Shane realized he had literal tears in his eyes from laughing too hard.
They talked a bit after while the crew set up for the next shots and Shane waited with bated breath for the moment that Rozanov had to go shoot on his own to catch his mother's eye.
She walked over with a raised eyebrow, and Shane tried to not let that intimidate him as he stuttered out in broken Russian, “Меня зовут Shane. Как вас зовут?”
Her face was surprised and it made her look younger. Then she smiled and leaned in to say, slowly as if she knew he'd need it, “Меня зовут Ирина.”
“Irina.” Shane tried and when she nodded, he said his final sentence. “Приятно познакомиться.”
She let out a string that he bet was something like “Nice to meet you too” because it had nearly all the same words Shane had memorized, and Shane felt accomplished as they were released for the day to shower.
Then Rozanov jerked off in front of him and Shane gave out his room number and Shane forgot that Ilya Rozanov came with a ghost right up until the moment he opened the door and saw them both standing there. Shane blanched but Irina said nothing just gave a little wave before taking a leisurely walk off down the hall.
The room was all muted warm tones from the lamps, but when Rozanov leaned his head up after sucking him off, smirking and with a shameful flash of white on his tongue before he swallowed, Shane also realized hanging between their bodies was a familiar necklace.
“What kind of cross is this?”
Shane remembered Irina wore a cross, the only spot of color on her, and its twin, or more likely the necklace itself, now rested along his collarbone.
“Nothing.” Rozanov huffed and then smacked Shane’s stomach. He spoke some more, but Shane was distracted, thinking about Irina floating idly somewhere outside, seemingly knowing and not caring that her son was hooking up with a man. He was stuck on that cross, so important that Irina imagined it on herself even in death. Shane’s parents had never been religious. It suddenly felt stilted, this thing between them.
Shane played with his fingers, rubbing a thumb over the scar on his knuckle he got in pee-wee hockey. Then he thought again of Irina, leaning out over the balcony, pale hair drifting around her like a cloud. “Hey, what does this mean?”
Shane did the gesture she’d done, the folded first with the thumb sticking out, and Rozanov laughed and smacked his hand down, incredulous. “Who did that to you?”
“No one, I saw one of the Russian players doing it.” Shane lied. “What does it mean?”
“Which player?” Rozanov demanded and then laughed again, pulling at Shane’s hand as if checking that he’d seen correctly. “Is rude. Don’t do to others.”
“Alright.” Shane thought of how strongly Irina had thrusted her hand in her late husband’s face. Of how not once during the draft when he had shamefully been spying on him, did Shane see Rozanov’s father give him so much as a hug.
Then the outside world reinserted itself and a voice sounding too much like his mother for comfort starting thinking about the optics of two up-and-coming rivals fucking.
“Please don’t tell anyone.”
It came out more pleading than Shane had wanted and Rozanov, huffed. “I have same secret. Who would I tell?”
Your dead mom who is probably hovering outside the door now? Shane wanted to say. Rozanov pulled on his clothes with the sort of efficiency of someone who had done this a million times and it sent something squirming in his gut.
Rozanov didn’t stay long after that and Shane couldn’t tell if that was a bad thing. He wanted to be alone, to parse through the feeling of a tongue on his cock, so different than when his first girlfriend Claire had tried, and yet also feeling strangely empty sitting alone on the bed.
He’d pulled some clothes on, legs folded up to his chest and head buried into his knees. That was why he hadn’t realized someone was in the room.
“Был ли он плохим любовником?”
Shane’s head jerked up and Irina was sitting on the bed. She was startlingly pretty, like something from one of those Russian fairytale drawings. Without thinking, his eyes fell down to her neck where the cross sat.
“I don’t…I only know those three sentences.” Shane threw a blanket around himself, he felt uncomfortable without a shirt on, and then went digging for his dictionary from his bag beside the bed. He found it under his discarded suit jacket and sounded out the first word, flipping through the alphabetical pages, holding it out to her until her finger landed on the correct one. “Was…I know that one, that’s he, and that’s…bad. Was he a bad…”
Her finger came down on the final word, her mouth moving around it, “Lov-er?”
