Chapter Text
In an MLH office hallway, Ilya straightens his son, Nikolaj’s, tie for the sixth time, only for Nikolaj to loosen it the moment Ilya’s hand drifts away.
“Will you leave it?” Ilya grouses.
“Why are we even here? This should be a zoom meeting,” Nikolaj complains. He’s all impatience, his strong, seventeen-year-old body unrepentant in every slack line of his posture.
Ilya feels his back go up, even as he fights for a casual tone.
“Because, my precious idiot son, when you were three, your mama and I taught you that there are bad words in life. Words you don't ever say in front of other people,” Ilya reminds him, straightening the tie for a seventh time. He swallows. “Words you definitely don't say while mic’d up on live television. The f-slur is one of them, no?”
Nikolaj is quiet for a moment.
Ilya clears his throat. “So. We are going to meet with the MLH commissioner. And we’re going to apologize, say it won’t happen again, and thank this man for letting you continue playing hockey in his league after you opened your foolish mouth.”
Nikolaj’s mouth twists again. He has all the Rozanov pride and unfortunately a lot of the charm too. He’s not used to humiliation like this.
“Still coulda done that on a zoom,” he grouses, but quieter. “I’m missing ice time.”
Ilya pats his shoulder even if he doesn’t quite look his son in the eye for the sea-motion feeling in his stomach. He loves his boy, but also this is probably one of the most embarrassing and terrible things to happen to Ilya in his long and varied life, which is saying something.
Everyone says parenting is not easy but this cannot be what the trite phrase means, because Ilya thinks it is ludicrous for parenting to be this hard.
An assistant comes and escorts them to the commissioner’s office, handing them useless mini water bottles with two gulps of liquid inside.
“Commissioner Langstrom is out with a flu, unfortunately,” the assistant says. Nikolaj’s almost full body reaction of oh great, what a waste of time, is thankfully ignored. “We have the deputy commissioner taking his meeting today.”
Ilya blinks as she turns the knob, because he could have sworn that she said deputy commissioner but that would mean—
“Hollander.”
The word leaves his throat a little hoarse. A softer h than he’s trained himself to use. Like he’s just come to north America all over again.
Shane Hollander is there inside the office, blinking back at them. He looks at home behind the wide mahogany desk with hockey memorabilia surrounding him, at ease at the control center. His blazer is off and Ilya can see his lean body shift in familiar yet unfamiliar ways as he stands and walks across the desk to greet them with a handshake.
“Mr. Rozanov,” he greets Ilya first, formally, and Ilya has never in his life blushed, but he might start at the tender age of 47.
“Mr. Hollander,” he corrects himself. Yes, they aren’t rivals on the ice, not anything but two old men meeting for unpleasant and embarrassing business. There can only be the Mr.’s and manners here.
When was the last time he even saw Hollander? Nine years ago at least... He looks good.
Ilya clears his throat, pats Nikolaj’s shoulder to move him forward.
“My son, Nikolaj.”
“Niko Rozanov,” his son corrects, using his too Canadian nickname, shaking Hollander’s hand. “Thanks for meeting with me.”
“Of course,” Hollander says smoothly, moving back to the desk and sitting down. He gestures to the chairs in front and Ilya sits.
After so many years apart, it’s hard not to look closely at Hollander. Time has been kind to him in a way it hasn’t to Ilya. Maybe all those macronutrients and multi-step skin care routines did mean something, for how trim his waist is, the strength in his arms his button up shirt cannot hide. Lines cradle his eyes affectionately, emphasizing his freckles, the quick alertness of his dark eyes. His age shows in his glances, the way his lips purse.
He looks like Yuna Hollander, Ilya realizes, down to his new firm, no-nonsense look. Ilya bites his lip not to say anything on the subject. Not his observation to make. Too familiar. He wonders though, do all adults look like their parents? Is Ilya the spitting image of Grigory Rozanov?
He doesn’t feel like his imposing father, sitting across from this beautiful man he used to fuck and waiting for his son to apologize for using the f-slur on a sports broadcast. Mostly he feels like he’s breached a whole new level of embarrassment yet undiscovered by man.
