Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.

Cliff said Ilya liked crazy pussy. Lifelong friend of Svetlana Petrova, Ilya did not use such language. Svetlana said he liked women who wanted to kill him and had a matching preternatural talent for finding such a woman in any given five mile radius. Ilya said that American women didn’t scare him. He had apparently spoken too soon.

Caitlin was gorgeous, and the first time Ilya saw her she was throwing a punch at a woman in line for the bathroom in a Boston club. Ilya had bee-lined for the bar and brought her ice for her knuckles. For about six months she was who he called when Svetlana was out of town. Then he met Maria, who passionately advocated for credit card fraud and spoke passable Russian she’d learned from a tyrannical grandmother, and he took up with her instead.

Maria never brought anyone back to her place because she didn’t want anyone knowing where she lived, which meant they often hooked up in unorthodox locations. This was part of her appeal. One Friday night they got off in the stairwell of a fire escape at an art launch, and it wasn’t yet midnight when they left, so they hit the clubs after. They drifted apart, which was fine with Ilya, and when he left at three in the morning he left alone. He had parked in an out of the way lot, small and otherwise empty, and he was glad he’d taken the time to sober up because he wasn’t sure how he’d have processed seeing the passenger and driver side windows of his Bugatti shattered while drunk. Sober, he processed it by calling his agent.

This wasn’t exactly an agent’s remit, but Ilya was making serious headway in redefining that. Pasha was Russian – Russian Russian, not Russian-American – and he didn’t only have Russian clients, but there was a clear bend in that direction. Among them Ilya was the most important and he took full advantage of this, essentially requiring Pasha to do the work of five employees. He didn’t feel so guilty because he also paid Pasha like he was five employees. Ilya liked Pasha, which felt lucky in a way he didn’t always get, and he didn’t want to test that luck on a manager or lawyer or publicist or accountant. He had these people, technically, but he never dealt with them. He left it all to Pasha.

“Ilya,” Pasha said. “What do you need?”

It was how he answered every call. Ilya liked the simplicity. “New car windows,” he said. “For my Bugatti.”

“Something you did?”

“No, a mindless vandal,” Ilya said. It was kind of his fault for parking somewhere not all that secure. That was the price for always wanting to keep the option of car sex open.

“Uhuh,” Pasha said. “Text me your location. I think I have all your insurance details. Are you somewhere you can wait?”

Ilya looked around. He wasn’t the type to worry about his personal safety, but the environs weren’t exactly pleasant. “Depends how long,” he said. “I can for now.”

“Okay,” Pasha said. “Sit tight while I make a game plan, I’ll call you back in a few.”

The only place to sit would be the glass-covered seats of his car, so Ilya wandered around some. He could hear other club stragglers on nearby streets. When Pasha contacted him next, it was a text rather than a call. There was a tiny black and white image and the words: Know her?

Ilya did; it was Caitlin, and while there was nothing incriminating about the image itself, Ilya had to assume it was CCTV from the lot he was standing in, or somewhere nearby. People didn’t always respond so well when he lost interest. Ilya sympathized. Shane Hollander hadn’t responded to a text from Ilya in three weeks, and Ilya felt like doing something drastic too. In his case that would probably just be a dick pic.

Yes, he texted back. Pasha responded, Want me to buy the tape?

Ilya was reminded of CCTV footage from a bar that had circulated on social media last year, of a woman in Memphis swinging a pool cue at him. The tape also caught them leaving the bar together twenty minutes later. Ilya hadn’t really minded that going around. Still, he texted Pasha: Yes.

A few minutes later Pasha called. “Who is she?”

“Caitlin Robins,” Ilya said. “She has a baseball bat in every room of her apartment. She showed me them all.” He said it as a fun anecdote. The mood changed abruptly at Pasha’s response.

“Well, it wasn’t her baseball bat, it was her gun.”

Ilya laughed, Pasha did not. Ilya stopped laughing, a new feeling setting in. Baseball bats and pool cues in the hands of people significantly less strong than him were potentially problematic but ultimately manageable, at least under his system of risk assessment, which he had been told was skewed. Even by his assessment guns were scary. And it was scary that Caitlin had never mentioned having one, because Caitlin didn’t have much of a filter. And, it occurred to him to wonder, how had she known where to find his car? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. “Who the fuck gave her a fucking gun?” For some reason he was whispering. He left the lot for one of the streets still occupied by drunk people.