“Oh my god!” Shane buried his head in his hands and then covered himself with the dirty comforter. “I’m not telling his mom what he did. This is so embarrassing.”
“Embr-ssing?” She asked and then pointed at his book until he groaned and flipped through it so she could read the Russian translation. He understood she got it when she threw her head back and laughed.
“Glad you think this is funny.”
Irina smiled and laid her hand over her heart, speaking slowly, a word at a time so that he could follow along. “Ты…ему…подходишь.”
“You are…good…for him–oh no! We just–” Shane tried to think of something that would be in the dictionary but the words ‘casual hook-up’ and 'fuck buddy' were probably not in there. “It’s not like that.”
He slowly repeated the words in mangled Russian but she was just smiling and nodding, looking at where her son had vanished a few moments before and the embarrassment rose up again. Oh god, he’d sucked off her son like ten minutes ago. Oh fuck, her son sucked him off ten minutes ago. Shane was going to throw up.
Before he could spiral any farther, she said something low and quiet that he couldn’t hear and had no hope of translating before she vanished.
They played again a few times that fall, Irina often a flash in the corner of his eye, but he didn’t speak to her again until All-Stars. They’d gotten all wired up and he’d had to watch her in the front row, bags under her eyes but smiling softly when Rozanov responded with one-word answers.
Shane, just having dove head first into learning another language, could commiserate when one of the reports spouted a meandering question even Shane had trouble following. He answered it the best he could and in the blandest of terms, which was made harder by the fact that Irina kept making faces in the front row. At least he knew where her son inherited his sense of humor.
That night when he saw Rozanov again he took one lap around the room to check for any wayward ghost moms and then immediately fell to his knees. It took his mind off the other million things buzzing around in his head and the steady pressure on his tongue, the repetitive motions, it soothed something in him.
Still, he was twitchy all night, thinking about Scott Hunter next door and Irina floating around somewhere, and so when Rozanov leaned back, Shane felt stupid and childish, until he muttered “Ok. So next time.”
“Next time?”
Then there is another thing for him to worry about, thinking about Rozanov and his mother in his apartment, of the sticky feeling of sheets being on his bed, and Shane hadn’t realized he’d been breathing heavily until Rozanov leaned back.
“Hollander, you are having a panic attack.” He joked. “Is just a plan to fuck.”
Shane nodded, let himself sink into the mattress. He could feel the metal of Rozanov’s cross on his chest, warmed from their body heat. After, there was a squirming in his chest, a burst of affection when Rozanov took his phone and put in his number.
Then the storm and the missed text. He used the time during the canceled game to practice a few new phrases in Russian, muttering them into Hayden’s eldest’s hair until her babbling had little Slavic lilts.
“Don’t let her start sounding like Rozanov!”
Shane jumped, looking over his shoulder where Hayden had come back out of the kitchen with a beer Shane turned down. “You trying to learn Russian?”
“There is this Russian woman who lives near me. I thought, with so many people in the league speaking it, it wouldn’t hurt to learn.”
“Damn, that’s dedication to the sport.” Hayden swallowed the lie easy enough, busy making faces at his baby in Shane’s lap, but Shane let his guard down too early because Hayden followed it up with, “Is the Russian girl hot?”
“Nope, not going there. She’s way older than me! Her son is my age!” Shane had absolutely no interest like that and turned to the baby to get off the topic.
“Alright, man. Just want you happy.”
Shane smiled at that thought about the nebulous future where he had a wife like Jackie, maybe a kid, but the image never really settled. It hung suspended in his mind like the faint glow of ghosts, untouchable.
Any other thoughts were put on the back burner for Rookie of the Year. His mom seemed to think he had it in the bag, but he and Rozanov had tied in points, as much as he hated to say it, and Shane couldn’t help but wonder if maybe drafting an acceptance speech was a touch premature.