Nikolaj launches into an apology that is dreadfully stiff. For all he has inherited Ilya gregariousness, he has never learned the sensitivity required to really persuade someone. Then again, maybe Ilya is misremembering his own youth—god knows the number of times he was sat across from some official or reporter and mouthing his apologies, insouciant smirk lurking on his lips. Never for using a slur, of course. Even the mouthy, truculent Ilya of back then just wouldn’t…
Still, at least Nikolaj gets it all out. He hands over a printed copy of his social media apology and Hollander puts a pair of silver reading glasses on. Ilya has to look at the bobblehead on the wall— he isn’t strong enough to weather this mix of humiliation and the immutable desire that is Hollander in reading glasses. They only look better on him now, actually, which feels unfair. Is not how aging is supposed to work.
“He will never use this language again,” Ilya says, mostly to fill the gap of the silence.
Hollander’s eyes flicker from Ilya to Nikolaj and he dips his head. He takes off his glasses and smiles.
“I speak for the league when I say we appreciate that. Thank you for taking the time to see me, it shows how seriously you're taking this."
Nikolaj is quick to stand, already over the whole thing, thinking about getting out the door on the ice before his team plays New York.
“Yeah, of course. Thanks,” Nikolaj says, rushed and almost rude. Ilya mangles an apologetic smile that he hopes doubles as an excuse for his brusque kid. Mostly he feels like melting into a puddle in the carpet. He has never been so embarrassed, not even the time Scott Hunter landed a punch in Ilya's second season.
Hollander kindly lets it slide (always so considerate) and shakes Nikolaj’s hand, then Ilya’s. Then father and son are standing outside in the hallway. Ilya feels a little in shock and turns back to the door, but it’s shut, over and done with. Ilya’s window to Hollander has closed soundly behind him. He stares for a moment, unsure how to feel.
Nikolaj is texting a storm, probably to his teammates. Telling them he’s on his way or complaining about how stupid this non-zoom meeting apology was.
“You won’t right? Nika?” Ilya says. Something in his tone pricks Nikolaj’s concentration because he looks up. “You won’t ever use that language again.”
Nikolaj rolls his shoulders. “Everyone says that shit. It’s not my fault I was mic’d up.”
“You think I don’t know what a locker room sounds like? It’s not about that,” Ilya says. His mouth works for a second, but he can’t quite resolve what it is about in this moment.
Nikolaj huffs, impatient. “Don’t worry, I won’t damage your legacy.” Which is about the most insulting thing he could say. As if sensing he drew blood, Nikolaj turns away. “I’m taking an uber. I’ll see you later, old man.”
Ilya stands, hands clenched in the hallway. He sucks a deep breath in and out like his therapist taught him.
He does know what Nikolaj is talking about, how the minute the slur dropped, reporters were drafting articles comparing Nikolaj’s chaos to Ilya’s rookie year, smearing them both in the process. Alluding that maybe dominating, party-boy Ilya used the same language without ever having to say so. And it doesn’t matter that Ilya never did (yes, for the simple reason obvious reason, but also because he did not need to stoop to slurs to chirp his opponents), because the world won’t see that. The vapid, drama hungry audience just sees a lineage of careless, feral Russian men, something that Ilya has never managed to curtail even now that he’s retired.
He wishes that Nikolaj’s every move was not compared to him too, but not because of his legacy, but because he wants him to have his own life—
“Rozanov?”
Ilya almost jumps out of his skin. He turns, feeling his face pale as he sees Hollander standing in the hallway, Ilya’s phone in his hand. Ilya pats his back pocket, blanches to find it empty.
“You forgot this.”
Ilya takes the phone, sure his fat ass squeezed it out when he sat. Why Hollander did not send his scurrying little assistant, Ilya does not know, but he suspects from the increased tightness of Hollander’s face, the painfully polite Canadian sympathy, that he heard some, if not all, of that shitty exchange.
“Thanks,” Ilya says, trying not to think too obviously about his desire to walk into traffic.