“If you turn this into a gun rights issue that’ll be worse for your career than basically any scandal I can imagine,” Pasha said. “We can probably quietly get her license revoked, though. I’m already in the process of filing a restraining order. Might start calling around to cities and get them to prefill the forms for you. The trouble is criminal charges.”

“No, I don’t want that,” Ilya said. Growing up with a cop had taught him to not waste his time with cops.

“Right,” Pasha said. “And if you did do it, it would mean this story getting out, which isn’t great. But if you don’t, is the thing, it’ll fuck up your insurance real real bad. If you tell them your windows got shot out, you’d better have told the cops, too.”

“Fuck,” Ilya said.

“What I thought. Best head down to the station,” Pasha said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Well – could you pick me up?” Ilya asked. “I don’t have a fucking car.” He moved the phone away from his mouth so he could laugh.

Pasha picked him up a half hour later, got out of his car to hug Ilya on the street and then shook his shoulder. “God,” he said. “You’re so fucking young. I go too long without seeing you, I just hear about the shit you’re getting up to, I forget that.”

Ilya shrugged him off, but he was feeling a little younger than usual too.

It was Ilya’s third restraining order but the first he’d taken out because he actually wanted it, rather than because his team, via Pasha, had insisted it was what was best for all parties involved. Svetlana had bet Sasha that Ilya would have one out in every state with a hockey team by the time he turned thirty. Sasha’s characteristically sweet and supportive counter was that Ilya would have been kicked out of the league and thus the US of A by then.

At least with this scandal Ilya was very much the victim, and the league couldn’t really take any action against him, even if the offer of counseling he received the next day did seem somewhat passive-aggressive. Monica’s advice, relayed through Pasha, was for Ilya to say nothing about it publicly. Monica was his publicist, but she might as well have been Pasha’s imaginary friend. Ilya was happy to comply. He was too busy coming up with his own PR strategy for breaking the news to Svetlana, trying to figure out a framing that would make it seem funnier than anything. That proved harder when the story dropped and the headlines left it ambiguous as to whether or not Ilya had been in the car at the time.

Svetlana handled, if not happy, there was one other person Ilya waited to hear from. The day after the news broke, always a little out of touch with gossip, Shane Hollander texted him a bunch of question marks and a link that ended in boston-woman-shoots-2983185. Ilya didn’t bother click through.

The text did not come as a surprise. Ilya hadn’t been expecting it, either, but he’d been prepared for basically any reaction from Hollander on this, including none at all. He’d been thinking about what Hollander would make of it since it became clear the story would go public, because slowly and dangerously in Ilya’s head the public was reducing to Hollander. Watching him, doubting him, wanting him.

Lily: Don’t worry baby I only want you

Jane: Shut up. Are you alright?

Lily: Yes totally fine all big misunderstanding. Media blew it up.

Ilya didn’t think that was quite the phrase but Shane was good at getting his gist. Ilya reviewed the exchange skeptically, unsure if his response was reassuring enough. Shane was so skittish, and Ilya hadn’t made much progress with him recently. They’d hooked up twice, never getting further than blow jobs, and Ilya really, really needed to fuck him. He couldn’t let this frighten Shane off. It was why he’d gotten Pasha to buy the CCTV of Caitlin ruining his car; he didn’t want Shane seeing it. He sent a thumbs up emoji for good measure.

Concern out of the way, next came the judgment. I guess this is the kind of thing you’re into. Despite his previous desire to reassure Shane, Ilya didn’t feel all that moved to deny the accusation. Hollander wasn’t as different from these women as he’d have the world believe. Ilya’s preternatural talent told him so. Shane gave Ilya the same kind of thrill, maybe even stronger; standing on the edge of a skyscraper, opening the door of a speeding car. Shane wasn’t pool cue crazy but he was some kind of crazy, Ilya could sense it. Shane would try to kill him in his own way. Some distance would be best for all parties involved, Ilya imagined Pasha-as-five-employees saying. “Canadian boys don’t scare me,” Ilya said under his breath, and half hoped he was speaking too soon.