The ceremony was bigger than he expected. Shane had never been to Las Vegas before and he disliked it almost as much as he expected to. It was too hot, every drive took ten times as long as it should, and there was not a single place where he could be alone, not even his room. His mother had gotten herself a key and let herself in and out the morning of the awards ceremony, steaming his tux and setting out his shoes. He tried to tell her he was an adult now but that just got him a sharp look which told him to shut up.
Vegas was also full of ghosts.
They were on every street corner, tucked away in every stairwell, lingering near attractions as much as the living tourists were. Shane knew that ghosts could travel, but only when attached to something, usually someone, as a guide wire. Irina was a good example of that, but now Shane could see that other ghosts must have had the same idea.
Luckily the swells of people and flashing lights distracted everyone, even ghosts, and not one seemed to realize Shane could see them. Still, he couldn’t even go for a walk in his hallways without seeing an old-fashioned looking maid pop in and out of rooms as if looking for spectral messes.
When the ceremony itself started, Shane tried to pick out the pale white of Irina to help spot her son, but the whole room was moody and dark. When the lights went down and other awards were announced, he kept expecting to see her, the flash of her pale hair or white nightdress, but it never came. He was looking behind him towards the doors when his name was announced.
Like a robot, he stood and gave a little polite nod when he was handed his trophy and said the speech he was so thankful his mother had him prepare. Swarms of people descended on him afterwards, advertisers he directed to his mom and past athletes he sent to his dad.
Who he wanted to see was nowhere to be found. Without thinking, his hand brushed his suit pocket where, next to his acceptance speech, he’d tucked away his Russian sentences in case he forgot them.
“That better just be ginger ale, Rook.” Scott Hunter leaned next to him on the bar. Shane nearly choked on his straw.
“It is, I’d never indulge in front of you.” Shane rattled off, but his light hearted tone stumbled a bit and even though Scott was kind enough not to say anything, he definitely caught it.
But then, what exactly could Shane say when his dead parents hovered over each shoulder, flickering between track pants and tank tops to bloody, mangled, and missing limbs? Shane looked down to avoid their eyes, but he didn’t worry too much. They only had eyes for their son.
“What would you say if me and some of the other old fucks wanted to do shots with the three Rooks?”
Shane nodded vigorously. Anything to take his mind off Scott’s parents who had returned back to how they must have looked in life, dressed for practice, eyes filled with pride.
“Where’s your boy Rozanov?”
“My–what?” Shane stuttered out. He ignored the way Scott’s parents seemed to laugh, breathless and silent.
“No, I mean, not your boy. Just like, it’s always Hollander and Rozanov, right? I just thought…”
Shane muttered some excuse which Scott thankfully bought and then Shane turned to avoid watching the couple flicker into bloody versions of themselves, flagging down the waiter.
Sometimes ghosts were more memories than anything, just afterimages of people. When Shane was four his grandfather had hovered over his bed for three days after his death but he never spoke, just watched until Shane got so overwhelmed he cried. His parents had thought it was grief and his grandfather had moved on not long after his body had been cremated, but it still stuck with him. Scott's parents never spoke, just watched, observed, loved. Somewhere around the third shot, he wondered if how you died might impact the type of ghost you’d become. He’d always avoided those thoughts when he was young. He hated the thought of being crazy and even after he’d determined time and time again that the information the ghosts told him was true, he just wanted to pretend to be normal.
Your boy Rozanov.
The words floated about his head after he broke away from the group, just tipsy enough that the whole world was a bit wobbly and his vision wasn’t sharp enough to catch the details of his own hands, let alone ghosts. And yet, he saw her the moment he stepped out of the reception room and into the stairwell.
Irina was smoking an imaginary cigarette, wearing a magnificent black gown which pooled at her feet in diaphanous puddles.
“I don’t think you should smoke here.” And then realized that was stupid because she was dead and the smoke wasn’t real so he instead pointed at her dress and stuttered out what he thought were the words for dress and pretty and hopefully in the right order. “красивое платье.”
