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Ice hockey in Florida shouldn’t be called ice hockey at all, Ilya has always said so—pointedly and especially loudly when on the ice with the Tampa Storms or the Florida Privateers. It is unnatural, really, to leave an arena after an hour on the ice only for the outside air to be sticky with heat and moisture instead of crisp with snow. Florida hockey does not have a spine. It is man-made and unnatural, like the new meats they are growing in labs these days for the vegans or the old meats they have been serving at baseball stadiums for who knows how long.
(Hollander likes to point out that the ice on the arenas in Boston and Montreal are just as man-made. A few years ago, while they were still tied together in bed and lying on their sides, he'd grabbed his phone from the bedside table and pulled up a video of a construction crew melting down a rink’s ice to install a basketball court underneath it at the end of the regular season.
Ilya told him that if he wanted his knot to go down faster, he could have just kicked him in the balls instead.)
Ice hockey in Florida is, at its heart, a parody of the sport. A shallow imitation without a soul.
This, of course, makes it the perfect location for the All-Star Game, Ilya will give the organizers that much. They have found the perfect soulless place for their favorite little ego entertainment farce, and it is Tampa Bay in January.
He has more than half a mind to not go when he first receives the invitation in December. It’ll probably be considered rude to pass on the invitation. People will talk about it, almost certainly. They’ll say he is too egotistical, too selfish, too much of a knothead alpha for even a friendly little competition. It would be not good, but this is what good agents are hired to handle, and he pays his agent very well.
And so what if he does not care to fly to stupid Florida in the middle of January for a stupid little event? He has been asked to go to these Games since his rookie year. Another rookie can take his place. He will not be missed. His absence will not be noticed.
Not when Shane Hollander has a girlfriend.
A famous, movie star actress girlfriend.
A beautiful beta of a girlfriend who fits herself into his arms like she belongs there, who rubbed her scent all over Hollander in a some dark and dingy Montreal club while he just stood there and let her, who lives in the same city as Hollander and probably wakes up in his nest every other morning at least, whose fans have taken to calling the pair of them Hollandry which is maybe the stupidest almost-English word Ilya has ever heard. It sounds like an STD.
It sounds like something Ilya would absolutely hate to catch sight of and so, he is very certain he is going to draft an email to his agent to request that they reject the All-Star invitation.
But then, as if the hockey gods have it out for him personally, the MLH’s official Instagram page releases the All-Star lineup a few days earlier than they usually do.
And they want him to play on the same team as Shane Hollander. They want Shane Hollander to be his captain. They will probably want Shane Hollander to be his line-mate, which means they will probably want him to play right wing. Which means they will probably want Shane Hollander to be his centre and his line-mate, and it’s so close to everything Ilya wants that he can feel his teeth ache in his gums just thinking about it.
So he should probably say no, still, despite the fact that the rejection will be even harder for Agent Patrik to handle diplomatically, and it will look even worse. It will look like Ilya Rozanov is a hot-headed, petty, territorial alpha who cannot even stomach playing alongside his alpha rival for one friendly game.
And maybe he is a hot-headed, petty, territorial alpha, but it is not for any of those reasons people will think. But then they think Shane Hollander is an alpha, and Shane Hollander has the sweetest omega scent Ilya has ever had the pleasure of smelling, like crystallized ginger and cloves. And Shane Hollander makes the prettiest sorts of whimpers and moans when Ilya puts him facedown on a hotel bed and drinks up the slick leaking from his red little hole. And Shane Hollander wears the most desperate, broken-hearted expression when Ilya pretends and teases that he has decided not to give him his knot, as if Ilya has ever once been able to resist the temptation to try his damnedest to breed Hollander full of his pups.
And so the people who will talk if Ilya turns down the All-Star Game, they are not so smart. And Ilya will pay his agent Patrik a very big New Year’s bonus for the headache it will cause him. And Ilya will not go to stupid Tampa in stupid Florida because he knows himself well enough to know that he really is a bit of a hot-headed, petty, territorial alpha, so he doesn’t know if he can be trusted with seeing Rose Landry around Shane Hollander.
Once was bad enough. Poking a bear once is something only idiots do. No one’s ever left alive to try it a second time
And yet.
And yet.
On January 1st, skull pounding and cheek pressed against the cool marble tile of his bathroom floor, he reaches for his phone and pulls up his email. His house smells awful. He doesn’t think he’d feel quite as sick if it weren’t for the fact that the smell in his house is making his body rebel against him. Too many different scents; too many omegas. None of them the right one.
He’d thrown a party. A New Year’s Eve celebration that had included anyone with even a passing involvement with the Boston Raiders franchise. It had been good to ring in 2017 with his teammates and their families and about half of Boston. It was supposed to make him feel—good. Less—not good.
Now it’s just making him sick, and that’s terrible. That’s the sort of worrying that he doesn’t have the brainpower for, because why does sleeping with some stranger omega make his insides want to fuck right out of his body? It’s troubling. It’s definitely a sign that the last thing he needs to do is put himself in a situation where he sees Shane Hollander sooner than he has to.