Hollander doesn’t leave, and Ilya tries to figure out what he’s supposed to say here. Apologize again? Make excuses for Nikolaj with the dead mother card? (A card Ilya never played for himself as a kid but finds himself using with strange regularity for his own son.)
Before Ilya can embarrass himself further, Hollander speaks.
“I was about to take my lunch. Do you want to get a coffee? Or something.”
It is the last thing Ilya is expecting, which is why his lips part and he must look like an idiot for a moment.
Meeting again is supposed to be awkward, Ilya thinks. With all the shared history, the way Hollander monopolized his mind and body in his twenties, the horrible way they split apart and all the pain and heartache… but maybe time does make all things easier. Because Ilya cannot feel that thick miasma of confusion he was consumed by in his twenties. Looking at Hollander now he just feels curious. Drawn in.
“Or not. I’m sure you have places to be,” Hollander murmurs, and in the sweet hesitation that averts his eyes awkwardly, Ilya sees that boy he spent ten years chasing across the ice. So strong, so soft.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Ilya says, not even sure what he’s after. He justifies it to himself that even old men have to catch up now and then.
The café Hollander leads them to is located underneath one of the many office buildings in the Manhattan area. Without discussing it, both of them take a table at the back, away from the busy front where businesspeople walk in and out in a dizzy revolving door of caffeine demand.
When asked, Hollander said ‘for here,’ and the ceramic cup tinks as it settles against the table. He doesn’t mean to leave quickly, Ilya thinks satisfied, blowing on his own unsweetened black tea. They watch each other for a moment that is quiet, rising listless and easy like the steam from their drinks. He wonders what Hollander sees, looking at him. It must be nine years since they last met at an event…
“You… Um, you’re working with Mcgill?” Hollander asks and Ilya blinks. How did he…? Hollander gestures to Ilya’s felt jacket with the small, emroidered martlet mascot head, and Ilya feels like an idiot.
“Oh, yes. For some time. It’s good. The college circuit has promise but not the uh, the ego.”
Hollander smiles at that. “You know, my dad went there. It’s how he met my mom actually, she was a student manager.”
Ilya wonders if there isn’t a single thing in his world not touched by Hollander, because he did not know.
Hollander continues, “I always thought you might coach pro.”
“Bah. No. Too much politics. Not enough fun. More pleasure to play at that level than coach,” Ilya says. “College is better. More control of the team… You never wanted to be Coach Hollander?”
Hollander hesitates, shakes his head. “Everyone expected me to—”
“Four Stanley Cups,” Ilya murmurs, grinning from behind his tea cup.
“Shut up,” Hollander laughs, and it is a honeyed sound, makes Ilya's tea taste sweeter than it is.
Ilya feels a little zingy, snaps his fingers. “Maybe you’re like the great one. Gretzky. He could play for hell but couldn’t coach for shit.”
“The Coyotes needed more than Gretzky to save them from the axe,” Hollander shoots back. “Besides, maybe I just wanted to make change in the sport on a wider scale.”
Everyone knows Hollander is gunning for the commissioner seat and Ilya cannot help but grin like a wolf.
“Mr. Politician,” Ilya murmurs, but maybe the callback is a little too much for how Hollander fidgets in his seat. Ah, is he uncomfortable? A little red in the face. Perhaps fighting a go fuck yourself, Rozanov. Maybe it’s too close to those private nights against tall windows, how they chased each other around the kitchen island and into Hollander’s bed.
“I’m sorry for my idiot son,” Ilya says, because it bears repeating. This is likely the kind of change Hollander would like to see made in the hockey world.
Hollander’s expression is hard to read. “It’s not all on him,” he says, too generously. “We both know how it is inside locker rooms.”
Ilya dips his head, but it feels like a weak excuse. The easy excuse. He remembers a time when he thought Scott Hunter was going to revolutionize the sport, but there has always been a push and pull with progress, and as much as Scott did to tell people there were gay sports players, there was an additional push to make it clear how little that would be accepted in the locker room. How ‘distractions’ were excised and left to warm the bench.
