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i. Philadelphia, 2009
Ilya curls his palms around the cool metal handle of the railing, breathing in. The clean air hits his lungs like a punch, the cold metal cutting into his palm. He looks at the skyline, at the thousands of multicolored lights, millions of Philadelphians turning in for the night. Allowing them to blur, he focuses inward, on his body. His skin is too tight and too hot, flushed, chest squeezing. Clenching all of his muscles and relaxing them one by one only helps a little.
It’s something an old coach taught him, the one time he’d noticed that Ilya was nervous before a game.
Unfortunately, his father had also seen it. Ilya never saw that coach again. And he always made sure his father never saw him nervous.
Thinking about his father makes his heart race, and for a distraction, he fumbles for the cigarettes in his inner pocket. They’re smushed, but that’s fine. The silver lighter alongside them is warm from his body heat. He traces the cyrilic inscription with his thumb. Svetlana had organized all his friends from back home to buy it for him before he left for the Draft. He suspects she paid for most of it herself.
It takes him a couple of tries to light the cigarette.
The smoke is a balm to his senses, familiar in the way it blankets his senses. The hard squeezing pressure in his chest eases. He looks around the small terrace, cursing himself for not doing so earlier. There could be someone there, watching. Recording. He’s usually so much more careful than this. He can’t afford to be lazy, like his father said.
Thankfully, it’s empty. He relaxes and -
- a pair of orange eyes blink at him from the shadows.
Ilya yelps, jumping back against the railing. For a moment, he teethers on the edge of the building before he catches his balance. Behind him, the lights twinkle menacingly.
“Fuck,” he breathes. There’s a strange squeaking sound from the dark corner just behind the door, before a tall bell-shaped figure steps out. It’s orange, Ilya realizes, and very fuzzy. “Gritty,” he says without thinking. Even he knows the name of Philadelphia’s mascot. He doesn’t know Boston’s. Maybe he should ask.
Gritty squeaks, in a pattern that Ilya recognizes as laughter.
“Why are you here?” Ilya asks, stumbling over his words. He’s seen mascots before, even mascots committed to the bit, but there’s something about Gritty, that’s just the slightest bit off. There’s no gap in between the head and body that would indicate where the suit is put on, and the big fuzzy body moves along as the mascot breathes.
Gritty waddles up to Ilya and waves his fuzzy paw over the skyline.
“You are home,” Ilya says, guessing. Gritty squeaks affirmatively. “I mean…your home? Real home?”
Gritty sighs, and points out to the city insistently. Ilya follows his finger. “The arena?” Ilya guesses. He can’t remember what the rink where the Flyers play is called. Doesn’t really care enough to remember, so he probably never will. It’s near the venue where the draft is being held, near enough that Ilya can spot the scaffolding on the walls. “Fixing?”
Gritty bursts out in a series of squeaks, miming furiously with his whole body. Something about crashing the net, or maybe going to sleep while something falls on your head? Ilya isn’t sure.
Gritty throws himself down with a loud huff, crossing his fuzzy paws over his chest. After a moment of hesitation, Ilya lowers himself down next to him, leaning his back against the railing. The mascot radiates an almost preternatural heat, like a large animal. Sitting this close, Ilya can smell him too. Not plastic, or sweat. Ozone, and smoke.
“That’s rough, buddy,” Ilya says, trying to imitate the tone he’s heard from his future captain, when he’d told him that the airline had lost his equipment, sending his hockey bag to Jamaica.
Gritty sighs. It shudders through his whole body. Ilya takes a drag of his cigarette. It’s almost gone, burning down slowly while he’s been dealing with the situation. He catches Gritty looking at it with interest.
“You want?” Ilya asks cautiously, patting his blazer for the pack of cigarettes. He’s never met a mascot who smoked, but Gritty isn’t like any mascot he’s ever met.
Gritty squeaks his agreement. Ilya pulls out the pack of cigarettes, and holds it out. A fuzzy orange paw darts out with supernatural speed, and then the whole thing disappears into the mascot’s wide gaping mouth. Ilya doesn’t see any teeth. Somehow, that’s more disconcerting than if he had.
“That was expensive,” Ilya says, glaring at the happily munching mascot.