2.

The next time Ilya ended up in a police station he was not the victim. He’d been staring at the pale blue wall for an hour by the time Pasha came to talk to him. Ilya braced himself for news of Boston releasing him from his contract, of deportation orders, of bail hearings. Instead Pasha grinned and said, “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

He was fucking magic. Or maybe Ilya was. Either way he hugged Pasha, and didn’t ask questions until they were outside the station.

Then he grabbed Pasha’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “How the fuck am I not in trouble?”

“Not your car,” Pasha said, easy. “Not your car, not your drugs.”

They were, in fact, Ilya’s drugs. Molly he’d been bringing as a housewarming gift, and he’d spent the last hour wondering if bringing a housewarming gift was the same thing as intent to distribute, and if it was too much powder for him to say was for his personal use. Except it wouldn’t be his personal use any more. Alex’s car, Alex’s drugs. Ilya turned back to the station, disgusted it had slipped his mind. He’d been too caught up in his own leg-gnawing panic. “Alex,” he said.

“He will be fine,” Pasha said. “He probably won’t even do time. First offense, a little bit of a class B drug—”

“And the speeding,” Ilya said, because that was why they’d been stopped in the first place.

Pasha nodded, like this was an important point. “He should not have been speeding in a car with you.”

“I want to see him,” Ilya said.

“Okay,” Pasha said.

“Now,” Ilya said.

Pasha sighed. “I will see what I can do.”

Pasha got him in, because Pasha was the one who was magic. Alex looked – fine. He’d done himself up all nice for the party and it was barely past midnight. He smiled when he saw Ilya, and Ilya tried to reciprocate.

Alex had come over to the US from Russia to play hockey ten years ago, and washed out of the AHL two years ago, but had family in Boston and been allowed to stay, even though he probably still had a chance on the fringes of the Russian league. He liked America enough he’d started going by Alex. He and Ilya were friends, but in the weird way Ilya had friends these days where they weren’t exactly equals. Naturally he would take the fall for Ilya in a situation like this. Ilya was too important. Ilya helped pay for Alex’s aunt’s dialysis.

And Ilya would go along with it, because Alex wasn’t important enough to Ilya for Ilya to lose everything he’d lose if he came clean. He’d do that, probably, for Svetlana. The list ended there.

“I’m so fucking sorry, man,” Ilya said, standing across from him. They were speaking in Russian, a bored cop a few feet away from them, but Ilya hadn’t thought to check how secure this exchange would be and still didn’t want to say anything too revealing. He hated not being able to be blunt about this. It seemed like something that warranted an honest conversation.

“My fault,” Alex said, and Ilya couldn’t tell if he was playing a part or if he really thought so. He’d been the one who was speeding, but it wasn’t like Ilya would have been keeping an eye on that if he’d been in the driver seat.

“Still,” Ilya said. “I feel like shit, and I’m not the one in jail.”

“It’s okay, Rozanov,” Alex said. “You take care of the people, the people take care of you.”

“And I will take care of you,” Ilya said. “Lawyer, bail, job, whatever.”

Alex kind of raised his eyebrows the way one might at someone who’d gotten too emotional on a night out. “Right,” he said. “Thanks, man.”

Ilya looked at the grim ceiling. He was getting the feeling Alex had already had conversations, maybe with Pasha or maybe with someone else, a lawyer Ilya hadn’t even had to meet, and that Alex had a clearer idea of what was going to go down than Ilya did. That was how Ilya liked it, as hands off as possible, but it didn’t feel as simple when he was being hands off about someone else’s life.

So Boston didn’t release Ilya from his contract, but he did get suspended for three games, because he’d been in a speeding car with drugs even if in the eyes of the law the drugs hadn’t been his. From an outsider’s perspective he’d gotten off unjustly easy, three games nothing compared with the sentences handed down to other players caught in illicit situations, the ones who'd made the mistake of not being generational talents. From an insider’s perspective, namely Ilya’s, this was one of the worst things he’d ever had to endure. It was hard enough sitting out for injury, but at least then he could tell himself the team might actually be worse off if he went out there slow and uncoordinated. Getting home from the police station he hadn’t had as much as a twinge in his ankle. He’d scored six times over the last four games. Boston was on a winning streak that instantly broke with his suspension. This was a different kind of torture.