The cruel handling of queerness was sobering to watch at the time. Made Ilya bitter in ways he tried to bury with drink and clubs.
Though there was a time, right after the announcement, when he even thought that he and Hollander might have a chance at… something. He’s never been sure what, exactly. It’s not like hockey homophobia was the only barrier for them. Still, under the blinding light of Hunter’s admittance, Ilya’d really felt the certainty that the two of them could… could. Even now the meaning of the possibility slips away from him, like gripping smoke with his hands.
Hollander’s dark eyes glance up from his coffee and Ilya remembers where they are. Funny, even his tricky knee is quiet despite the cramped seating, as if Hollander has lulled it into thinking they are in the past. Just the two of them in their private world.
“Does Niko… Or is it Nika, you said?”
“Name for parents to use, Nika. Niko is something he makes up for his friends to call. It is stupid when Nikolaj means victory, no?”
“You would name your son that.”
Ilya grins, full teeth. “What else would do? You're asking about him why?”
Hollander looks down, taps his short, clean fingernails against the ceramic cup.
“He doesn’t know then? About you being…?”
Ilya almost chokes on nothing. “No! No. I would never— I know how badly you wanted to keep it quiet— What? Did he say something or…?”
Hollander flushes, freckles stark against his skin. “I didn’t mean about us,” he says quietly, intently. “I meant about you.”
Oh. That Ilya is bisexual. Hm, Ilya thought he’d found the deepest level of embarrassment before, but maybe not.
He scrubs his hand over his hair, feeling his longish curls drag over his face as he looks at Hollander. He used to be better at this. Used to have walls the height of Everest. Could posture like the best of them. Instead, Ilya comes across all earnest, babbling, revealing too much. Age has made him silly.
Hollander smiles, bemused at Ilya’s behavior and the pretty tilt of his mouth is not making it easy to keep forgetting how much he once adored this man.
“No, Nikolaj does not know that either,” Ilya says. It sounds terrible, said like that. He explains, “I don’t know, it never came up,” which only sounds worse. This is perhaps the weakest of excuses in a day full of weak excuses. He doesn’t know why he has never told Nikolaj, only that the idea of explaining to his child about his dad being a bisexual man was never quite comfortable. He made it clear growing up that he didn’t give a shit who Nikolaj liked, but it’s not the same thing as being open or encouraging tolerance, he’s realizing.
It never seemed relevant, might be a better excuse. In truth, Ilya has not slept with a man besides Hollander and Sasha— He was married for sixteen years, which was preoccupying, and while he wasn’t a perfect husband, he never cheated. Then, after retirement and his wife’s death, it was always the same issue he had as a sportstar. He is no longer the Bears’ or the Royals’ Ilya Rozanov, star center, but he is still high profile enough with a budding professional son which means he doesn’t want his sexuality public. That means only fucking men with the same secret, a mutual self-destruction that he can trust. It’s harder, finding men (who aren’t married) with the same investment for secrecy when casual sex with women in bars is so much easier.
If he isn’t actively fucking a man, won’t it just be confusing? His head can make sense of it logically, but in his heart, it still feels like a lot of pitiful excuses.
(and some part of him fidgets at the thought of confronting Nikolaj now. The moment he saw his son after the broadcast, he’d been desperate to ask did you mean it, is that what you really think but in the same breath, Ilya was desperate to never know.)
He doesn’t say any of this.
Hollander exhales and sounds relieved of all things. “I’m glad, I guess, that he didn’t know.”
Ilya blinks at Hollander, who almost glitches in his effort to over explain.
“Not because I don’t think you deserve to be out and known, just that… well, if he said that knowing that you…”
Ilya fidgets, that same fear that he might have swelling in his stomach.
“Yeah, I know.” Ilya groans and leans over, thuds his forehead on the table a few times. “Fucking kids, Hollander.”
“Pretty sure you can’t do that in North America.”
Ilya turns his head, grins toothy. Hollander’s humor always manages to surprise him.
“You never had any? Adopted or…?”