Gritty squeaks, waving his arms in the air. Ilya is surprised by how he doesn’t really feel angry. In fact, there’s a smile growing across his face without his permission. There were only three cigarettes left anyway.
The only sounds are traffic from the street below, and Gritty’s heavy breathing. The party beyond the doors might as well be in another world. Ilya’s hands aren’t shaking anymore. There’s nothing squeezing his chest.
Still, there's no sense in delaying the inevitable.
Ilya gets to his feet. “I have to go,” he says. Gritty chirps agreeably. “Next time we play you, we win.”
Gritty gives him the finger. It’s surprisingly funny when it’s fuzzy.
Ilya gives him an awkward wave and pushes open the door. There’s a commotion going on inside. For a frightening moment, he thinks they’re searching for him.
“Gritty!” yells a tall woman in a Flyers uniform. “Gritty!”
Behind him, the mascot goes rigid. Ilya turns around to look at him, at the orange eyes spinning wildly in their sockets, fuzzy palm clasped over its toothless mouth to keep in the characteristic squeaks.
“I won’t tell,” Ilya says solemnly. “Don’t worry.”
Gritty waves happily. Ilya closes the door to the terrace, and rejoins the crowd.
Later on, all the fancy handheld desserts are replaced by big trays of sheet cake. The organizers seem baffled. The tall woman in the Flyers shirt just looks resigned.
Ilya takes some of the cake. It’s surprisingly good, up until he finds a long orange hair in it.
There’s a brief moment later, as he’s looking across the gym at a sweaty Hollander that he’s tempted to tell him all about his encounter on the roof. It passes quickly. It wouldn’t do any good, getting too chummy.
*
ii. Philadelphia, 2011
It’s not the first time Ilya has heard something shitty said in a scrum. He’s spent two years in the Super League, playing with guys almost twice his age, so he’s heard every iteration of a homophobic slur, not only in Russian, but in multiple languages. Nothing has changed in the NHL. He’s used to it, all the shitty, awful parts of the game. Part and parcel, alongside all the headshots he’s been dodging.
Boston play in Philadelphia the day after the All-Star Game. The clothes in Ilya’s hamper still smell like Hollander’s old man cologne. Ilya’s fists keep clenching around nothing, feeling the phantom softness of Holander’s skin, the hard muscles beneath. He spends the day distracted, thinking about those big brown eyes looking up at him, hazy with pleasure, utterly trusting.
The guys think he’s hungover, keep trying to get him to tell which veteran was buying him shots. Jokes on them, Ilya can get Bryzgalov to buy him alcohol anytime he wants. He just has to listen to him talking about how the universe is so humongous big, and honestly most of the time he’d rather stay sober than have another discussion about aliens.
Still, they’re not entirely wrong. He feels hungover, drunk on last night. Maybe that’s why the carelessly thrown slur hits him like a boarding call. Or, no, there’s an actual boarding, and it’s Ilya distracted, his head not entirely up and following the play, and someone pushes into him from behind, crunching him against the boards.
He’s fine, his father always said he had a hard head. Except when he says it, it’s not a compliment. Ilya is already getting up, when his captain, all 206 cm of him, comes barreling into the other guy, and a second later they’re in a scrum, everyone on the ice piling in, and Ilya grabs his own guy blindly, hoping he doesn’t have to throw any punches because he still feels dizzy.
He hears it then, shouted above the din. He doesn’t recognize the voice, everyone’s screaming sounds the same.
By the time he skates up to the bench, he must look shaken up enough that the athletic trainer waves him down the tunnel for concussion protocol. He passes it, of course. He doesn’t have a concussion. Russians don’t have those, except for how Ilya met Sergei Zubov a couple of months before he was drafted, and the other man had to have Ilya’s name written on a piece of paper to remember it when he spoke to him.
But that’s beside the point. Ilya’s father says Russians don’t get concussions. Just like they don’t get depression, or anxiety, or bipolar disorder.
It’s five minutes to the end of the game, and the Flyers are up by three, so the athletic trainer lets him stay out in the medical room. He should go to the locker room, shower and get dressed, but he stays in the room instead, looking at the wall. He comes back to himself some time later, and his surroundings are quiet.
With a growing sense of dread, he walks on cramping feet to the locker room, and finds it empty. A glance at his phone makes him curse. He’s late, and he’s been missed.