“Спасибо” She said and Shane beamed because he knew that one and then confirmed it when she repeated herself in English. “Thank you.”
“How have you been?” Shane asked. He stumbled a bit which was embarrassing because he was just standing there but Irina smiled and took another drag so it must not have been that bad. He tried in Russian. “У тебя все хорошо?”
“Better.” She hummed and at his confused look, “Your Russian. Still ugly, but better.”
“Oh, uh, thanks? Oh, Спасибо!” He sat down on the stair in front of her so that he could press his head to his knees. “Sorry about this, I had too much to drink. Напиток?”
He tried to repeat that in Russian too but butchered it so badly that Irina’s cigarette flicked out of existence because she was laughing too hard.
“I miss vodka.” Irina moaned. “Never have because of…работа? Job? Then–” She gestured to her stomach and mimed it growing large. “What word?”
“Беременная? Pregnant?” Shane guessed and she clapped happily. He leaned in, enjoying the quiet conversation away from the cameras and all the people who wanted something from him whether it was money or a sound-bite. Irina only wanted to talk and Shane thought not for the first time that being dead would be awfully lonely. “You got pregnant with Ilya?”
“No, no, Alexi. Oldest.” She explained.
“He never talks about his family.” Shane asked. He knew he shouldn't, that if Rozanov wanted to talk about something other than sex with Shane, he would, but the heat from outside was warming up the stairwell and the alcohol made his brain mush. “What was your job? Your работа? Why couldn’t you go back?”
Irina opened her mouth and then closed it, looking for words, half-starting them and then giving up. Finally she just covered her mouth with her hand. Shane felt his already red face get warmer. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that. I always say the wrong thing.”
“No, no wrong. Just…hard. And sad. After pregnant, no more фигурист.” Irina picked at her dress, finally looking over at him. This close, Shane could see that she looked older than Shane remembered her. She had been no older than mid-twenties when he’d last seen her, but under the bright fluorescent lights of the stairway she’d aged. “Husband was bad man. Mean man.”
“Did he–” Shane cut himself off. Always, always asking the wrong questions. Shane’s stomach clenched and he prayed she couldn’t guess what he’d stupidly been about to ask but from the way she leaned back, somehow casual and chic like her son, told him he hadn’t fooled her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…it’s none of my business. Извини.”
“Is ok.” She said, but the playful edge of her had dulled and Shane felt she had answered his question without saying a word.
“I, ah, actually came to find Ilya?” Shane deflected. His name still felt weird coming out of his mouth, but Shane thought it would be mean to call him Rozanov in front of his mom. “We were celebrating at the, ah, вечеринка. Do you know where he is?”
“Крыша.” She muttered and Shane racked his brain for any of the vocabulary he'd learned. When he came up blank she just pointed upwards. “Oh, roof, yeah.”
“Be kind. Ilya…” She smiled softly, waving her hand as though to pluck the word out of the air.
“Sad?” Shane guessed, something his mom told him not to do, but here it helped because Irina looked at him with thinly veiled thanks.
“да, sad.” She said softly, rubbing at her pale wrists. Because he was looking, he noticed that even though she could choose every detail of how she looked, Irina was not wearing a wedding ring. “You good boy, Зайка.”
“Oh, uh, Спасибо.” Shane logged the word for later, rolling it around on his tongue to try and get the sounds correct to try and translate when he got home considering all the online versions were shit. “Спокойной ночи, Irina.”
“Good night, Shane.” She repeated and then, “I watch door for you!”
“Oh that’s not…” Shane tried but she was laughing and even from the next landing he could see she’d remade her cigarette so Shane just let it go before climbing the stairs.
Slowly, making sure to take one step at a time so as not to fall, he sounded out the words on his tongue as he made his way up to the roof. Slightly drunk and seeing her son leaning over the ledge with a cigarette, Shane couldn't help but think of Irina. Had she jumped? Cut her wrists? Taken pills? Or had her husband done something? Had Russia itself been to blame? Something quiet, Shane thought, Irina wouldn't have wanted to scare her sons.