He usually only read media coverage of himself when the story was funny, but this time he was doing it as self-flagellation – the national stuff, because the local reporters were twisting themselves up to come to his defense, Ilya still enjoying a grace period after bringing them the cup last season. National articles loudly asked whether he should retain captaincy, something he’d quietly asked Cliff when the suspension had been handed down. His suggestion had been roundly rejected, but Ilya didn’t feel so crazy for making it. Captain didn’t mean best player on the team. Ilya’s outside noise had always stayed outside, until this.

And there was the other thing that made this hell, which Ilya didn’t like to linger on because it embarrassed him how much he cared: the third and final game of the suspension was against Montreal. Ilya was missing playing against Hollander. He wondered how Shane felt about that, if Shane was disappointed too. Maybe angry. Shane hadn’t texted him about these headlines. They hadn’t texted in a month, and the closer the date of the Montreal game came the louder that silence rang in Ilya’s ears. The suspension meant Ilya wasn’t traveling with the team or attending games, but this match up was in Boston, so they’d be in the same city even if Ilya would have to watch from his couch. If he could bear to watch this one. Ilya wouldn’t get to play against him, wouldn’t get to beat him, but it was increasingly feeling like he wouldn’t get to fuck him, either. It was only this season they’d been hooking up after every game, still too new for it to be a settled habit. If they missed it once Ilya would have to put in a lot of work to make sure it didn’t derail everything.

Ilya didn’t watch the game and Montreal won. Boston had held off a young Detroit team in their previous game sans Ilya, and Montreal were betting favorites for the cup this season, so it wasn’t too humiliating. But Ilya had let the rivalry down; it had been nationally televised in anticipation of a Rozanov Hollander match up. Shane didn’t text before the game and he didn’t text after. Ilya wondered if Shane had a harsher view on recreational drug use or reckless driving. Their last exchange from a month ago was flirty, lighthearted. Ilya could look at it and imagine they liked each other.

He was looking at it and imagining they liked each other at midnight, so he saw the three dots appear, pulsate for ten seconds, disappear again. His hand clenched around his phone, and he kept the chat up for another forty minutes to see if they’d re-appear before he fell asleep. They didn’t. He didn’t let himself wonder. He really should just forget this all, the suspension now complete.

3.

Their last match up that season was in Boston too, and Ilya had stopped worrying that Shane would use that one game off as an excuse to break the trend entirely. They’d fucked twice since then and would fuck again tonight, just not as soon as Ilya would like, because one of Shane’s teammates had scored their three hundredth career goal and Shane had to show face at a restaurant first. Ilya hated in between times like this, hours that slipped into his schedule where he had nothing to do but wait for what came next. It was worse when what came next was Hollander. It gave him more power than he already had.

Ilya didn’t think of anything especially creative to pass the time, just took to scrolling through social media, where his eyes caught on a DM request. The username was hi_ilya, no photo, and a lot of the requests were from accounts dedicated to him, but for some reason this one made him a little uncomfortable. A little excited. He tapped into the profile, blank except for its bio: dollar sign emojis, a date from last spring and then a three digit number, 395. Somehow, like maybe Ilya had known to be worried all this time, he knew straight away what it was. He called Pasha.

“What do you need?”

“Not sure,” Ilya said. “But someone might be trying to get money from me, and we might have to give it to them.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing bad,” Ilya said. He’d fucked a man. Pasha was familiar with most of Ilya’s exploits but this branch of them had thus far remained secret. It wasn’t because Ilya didn’t trust Pasha to keep it secret too; more that he didn’t want to see anything in Pasha that would make him have to reevaluate him. They weren’t exactly friends, but they were something close.

And he still wouldn’t tell him quite yet, because his door buzzed. “I gotta go,” Ilya said. “I’ll call you in—” Like many elements of their arrangement, how long a night with Shane would last was unpredictable. “Fuck, I don’t know, later.”

He hung up before he could hear Pasha’s response, smoothed his hands down his t-shirt, and went to let Shane in.

“Sorry,” Shane said, brushing past him, and Ilya remembered anticipating this, that Shane would be flustered from having to manage these two commitments, from having to leave a party to come see Ilya, and that Ilya could probably take advantage of it. He liked Shane all wound up.