Ilya takes a quick shower, and dresses, then pauses, at a loss. The buses have already left without him (and no one noticed he wasn’t on, and that makes him feel some type of way that he doesn’t want to examine). The smartest thing would be to find the equipment managers, who must be around somewhere, because the locker room is still in disarray. They might be down by the ice, picking up the debris from the game, so that’s where he decides he’ll go.
Except that when he steps out of the locker room, all the hallways look the same. It’s his first time playing the Flyers at home, and he still doesn’t even know what the arena is called, much less where everything is. Ilya picks a random hallway and starts walking.
He must pick the wrong direction, because instead of the ice, it leads him deeper into the arena, past empty conference rooms and down sterile hallways. It’s when he starts to hear the deep thrum of the pipes that he realizes that he really must have fucked up, because he’s now beneath the ice. The neon lights flicker, and it smells strange, like smoke and ozone.
Ilya is just about to turn around and leave the way he came, knowing he’ll have to cough up a fine and endure a lecture on top of that, when he hears a familiar squeak.
He turns around, and a fuzzy orange monster is barreling at him at full speed, shrieking wildly and waving his arms. He cringes back, but he needn't have worried because Gritty comes to a dead stop in front of him, vibrating in excitement, his toothless grin so wide it takes over half his face. Ilya can’t help it. He smiles back.
“Hi, Gritty,” he says and Gritty lets out a series of happy sounding squeaks, bouncing in place, its orange beard bristling, before he gives Ilya the finger, grinning.
Ilya can’t help but grin back. “Yeah, you beat us,” he says, and Gritty shrieks in triumph. “But we’ll get you next time.”
Gritty makes a sceptical sounding squeak, which is fair. Philadelphia are really good this year. And despite Ilya’s best efforts, Boston are not.
Ilya has a thought. Gritty looks comfortable here, under the flickering lights and the humming pipes. He’s even changed out of his customary jersey and helmet combo, to a onesie printed all over with the Flyers logo and a surprisingly normal looking pair of slippers, and he’s got an old-fashioned sleeping cap on his head.
“Were you going to sleep?” Ilya says, struck by the sudden realization. It’s not like he hasn’t deduced that Gritty isn’t like the other mascots, who take their head off at the end of the work day and go home to their normal families, but seeing him in his pajamas is something else. Weirdly vulnerable, and he doesn’t know what to do with the feeling.
Gritty waves him off, shuffling in his slippers. “Sorry,” Ilya says, somewhat embarrassed. “I’m lost. If you could just point me in the right direction, I’ll-”
He never gets to finish the thought. Gritty perks up, and gives him a thumbs up, before he waddles down the hallway, motioning for Ilya to follow. He’s surprisingly quick for such a big creature, and Ilya has to jog to keep up with him. They pass through more hallways, but Gritty seems to know exactly where he’s going so Ilya is content to follow along. The sight of their feet, fuzzy and orange in slippers, and Ilya’s comparatively smaller in sneakers, is surprisingly amusing.
Even that gets old eventually, and Ilya’s old thoughts start to creep in. He doesn’t even realize he’s frowning until Gritty makes an unfamiliar sound, a low croon that Ilya takes a moment to place as concern.
“I’m fine,” he tells Gritty, who repeats the noise again. It’s surprisingly soothing. “Really.”
Gritty seems unconvinced. And there’s really no one in this world that Ilya can talk to about this. Maybe Hollander…but no. That would be the worst idea.
“Someone said something shitty on the ice today,” Ilya says and Gritty makes an encouraging noise. “I’m having a hard time shaking it off.”
Gritty croons again, inquisitive. So Ilya says it in Russian, because that’s the most familiar and it hurts the most. And then he goes on with it, Russian, then in Ukrainian, Latvian, and Czech, Swedish and Finnish and French. English is last, and by then he’s out of breath and yelling.
Gritty is quiet as Ilya tries to catch his breath in suddenly empty lungs.
Then Gritty lunges, supernaturally fast and strong where he’s got his boiling hot paw clamped like a vice around Ilya’s arm. Gritty drags him down the hallway, and then through a door and Ilya feels too surprised and betrayed to resist. Gritty lets him go, and Ilya stumbles backwards, distracted by where they’ve ended up.