He was so busy thinking about the morbid fact that nearly all the ghosts who linger for years at a time were murders or suicides. There was just too much grief Shane thought, to let go easily on both sides of the veil. He didn't know what had caused it but Shane also knew that it didn't really matter all that much. Why would how she died matter when it looked like all her son needed was a hug from her?
“What does zai-ka mean?”
Shane hadn't meant to say that, but it seemed to startle Rozanov who seemed confused and then suspicious. He flicked ash off the roof. “Who called you that? One of the guys downstairs?”
“No.” Shane said. It had sounded affectionate when Irina said it but Shane would be mortified to learn it was mocking. “A woman in my building.”
“Called you little bunny?” Rozanov demanded and Shane had to press his head down into the railing to muffle laughter. “It's…affectionate.” He explained, smoke trailing up his face when Shane turned his head to look up at him. Then, as if he couldn't help it from slipping out, “My mama used to call me that.”
Shane's smile faded and he thought of the pair they made, two beautiful Russians smoking alone. Shane opened his mouth to say something but Rozanov cut him off, looking away and out into the city.
“Congratulations.” Rozanov gestured to below them and Shane had a strange moment where he'd forgotten receiving one of the biggest honors of his career. In the warm Las Vegas heat, Shane hadn't been Shane Hollander, Hockey Player, Impossible Idol, Unreachable Standard. He'd just been Shane, and it had been nice.
“Thank you.” Shane said, because that was what good, responsible, clean-cut people like him said.
“You are drunk.” Rozanov said, a touch proud, smile tilting the corner of his mouth. “Good. Big night for you.”
“I’m not!” Shane defended and then he really didn’t want to talk about the award anymore. “It could have gone to either one of us.”
“It went to you.”
Shane’s head snapped up and he had a rush of indignant anger. Rozanov went first in the draft, talked shit in interviews, and got to be seen out at clubs and with women. He was able to get drunk and get talked about because he didn’t have those kids who came up to him after games, saying they’d never seen someone like them somewhere like that–
Ilya’s sad, Irina had said. Shane groaned and he could almost feel the weight of Rozanov’s eyes.
“Are you, like, mad about it, or something? Angry you can’t do another victory lap?” Shane asked, but it was more unsure than anything. Rozanov grumbled something under his breath, the words just a touch familiar. “What did you say?”
“Not everything is about you, Hollander!” Rozanov growled and Shane wished he’d listened to Irina and left Rozanov alone. He felt worse than when he’d been in the reception room, surrounded by a thousand people and still alone. “What do you even want?”
“Nothing, I just needed some air and wanted to see the view…” It sounded weak to his own ears.
“And what? Here is the fucking view, Hollander, check it out. Fuck!”
Shane wanted to say something but he knew if he opened his mouth now whatever came out would be the wrong thing. It always was. His stomach was knotted up into one painful lump and his throat burned, maybe from the alcohol, but also the way it did like when he was about to throw up. That was second priority to the way his eyes burned. Shane bit his lip to keep the tears from falling.
“I go home in three days.”
For a minute Shane was confused. It felt like a complete shift in topic if not the way Rozanov delivered it like it should explain his nasty mood. Except it did in a way.
A bad man, a mean man, that was how Irina described Ilya’s father, and now he was going home to be stuck with him for three months. His own family was such a rock in his life that Shane had a difficult time understanding just how mean someone could be to make Ilya Rozanov look less like he was visiting loved ones and more like someone being led to the gallows. Still, Shane thought of the type of man who’d hurt a woman like Irina. The faintest of impressions of Rozanov's father were in Shane’s memory, a stout man with large hands and the type of face he imagined a pit bull might have if they were human. He’d had medals on too, so maybe army or police.