He followed Shane into his kitchen, right up behind him. “Did you have fun?” he asked.

He heard Shane swallow before he turned to face Ilya. Standing his ground, meaning they were awful close. “I guess,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Were you sad leaving?” Ilya asked, reaching out with both hands to squeeze Shane’s waist.

Shane frowned. He was so easy to throw off sometimes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess. I mean, yeah, I wish this wasn’t – the same night.”

Ilya didn’t think Shane cared at all about leaving a team dinner early, was rather bothered by what he was leaving it for, but he wouldn’t give Ilya access to that kind of privileged information. “Do you think they are missing you?” Shane didn’t answer immediately. “Why do they think you left?”

“Stop,” Shane said, quietly, looking down. As in stop asking questions.

Ilya’s hands drifted up, feeling out Shane’s pecs under his smart shirt. His shirt for an expensive restaurant, so different to what he wore for Ilya. “You made me wait,” Ilya said, almost sulky. “It makes me want to be mean.”

Shane didn’t look up. “Okay,” he said.

Ilya’s eyebrows raised, a little thrown off himself. He got his fingers under Shane’s chin and tilted his head up. “Okay?”

Shane’s eyes locked on Ilya’s throat. “Okay you can be mean to me,” he said.

Ilya smiled. That would probably make things easier for Shane. “No,” he said, and pinched Shane’s cheek.

Shane frowned, then smiled, a little bit, and finally made eye contact. “That’s mean,” he said, all quiet.

“Yes,” Ilya said, still smiling, and kissed him. Shane took a few seconds to kiss back, still obviously off kilter, and in the meantime Ilya started undoing his shirt. He wasn’t deliberately trying to rip a button out, but his hands were moving rough enough it seemed like a possibility. He got blocked from the bottom of Shane’s shirt by Shane’s own hands, trying to pull up Ilya’s tank, a tug of war of neediness that Ilya willingly forfeited, letting Shane strip him. As Ilya returned to finish the buttons Shane’s hands dragged down his bare chest, nails scraping, brow furrowed, not reacting, never reacting, to the nasty bruising across Ilya’s torso, a garish mix of new and old. The people Ilya fucked were usually discomfited or awed, but Shane took it for granted. Being taken for granted shouldn’t have been so hot. Ilya just liked that Shane knew what he could handle.

Ilya gently herded Shane to his bedroom, Shane continuing to seem jumpy, edgy, ambivalent, like they were in the bathroom of that restaurant instead of in a private locked up home, like he expected his teammates to walk in at any moment. It was clear Shane was only half with him, was half back there, which Ilya needed to fix quick.

“You think they know where you are right now?” Ilya asked, as he urged Shane on to the bed, and it wasn’t one of his mean questions. He meant it to sound like he thought Shane was being ridiculous, which was his version of reassurance. That wasn’t quite how it came out, though, and it definitely wasn’t how it landed. Shane made a noise, something snapping through his body, all the way to his fingers, flexing in the sheets. Ilya felt momentarily stunned.

“Fuck, if they could see you,” he said, kneeing up on the mattress to join Shane, and there was no thought behind that at all, just truth. If anyone could see him, if a single other soul on earth knew what Shane looked like in Ilya’s bed.

“Stop,” Shane said, the second time that night, and Ilya did even though he’d seen Shane’s dick twitch under his briefs. He pulled those briefs down and took Shane into his mouth, partly because he almost always wanted to and partly because he had no idea what he’d say next otherwise. Shane was keeping himself quiet too, his moans vibrating out through teeth, biting his tongue even as he twisted his fingers into Ilya’s hair, even as his heels dug heavily into Ilya’s lower back, forcing his bruised stomach into the mattress.

“Don’t do that again,” Shane said, after, his words firm, his fingers gentle on Ilya’s thighs, the two of them tangled in a configuration that under the low light made it hard to tell their bodies apart.

“Which thing?” Ilya asked, running the sex back in his mind.

“The thing you said,” Shane said. “About knowing where I am, about seeing me.” Ilya craned his neck to look at him. Shane’s face was relaxed, but his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“I think you liked it,” Ilya said.