The room they’re in is big, and barely lit, with hockey bags all nicely packed and lined up to be loaded onto the truck. Gritty makes a beeline for one in particular. Ilya looks at the logo, and then at the number, and then makes a conscious effort to forget them.
“How do you know it was him?” he asks, and Gritty lets out a disdainful shriek. Ilya supposes it makes sense, that the team’s pet monster would know everything that goes on in its domain. He wonders briefly if Blade is the same way, but he can’t be. Ilya’s seen him with the head off, has spoken to the guy in the suit. Gritty is an anomaly in every way.
Gritty has already unzipped the bag in the meantime, and upended its contents on the floor. From the deep pockets on his onesie, he starts pulling out sheet cake. Just baking dish after baking dish of sheet cake, which shouldn’t be possible, and yet. He upends them into the bag, mashing it together with an unholy glee. And watching him, the anger Ilya’s been trying not to feel suddenly roars back to life.
He drops to his knees and takes a pair of scissors, cutting through the laces on the skates. Then, he grabs a roll of tape and starts to tape all the gear in one big ball. Gritty waddles over, cake smeared all over his front, and together they tape a sheet cake into the middle of the ball of gear. By tomorrow the cream will spoil, making the gear smell even more disgusting. They stuff the ruined gear back into the hockey bag, and Gritty sits on top so Ilya can zip it shut.
Ilya sits back, experiencing a deep feeling of satisfaction, his heart racing as he watches Gritty fuss over the bag, straightening it so it doesn’t look any different than the others.
“Thank you,” he says finally, when Gritty hands him a towel to clean his hands. He doesn’t mean only for the towel. He can tell Gritty understands by his wide toothless grin he sends in his direction. This time when he reaches out to grab at Ilya’s hand, his grip is very gentle.
Ilya allows himself to be led through the hallways like a child. With the adrenaline leaving his body, he’s tired and cramping, and all he really wants is a bed. Gritty stops in front of a door and gestures at it. Beyond it, Ilya can hear the sound of washing machines.
Gritty releases his hand, and then brings one massive paw down on Ilya’s shoulder, patting it. Ilya’s legs almost buckle and send him to the floor.
“Bye,” Ilya says weakly. “And thanks.”
Gritty waves at him and heads down the hallway. Ilya glances at the door and when he looks back, Gritty has already vanished.
Ilya walks through the door and startles the equipment guys, who are washing and drying jerseys. He ends up hanging with them for a while, chatting and badly folding jerseys. At one point he maybe takes a little nap on the goalie pads.
He catches a ride to the hotel with the staff. The coach doesn’t fine him and he doesn’t get a lecture. In fact, he gets praised for being kind to the support staff. Coach even calls him ‘a responsible young man’ in his next media scrum, despite the fact that Ilya took three minors in one period.
He never gets connected to the prank in the Wells Fargo Center. A couple of months later, the guy gets sent down to the minors, and to Ilya’s knowledge, he never comes up again.
*
iii. Philadelphia, 2017
“I’ve got a curfew exception tonight,” Ilya announces to the locker room. He gets met with whistles and cat-calls, which he expected. There’s also comments, which he hadn’t and should have. Rookie mistake.
“Do you have a Philadelphia hook up now?” Cliff asks, sending him a sleazy grin. “Good, maybe you’ll finally get over that Montreal girl. She really did a number on you bud, eh?”
Ilya’s blood rises so fast, he’s halfway through a punch before he can stop himself. When he looks at Cliff, his grin is gone, his hands are up in a placating manner, and he looks a little scared. Ilya hates it.
“Don’t talk about that,” he says coldly. “Don’t talk to me.”
He almost runs out of the room. He doesn’t want to see the expressions on everyone’s faces.
Out in the comparatively cooler hallway, it’s easier to breathe. Ilya picks a direction and starts walking. He doesn’t exactly know where he’s going, but he’s got a feeling he’ll end up there anyway. His face feels hot. He’ll have to find a way to apologize tomorrow. Not directly, of course. Maybe he’ll stop by the bakery that Cliff likes, pick up some cronuts and pretend he’s been craving them, while letting Cliff eat them all. Cliff never picks them up for himself, because he says the cronuts are an offense to the noble heritage of the croissant, but Ilya has seen him hide under a table and stuff them into his cheeks like a chipmunk.