Because this is Hollander’s fault. It is Hollander’s fault he will have to get new bedding just because he can't stand the smell of daisies and vanilla on it. It is Hollander’s fault he will have to ask the professional cleaners to stop at his house tomorrow to take care of the rest of the mess. It is Hollander’s fault that his second-string goalie introduced him to his sister named Jane and Ilya had to get drunk on top-shelf vodka just to wash the taste of that name from his mouth.
It comes back to Hollander, again and again and again and always.
Patrik, he types. Shaky, only two fingers. Phone held close to his eyes and the phone’s auto-correct pulling more than its fair share of the weight here.
I will be at the All-Star game in two weeks. I am on Shane Hollander’s line, yes. Tell the organizers I play right wing for Hollander. Can arrive early for promo shots with Hollander if they want.
Happy 2017.
Ilya Rozanov
He reads over the blurry text with half his face smushed against the tile. He deletes the last sentence, about the promo shots, and then he sends the email before he can think twice. It would be a shitty, embarrassing thing to sound too desperate, and he already knows that Hollander has a game against Texas two nights before the All-Star weekend kicks off. There’s a very low likelihood of him being able or willing to fly out early when he has an equally low opinion about the All-Star games as Ilya does.
Maybe he’d do it for Rose Landry. But Ilya is not Rose Landry. He is not a beautiful beta actress who kisses Hollander on the cheek in public and takes him onto her movie set and posts pictures of him napping on the couch in her very important movie star trailer to Instagram.
He is not Rose Landry who probably hooks her ankles behind Shane’s waist as he fucks her sweetly and runs her hands through his hair without tugging on the ends of it because Shane says he doesn’t like it even though he always goes whiny and desperate for it when Ilya’s got him braced up on his hands and knees—
But Ilya is not Rose Landry.
Ilya doesn’t even know if he’s Lily anymore.
It’s been months since Boston. October November, December. Now it’s January 1st, and Ilya is a stupid idiot who is going to poke the bear again, even though the last time left him cold and alone and shivering in his empty house in the middle of a warm October with a mess of tuna melt ingredients still sitting out on the counter in his kitchen, all because he cannot stomach the idea of January going by without being close enough to Shane Hollander to count his freckles.
By his ear, his phone buzzes.
He groans, long and loud and unlocks the screen to peer at the notification. Next time, he thinks, he’d rather have Meuller’s sister Jane just kill him straight. Whatever he’s done to himself is much, much worse than dying.
Hello, his agent has written.
I am currently out of the office and will return January 4, 8:00am. Thank you for your message. If you are a current client and need to reach me before then, please find my emergency contact number below.
Best,
Patrik Karington
Ilya squints at the message. He has to read it five times in a row for all the stupid English characters to line up in an order that makes sense. He starts to read it again, debating on whether making sure that he and Hollander play on the same line together qualifies as an emergency worth interrupting a man’s holiday time—he’s leaning towards yes—when his phone buzzes again.
A notification banner from Google swoops down over the top half of his screen, and immediately all thoughts regarding Patrik Karington’s holiday fly out of his head.
The Google algorithm knows how interested Ilya Rozanov has been in the developing relationship between Montreal Metros’ Captain Shane Hollander and actress Rose Landry. The app thinks he would enjoy reading this breaking news story from Barstool Sports Montreal.
Promising Beginnings: Shane Hollander Steps Out Wearing New Bracelet After New Year's Eve Night Spent With Girlfriend Rose Landry.
Is Landry, Beta, following the Beta tradition of giving her intended mate a promise bracelet before the wedding? We have thoughts.
Ilya’s gums itch with the need to bite. To tear. Into anything. Something. Someone. To hurt. To mark.
But all the guests left ages ago, and no one he cares about has stepped foot in his house since October, and Shane Hollander is in love with someone else who isn’t him. So Ilya’s alpha can scratch and bay and throw itself against the walls of his chest and it won’t make any difference at all. The only person left wounded and remembering will be Ilya.
His phone buzzes again. A masochist or maybe just a man in desperate search for a lifeboat of any kind, Ilya looks at the unlocked screen.
Dear Mr. Rozanov, Agent Patrik has typed.
Ignore the OOO message, I monitor my inbox on holiday for my hockey stars (don’t tell my mate!). I know you all never stop truly take a holiday away from the game. I have just forwarded your request to Linda Owens in the ASG operational department. Should be no problem at all on our end, so consider it done.
Happy New Year,
Patrik Karington
Consider it done. Ilya thinks—maybe, probably—it is time that he does that. Even if it means ripping out the parts of himself that have convinced themselves that they belong in Hollander’s care. Even if his stupid heart still perks up at the idea of playing on the same team as Hollander. Even if he fucked his goalie’s sister last night just because her name made his breath speed up and his blood sing on pure learned instinct.
He will buy a new house if he has to, just to forget the way Shane Hollander nuzzled into his hand when he stroked his cheek on the couch in the living room. He will fly back to Russia in the summer and this time when the plane lands, it will feel like home again, and he will not think about stupid Hollander in his empty apartment in Montreal and his stupid promise bracelet and his stupid freckles.
All one hundred and seventeen of them.