“Yeah, but, still,” Shane said. “We shouldn’t talk about that. About anyone knowing. Please.”

“Okay,” Ilya said. He wasn’t sure it scared him the way it scared Shane, the idea of people knowing, and that made him feel guilty and a little ashamed. It should scare him. Logically. He had as much to lose as Shane – probably more, considering the Russia of it all. And he obviously didn’t want it to get out, but he wasn’t scared of it to the degree he couldn’t even entertain it as dirty talk. Ilya wondered what it’d be like moving through life with that much fear in him. He thought maybe it would be nicer. Clarifying.

“Do you think you’re lucky?” he asked. Non sequiturs were common between them after sex, so he didn’t have to explain where the question came from.

“Yeah, I guess,” Shane said, and Ilya could tell straight away, from Shane’s easy tone, that he was only talking about hockey, that the other domains of his life in which luck might play a role weren’t crossing his mind. Nor the possibility that Ilya might be curious about them. Privileged information. “I mean, I have been so far. No reason to think it’ll keep up, though.”

Ilya couldn’t help laughing a little. Shane turned to him, looked for a moment surprised to find Ilya looking back, and said, “What?”

“Nothing,” Ilya said. “Just. We are very different, aren’t we.”

“Well, yeah,” Shane said, and touched a finger to Ilya’s lip. “That’s what ESPN keeps telling me.”

Ilya couldn’t remember the name of the guy he’d slept with on that date in that hotel room, back in San Francisco, two games away from becoming a champion. He’d been skinny and laughed a lot, and he’d been confident in bed. He had called Ilya daddy, which Ilya didn’t much like except for the weird fascination he’d developed re: things other people did in bed with him that Shane Hollander would not be into. Shane had a jealous streak. Sometimes Ilya wondered if he could get Shane to do something just by telling him someone else had. He wasn’t that cruel, but he did wonder.

Back to the boy in San Francisco. He didn’t seem like he’d wanted to kill Ilya, because Ilya didn’t need that extra thread of trouble when he was fucking men, but he maybe hadn’t seemed so trustworthy either, hadn’t seemed nice, necessarily. Ilya hadn’t scoped him out the way a responsible down low bisexual would have. He’d been two games away from becoming a champion and he could already see it so clearly, and he’d gotten an idea in his head and the possibility of his own fallibility was very distant, even with the bruising all over his body.

Ilya’s tricks for keeping sex with men secret were as follows: only do it when he really got an itch; never fuck any of them more than once, except formerly for Sasha and currently for Shane; and pick people who didn’t know who he was. The latter element made it fun, too. It was good to occasionally check he was hot and charming on his own merits, not just by virtue of his fame or success. It had been particularly thrilling to confirm while on the edge of his greatest success yet. But he knew the anonymity wasn’t foolproof, and he’d bet money that even if this was the first guy to try to take advantage of it, this was not the first guy Ilya had fucked who had subsequently learned who Ilya was.

He called Pasha five minutes after Shane left. “Who wants your money?” Pasha asked, upon picking up.

“Someone I fucked in San Francisco during the finals,” Ilya said. “I think they’re threatening to go public with it.”

“Why would that matter?” Pasha asked. “Someone married? How drunk was she?”

“Jesus, sober,” Ilya said. “And not married, I don’t think. But it was a guy.”

Pasha only took a beat. “This is one we need to kill really, really dead,” he said. “No rumors. Can’t have rumors on this. You know why, don’t you? You know what they say, in English?”

“What?”

“No smoke without fire,” Pasha said, accent heavier than usual on the English words by virtue of having to switch mid-conversation. “It means whatever they hear they believe. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ilya said. “So can you kill it?”

“Yes, yes,” Pasha said, almost sounding insulted. “Just leave it to me.”

Pasha didn’t seem phased by the knowledge that Ilya fucked men. Ilya could have confessed to something actually reprehensible and Pasha wouldn’t have seemed phased, at least not over the phone. Ilya would need to see him in person to gauge whether this changed things between them at all.

Ilya sent Pasha a screenshot of the account before blocking it, which was all that was asked of him. He spent the next three days a little on edge and then, getting off a flight in Buffalo, he saw a text from Pasha saying, killed it. Ilya, if he wanted, could check Pasha’s slush fund to see if killing it had involved a pay out, and if so what size, but he didn’t want to.