It’s not Cliff’s fault that Ilya is like this, anyway. They’re flying to Montreal tomorrow. After the game, he has to meet with Shane. And Ilya has to break things off. There’s no other way. There’s too much he’s feeling. Ilya doesn’t like feeling too much because that’s dangerous. In fact, he’s happiest living his life in a moderate sort of numbness that allows him to get up in the morning and do his job, smile and laugh, and then go out, find a warm body for the night, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again. He likes that numbness, the stupid predictability of his outwardly wild life.
It’s just that Shane has been making it almost impossible for him to return to it.
“...and so I have to break it off,” Ilya concludes out loud, to the large fuzzy figure across the table. He’s got a cup of cocoa in his hands, and he stares at it so he doesn’t have to look at Gritty. “I’ll marry Svetlana and get my citizenship. She’ll do me this favor I think, especially if she gets a fat cheque at the end of it. She’s pragmatic, like I am. And then, when we divorce, I can finally be…”
Ilya pauses. He rotates the cup in his hands and counts the marshmallows. He takes a sip. It’s cold. He’s been monologuing to Gritty for what feels like the past hour. There’s no one else he could think of that would care enough to listen, and that’s probably pretty sad.
He looks up. Gritty is watching him attentively, elbows on the table, chin in his hands. Ilya’s been talking to him in Russian, but he’s pretty sure now that Gritty understands. There’s no language that could be a barrier to him, there’s no door that’s locked, or action that can be hidden, at least not inside the arena he calls home.
Gritty is quiet. Alert. For a fuzzy orange mascot, his face can be very expressive. Ilya has to look away from him before he can speak again.
“Honestly, I have no idea who I’ll be,” he says, staring at his cold cup, the claw marks in the wood grain. “I’ve never thought about it. You know my mother died when she was 36? I’m 26 now. I’ll probably play for ten more years, if I’m lucky. Get a couple of Stanley cups. I’ll have to see Hollander four times a season, and that’ll be agony. Then I’ll be retired and I’ll never see him again. Somehow, that’s worse.”
Gritty makes a noise, a deep croon that seems to go on, achingly sad. Ilya didn’t even realize that Gritty knew that kind of sadness, but he should have guessed. This fuzzy orange monster is the personification of everyone that’s ever walked into the arena in a Flyers jersey. Of course he would know loss.
“But I have to break up with him,” Ilya says, and he knows that he’s mostly talking to himself. “I’m poison, and I destroy everything I touch. I’ll destroy him too. I couldn’t bear it, if I ruined him like everything else.”
The cup in his hands is blurry. Over the roaring in his ears, he hears a series of squeaks, and then he’s being lifted out of his chair and crushed against warm orange fur.
His first instinct is to shake Gritty off. He gets hugged every day, in celebration, in locker rooms. Shane holds him sometimes, when they’re catching their breaths and he’s tired enough to forget that he’s supposed to leave. But it’s not like this, full body and strong. Bizarrely, it makes him think of when he was a child, and his father still celebrated his wins.
He was just like this, larger than life in his childish eyes, except that instead of uniform buttons and the smell of cigarettes, there’s plastic decal and ozone and smoke.
Gritty starts to purr. The sound is loud enough to cover up Ilya’s hitched sobs.
*
iv. Las Vegas, 2017
“And the most valuable player, Scott Hunter!”
Scott Hunter looks alright. He’s wearing a nice fitting suit, and his beard is neatly trimmed. His smile is a little nervous, but he looks well-rested and he’s walking without a limp. That is to say - he doesn’t look like someone whose life has been ruined by coming out. It’s a wholly unbelievable concept to Ilya, and yet, here’s Scott Hunter, proving him wrong in real time.
He glances to his left. Shane is sitting there, just a couple of seats down. In a couple of days (10 days, 8 hours, 30 minutes), Ilya will meet him at the airport to spend a week at his cottage. The thought makes him feel sick and buoyant at the same time. He’s got no idea what to expect. He can’t wait. He wants to call the whole thing off.
“A few weeks ago I reached my lifelong dream - winning the cup. I don’t even have the words to describe how that felt. But something else happened that night. Something that got a lot more attention than the Admirals winning the Cup.”