“Will you be okay?” Shane asked. Obviously his mother was fine with it, she’d cracked more than a few uncomfortable jokes about it, but Shane didn’t think that acceptance would be shared by everyone. “Like, does your family know about…”
“Is Russia, Hollander, what do you think?” Rozanov sneered but his heart wasn’t in it. “Don’t worry, no one knows about you.”
“I’m not worried about me, I’m worried about you.” Shane pushed and he was looking directly at Rozanov and saw the little hitch in his breath as Shane spoke. “I just thought that we…” Shane’s voice trailed off and any confidence evaporated. “Nevermind. Ok, I’m going to…”
On unsteady feet, he turned, stopping only once to say something familiar, basic, acceptable just to that Ilya would stop looking at him the same way he looked at everyone else: as if he was making a grand joke that you were too stupid to understand. He clumsily held out his hand. “I’ll see you next season?”
Rozanov was blank-faced, looking through Shane instead of at him, right up until Shane’s back hit the wall and their mouths clashed in a wet kiss. Shane leaned into it, hands grabbing at Rozanov’s smooth chin, digging themselves into his curls. Finally the ground was familiar again and Shane knew exactly where to step.
Then Rozanov’s hand touched his neck and Shane remembered the constricting feeling of of his tie. He pulled back, Rozanov dipping in close to reconnect their mouths, and there was the burst of fear of getting caught, of cameras and his mother, and it was on his tongue to tell Rozanov off.
But Rozanov had more to lose and he chose to kiss Shane on an open balcony in their tuxes. Adrenaline junkie or attention whore, or maybe both, Shane tilted Rozanov’s head so that he could draw a line of open mouthed kisses down to his neck. It was a lesson Shane learned on the ice: Rozanov wouldn’t stop unless he was stopped, even when it was bad for him. Maybe especially then.
“Not here, not in our tuxes where anyone could see us.” Shane gave one final kiss which might have been more bite before gently pushing Rozanov away. Rozanov’s flippantness was annoying, and would have been too much for Shane if there was the chance of being caught, but there was only one door to the roof and Shane had a surprising amount of faith in Irina waiting somewhere a few flights down, watching the door. “Either come to my room or come back down to the party.”
“The party?” Rozanov asked and then seemed in the mood to push because he thrust his hips out into Shane’s hands. “No one is looking.”
“Maybe not now. What time is it? Do you have your phone?” Shane huffed but started a pat down it looked like Rozanov was enjoying too much. He found Rozanov's phone in the back pocket, screen filled with six notifications from a contact Shane blearily realized he recognized. “Who’s that?” He asked as he handed it over to have Rozanov.
“My father. Are you going to send me dirty pictures while I am in Russia? Please don’t give poor man in Kremlin heart-attack when he sees them.” Rozanov joked but Shane just huffed. The notification still bugged him because the Cyrillic he’d seen hadn’t said father or dad, it had said Colonel. A mean man, Shane thought.
“Speaking of, Jane? Really?” Shane asked when he felt the ping of his own phone. Rozanov had sent him something. When he pulled it out, Shane laughed at the eggplant emoji. “You’re hilarious.”
Rozanov's face was a bit lighter and his shoulders were no longer as tight.
“You will miss me, Hollander.” Rozanov said brightly.
“In your dreams, Rozanov.”
“No, we both have less clothes on then.” He said and then leaned in for a final kiss, longer than it should have been but not as demanding as the first of the night. “Go on then, see you next season, Hollander.”
The stairwell was empty when he slowly meandered his way back down to the party, but there was the faintest hint of smoke still in the air.
When he got back to his room, he flopped back onto the bed and groaned when his bad hit something. He wedged the Russian-English dictionary out from under his back and the comforter, looking at the cover and then thinking about the other word Irina had said that night he'd not known. Shane sounded it out, trying to determine which sound belong to which symbol. He found it on the bottom of the English Fs, фигурист, with a little picture. He made a noise, something with air getting trapped in his lungs. It was so fitting it nearly made him laugh, it nearly made him cry.
Irina Rozanov had been a figure skater.