It’s strange— Ilya knows Hollander’s stats, can recite his last season by memory. Knows that he’s been steadily and determinedly clearing a path careerwise to the upper rungs of the commissioner’s office, has even been trying to remove fighting from hockey, but for all that he’s followed Hollander’s career, he really does not know anything about his personal life.
Hollander shakes his head. “No. None. Not sure if I’m cut out for it.”
Ilya bites his tongue against asking if there was anyone… Not his business. Old sportsmen catching up is what they are.
“Based on Nikolaj’s behavior, I don’t think I am either.”
“He’s a good kid,” Hollander says. “A good player.”
Ilya sighs, lifts his head. Feels his back protest as he straightens it.
“He has all my attitude and talent, his mother’s hockey sense. But I don’t think I taught him the important things. How to be good person.” Like Hollander is, he can’t help but think. Maybe some of that plays on his face, because Hollander stares steadily at him, unblinking and supportive, somehow.
“He’s seventeen. I don’t think any of us were fully done cooking.”
Ilya smiles, feels the hidden meaning in the words. Yes, they did make some crazy choices at that age, some that they even made together... He sees a similar thread on Hollander’s face, like grinning at like, and for a few moments they stare at each other, drinks forgotten, sharing an unspoken secret.
A BEEP from Hollander’s smart watch startles Ilya back to his senses.
Hollander taps it and rises, apology on his face. “Sorry, my break is almost over.”
“Office time, huh?” Ilya stands too, stepping close and crowding Hollander without quite realizing the instinct. Hollander looks up at him, eyes flicking over Ilya quickly as he swallows. Probably seeing all the places time has deposited fat on his body. Not everyone can be ultra fit like Hollander and he almost juts out his chin in rebelliousness, begging him to look his fill if he wants. Hollander swallows, and Ilya finds a crooked smile growing on his lips. He has confidence, always, and it is nice to see it still shakes Hollander’s steadiness.
Ah, there is not enough time in the world to heckle Hollander.
Ilya sticks out his hand.
“Nice to catch up, even if you found more ways to be boring, office man.”
Hollander rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile on his lips. “Almost made it without chirping.”
“Almost,” Ilya agrees.
The handshake lingers a little long. Ilya removes his hand when he notices. He turns for the door, ready for his embarrassment to be over.
“Rozanov?”
He turns back to see a different, more sympathetic sort of awkwardness. Hollander’s deeply intense eyes go to the floor before flicking to Ilya and away.
“I’m sorry about Svetlana,” Hollander eventually says.
Ilya sighs over the familiar wash of grief that swells when she comes up, manages to smile. “Thank you, Hollander. Was a long time ago.”
He waves his hand a little, getting a tiny, awkward wave in response and heads out onto the street.
Ilya walks to Central Park, focusing on not being hit by a car along the way to avoid lingering on his buzzing thoughts until he’s around the trees. It’s quiet here, too cold for people to linger on the benches. Runners pass and Ilya tries to remember the last time he did cardio instead of just weights.
Why did Hollander ask him to talk? Was it politeness? To give his regards about Svetlana’s death? To comfort a closeted bisexual man over the likely homophobia of his child?
Ilya used to be able to see the clicking of Hollander’s thought process like the exposed gears of a clock. Reliable, clear.
He knew why Hollander turned him away all those years ago, even if he was pissed about it. He understood. Read the reasons like clean lines cut in the ice. Now he can’t parse him.
Meeting up with Ilya now after all the difficulty of their parting… why…?
Bah, what does he know about Canadian politeness, Ilya thinks, waving the heavy thoughts away. It is still good to see he is doing well. Healthy. Probably in a long-term relationship with a sweet man, dog and all. No kids giving him headaches or crises about parenting.
(Hollander's probably found someone to love him right, the way he so badly needed when he was a stiff, tightly wound twenty year old. Yes, Ilya wants that for him. Definitely. Well... at least he believes it is what Hollander deserves. Hollander is living well in New York, far away from the chaos of Ilya which is as it should be.)
They both chose these lives for themselves.
All there is left is to live it.
...And for Ilya to try and not kill his kid in the process.