As if sensing Ilya’s gaze, Shane turns. Their eyes meet. Ilya makes himself look away first. He starts to smile, just a little bit, can’t help it. He feels giddy with it, all his fears immediately chased away. Just a couple of days (10 days, 8 hours, 28 minutes) and he’ll get to look at those eyes all he wants.
“It’s been an interesting month-”
“Alright, that’s good, great speech, my boy, but I’m afraid we’re out of time.”
The audience gasps in unison. Ilya’s stomach plummets. Commissioner Roger Crowell waddles with surprising speed across the stage, grabbing the trophy and pushing it into Scott Hunter’s arms. Scott looks more resigned than surprised.
On stage, the commissioner has commandeered the microphone, and is blathering on about inclusion and growing the sport. The words are insincere and empty. Ilya wonders if Scott Hunter’s partner is in the audience tonight, witnessing this public humiliation. Abruptly, he feels embarrassed, sick to his stomach.
“And so I implore you to reflect upon our shared values-”
The massive double door entrance to the auditorium slams open. The audience gasps again, practiced at it by now. In the bright square of the doorway, there’s a massive silhouette.
Gritty’s shriek is loud enough to shake the seats, reverberating off the walls. Ilya reflexively covers his ears, shaken. The smell of ozone is everywhere. Gritty is so mad, there’s smoke coming out of his ears. He points threateningly at the commissioner. Someone off to the side hands him a sheet cake.
Gritty starts to run.
He barrels down the steps towards the stage so fast that all Ilya can see of him is the blur of his fur. The commissioner, aware of the sudden danger, scrambles backwards, looking around for someone to protect him.
But Gritty is inevitable. With an almighty scream, he lobs the sheet cake at the commissioner. His aim is true, hitting him right in the face, cream and cake smearing across his expensive suit. But Gritty isn’t done. He hits the commissioner at full speed, ripping him off his feet with a brutal headbutt and carrying him backstage. There’s a scream, high and frightened. Then, silence.
After a moment, Gritty’s head pops from backstage. He grins, eyes spinning wildly in their sockets. The auditorium holds its breath as he bounces out, heading towards a visibly frightened Scott Hunter.
But, Gritty just grabs the trophy out of Scott Hunter’s hands, and sets it carefully on the podium. He sticks out his massive paw, and Scott Hunter, visibly bemused, shakes his hand. Gritty picks up the paper with his speech, and puts it into his hands, before herding him towards the microphone. He pats him on the back, almost sending him to the floor, and then disappears somewhere backstage like a phantom.
“Well,” Scott Hunter says, his voice shaking, but a smile growing on his face. “As I’ve said, I’m having a really interesting month.”
The crowd laughs. The air relaxes. Scott Hunter finishes his speech.
The next day, commissioner Roger Crowell quietly retires. He’s replaced by beloved broadcaster, former coach and co-founder of the project U Can Play, Rian Urke.
Ilya finishes packing for the cottage.
*
v. Philadelphia, 2021
It just so happens that the Centaurs season opener is in Philadelphia.
Ilya has a new ring on the chain around his neck, matching Shane’s. Their stalls are next to each other in the cramped visitor’s locker room, and sometime during the pre-game, it hits him that it’s the first time he’s ever really seen Shane’s routine. Not for bogus All-Star games, or training, or charity matches. A real game, that means something. Ilya keeps getting stuck watching the exact way Shane positions his laces, the way he counts the rolls of tape under his breath. It’s throwing him out of his own routine, but it doesn’t feel like it matters that much when Shane is warm and present next to him, their fingers touching on tape, their hips bumping together when they stand.
In the hallway, Ilya deals out his usual pre-game handshakes. He screams in some guys faces, gets screamed at in return. From the corner of his eye, he catches Shane shaking hands with some of the guys, ducking in close to speak quietly to some of the jittery rookies. It sits, warm in his chest, to see him fit in, feeling welcomed in these smallest of ways.
The mood is jubilant, because it’s the start of a new season, a clean slate. But there’s tension too, and worry, for the two of them. Philadelphia fans aren’t the most forgiving, and Ilya’s pissed them off enough to feel their wrath before. He doesn’t know what waits for them on the ice tonight. He’s learned that whatever he can imagine, it can always be worse. He feels sick to his stomach with the worry, and he knows Shane must be feeling worse. All of this is new to him.
A rink attendant calls them in, and he and Shane drift towards the end of the line, meeting in a moment of hesitation. They aren’t demonstrative in front of the guys. Maybe they never will be. Too much anxiety and fear, spanning too many years.
“Ready?” Ilya asks quietly. Shane breathes out deep, a trick Ilya knows he uses to manage his nerves. He drifts closer, caught up in Shane’s gorgeous brown eyes, his familiar beloved face. Beneath all the anxiety, there’s still a spark of wonder.
“Ready,” Shane confirms, and his voice is wobbly. He tilts forward, just slightly, because they’re standing so close, to bump their helmets together, so gentle. “You should go last.”
Ilya frowns. “You always go last,” he points out. They both always go last, it’s been an integral part of both of their routines for years. He used to cherish it, that he could linger behind and look across the ice to see Shane’s skate cut into the surface first. A moment of plausible deniability.
“You always go last too, and you’ve been here longer,” Shane says, expression twisting into something determined. “And it’d be good, to have you at my back.”
“Okay,” Ilya says, even as his heart grows three sizes in his chest. “I go last.”
Shane turns, and skip-runs to catch the last guy just leaving the hallway, and Ilya has no choice but to chase after him.
The Xfinity Mobile arena is loud, like he expected. He locks his ears against the noise. Taking his place with Shane at center ice, he lets his eyes blur the faces of the players standing across him. Next to him, Shane is standing tall and proud, eyes fixed straight ahead. Ilya can be strong, for him. Always.
After all these years, Ilya barely listens to the national anthems. They’re just there, background noise. But he does notice, when the singer hits the last note on “and the home of the brave,” and the microphone crackles and falls silent. All the lights go out, sudden and startling.
Ilya reaches for Shane instinctively, and finds him already reaching back. Their hands squeeze through their thick gloves.
Then, a single spotlight on the rafters. Gritty descends from above in a harness. He’s wearing a pride flag like a gown, trailing almost all the way down to the ice. The speakers come to life.
Diamonds, by Rihanna starts to play. Ilya’s breath catches in his chest.
Gritty sways to the music in a strange twirling choreography, arms contorting in a bad imitation of a ballerina. Even from the ice you can hear his excited squeaking.
“What in the world?” Shane asks next to him. Gritty passes above their heads at a leisurely roll. Troy promptly pales and looks at his feet. He must have seen what Gritty is wearing underneath the gown. That is, nothing.
Up above, Gritty meets Ilya’s eyes. He breaks his hypnotic dance to give him two vigorous thumbs up, his huge fuzzy body bouncing and vibrating as he attempts to convey to Ilya the breadth of his pride and love and support. Ilya’s vision turns blurry, as he raises his arm to give him a thumbs up back. In the stands, the fans are starting to cheer, loud enough to be heard over the music.
The song comes to its climax, Rihanna’s voice soaring through the arena.
The strap on Gritty’s harness breaks.
The arena takes a collective breath as Gritty spins wildly out of control, swinging back and forth while shrieking loudly as he slams into the jumbotron and bounces off. Diamonds is still, somehow, playing, and it gives the whole scene a surreal feeling. The pride flag appears to come loose from all of the movement, suspended for a second, then falling away as Gritty moons the whole arena.
With an almighty shriek, Gritty swings once, then crashes into the 1973-74 and 1974-75 Stanley Cup banners, which trail after him like some sort of cape as he swings himself onto the rafters with preternatural strength and disappears into the depths of the arena.
The Pride flag flutters gently down to drape across the ice. Ilya leans on Shane’s shoulder and laughs and laughs.
And that’s the only reason there are tears trailing down his cheeks.
*
+1
Ottawa, 2028
“...and I have a surprise for you two!” Harris says, clapping his hands together. Shane almost expires on the spot. The whole day he’s been filled with jitters and his body feels confused with it, adrenaline pumping in his veins. He feels like he has to check someone into the boards, but there’s only him and Ilya, and their friends, and they’re all in suits, so doing that would be dumb.
Shane thought it sounded like a good idea when Ilya suggested they do a vow renewal. Harris did a great job with their wedding, considering all the obstacles, but now that Ilya’s retiring and spending the next season a WAG, or a HAB, as it happens, it seems like the right time to celebrate with all the new friends they’ve made. There’s really no reason to feel so jittery, and yet.
And Shane is not the biggest fan of surprises. To many unpredictables.
“...I was really surprised when they reached out, but the Philadelphia Flyers organization said he would be so happy to come, and did you know he’s also an ordained minister?” Harris is saying, but Shane is barely listening. Ilya straightens up from where he’s been happily leaning against Shane’s side, his eyes trained on the horizon, the sun back-lighting a huge silhouette.
“Gritty!” Ilya yells, and the smile on his face is still one Shane rarely gets to see, one of pure joy.
There’s an answering shriek across the yard, and before Shane can stop him, Ilya breaks into a run, even though he’s not supposed to do that without his back brace. He meets Gritty halfway, and Shane knows he’s not the only one astonished when the humongous orange mascot picks his husband up like a child and swings him around in a circle.
In Shane’s head, the little monster that lives in the darkest corner of his psyche lifts its head. It’s bad enough that Shane’s still jealous every time a woman or man makes eyes at his husband, he’s supposed to be worried about mascots now as well?
Shane banishes the thought. He knows that Ilya and Gritty are friends, that the mascot is important to him, even though he’s never really understood it. He straightens the lapels on his suit and keeps his head up as he heads down to finally meet them.
“Shane!” Ilya is yelling, waving him over. “Shane, come meet Gritty! He’s going to marry us again.”
“I’m here,” Shane says gently, reassured by the way Ilya immediately folds into his side, leading him over. “It’s so nice of you to come…um…Mr. Gritty.”
He sticks his hand out, and immediately feels a little silly. The mascot lets out a series of squeaks, almost like laughter, and reaches out to grip Shane’s hand with a huge fuzzy paw. It’s so big that it engulfs Shane’s hand entirely, and then, it tightens. Startled, Shane looks up at Gritty, at his toothless gaping grin, his bulging orange eyes, focused entirely on Shane. Gritty lets out a noise, low and threatening, and his grip really is very tight. The mascot doesn’t say a word, but somehow Shane knows exactly what he’s trying to say.
“I’ll take care of him,” he says hurriedly. “I love him, of course I will. He’s the most important thing in my life.”
“Shane takes care of me,” Ilya says, looking between them, laughing in confusion. “You know he does, Gritty.”
Gritty squeaks, and his grip on Shane’s hand eases. He claps one massive paw on Shane’s shoulder, almost sending him to the floor. Somehow, and he’s not quite sure how, he feels like he’s been given the shovel talk.
The thought makes him feel surprisingly happy. Ilya doesn’t have many people that would think to threaten Shane over his happiness. In fact, there’s only Svetlana and her threats are so subtle they go right over Shane’s head, so she’s stopped trying. So what if the one doing the threatening is a 7 '0 mascot of a conference rival? If there’s anything Shane has learned over the past few years it’s to take your true friends where you can find them.
He steps up to Ilya’s side where he’s happily conversing with Gritty in a mix of Russian and English. He puts his hand on his husband’s back to brace him, because he really shouldn’t be standing for such a long time.
Yes, Shane will take care of him. He doesn’t need a mascot to threaten him to do it. He looks over at Gritty, catches one of his eyes. The other is rolling wildly in its socket, but Shane is ignoring that. Gritty gives him a thumbs up. Shane gives him a thumbs up back. They understand each other perfectly.
Later on, Gritty marries them again, dressed like a minister. Or something, Shane really couldn’t tell you. Shane barely notices because his husband is wearing a beautiful suit. Ilya is so gorgeous and radiant in the late afternoon light, grey hairs threading through the blonde. He barely knows what words are coming out of his own mouth, or what Gritty’s squeaking means.
(Though later, Troy will be wiping his eyes and telling a bemused Harris about what a moving speech it was.)
All Shane can think about is kissing that beloved mouth, and the laugh lines around it.
He does get to do that, while Gritty leads a conga line around their reception.
There’s a long orange hair in the cake. JJ chokes on it and has to be taken to the emergency room. No one really notices, too busy celebrating.