It was not the first story Pasha had killed for him. Only last summer, a few weeks after winning the cup and a few weeks after fucking a future blackmailer in a San Francisco hotel room, Pasha had called and asked if he knew the name Rod McCormick. Ilya did – it belonged to one of the fancier journalists, the kind that got flown out for away games too. Apparently he was doing a profile on Ilya, because flatlining in the Olympics and rising from the ashes in Boston was a good story, and apparently he was the first credentialed Boston media member who ever thought to wonder why Ilya’s mom never, ever came up, not even when he’d been back in the Motherland. Her suicide was a matter of public record but those records were paper and in Moscow. Ilya had made it clear in one of his first conversations with Pasha, back when he’d still had to make things clear: nothing about his family in the press, ever.

“I know you don’t want the details out there,” Pasha said. “But I want to check. If Rod’s happy with a line about how your mom passed away while you were a child, no details, would you be okay with that? As a concession. Or do you just want absolutely nothing at all? That’ll be a little trickier.”

“Nothing at all,” Ilya said, because Pasha did tricky things all the time. Pasha liked tricky.

“Okay,” Pasha said.

“Pasha,” Ilya said, because he could already feel the pleasant evening he’d had lined up slipping away from him. “Next time don’t check.”

The profile had been published sans reference to Ilya’s mom, and Ilya had felt debilitating relief and a burning desire to never think about it again. This time around Ilya wanted to celebrate a little, wanted to marvel. No rumors, nothing. The threat of the story had been wiped out of existence. Nobody would know it had ever even been a possibility. He felt like he should host a gay orgy or something. He wondered how common this was, how many people in the league had stories buried and how often. Naturally he thought of Hollander, and smiled at the idea of there being any skeletons in his closet other than Ilya. He pulled out his phone to look at their last few messages and then sent, They are saying on news you got arrested in strip club last night?????

When Shane opened it he still didn’t respond for two minutes.

Jane: You asshole.

Lily: You checked?

Jane: Of course I checked. Most times people tell me things they aren’t lying for no reason.

Lily: Have you ever been to a strip club?

Jane: That’s irrelevant. Tabloids say anything.

Lily: No smoke without fire !!!

4.

It was very rare for Ilya to feel that media coverage of his life off the ice was unjustified. Then for three months all anyone in the hockey world talked about was the negotiation of his second contract, and how its finalization coincided with large chunks of money being wired to a Russian bank from a business that was somehow connected to a minority owner of the team whose name Ilya had always forgotten, at least until this story. It would require a dictionary and perhaps a business degree for Ilya to fully understand what that connection was. There had been no statement from the team, no statement from the league, and many, many statements from fans and the media.

It wasn’t that Ilya minded people thinking he’d want the money – of course he’d want it, even if it wasn’t quite legitimate. What bothered him was that the team would only have given it if he had real leverage with them. If they’d believed that there was a chance he wouldn’t sign. Ilya really, really hated the idea of Boston fans thinking he’d considered leaving. They valued him for his talent only slightly more than they valued him for his love of the city, something he’d performed for them in his rookie year and which had gradually become real.

Ilya had known it had been his father before Pasha told him, even if he couldn’t exactly call his father to extract a confession. He wondered if anyone knew where that money was, now, or if it was going to rot in some account his father had forgotten along with everything else.

Pasha didn’t tell him anything all that useful for the first couple days after the story broke, and Ilya got the impression he was covering both their asses. Then, three days in with no signs of abatement, no signs of anyone coming forward to clear up the misunderstanding, Pasha appeared at Ilya’s door. He’d only been to Ilya’s a few times before, and always to speak very frankly.

“It was my father, right?” Ilya asked, his back thankfully to Pasha as he led him through the house.

“Yes,” Pasha said. “You know he used to be involved. You didn’t mind.”

“Right,” Ilya said. He had minded, but there hadn’t really been anything he could do about it. It had been best to just ignore it.

“He gave the impression he was acting for you,” Pasha said, and Ilya got himself a coke from the fridge so he could keep his back to Pasha a minute longer. “I was under the impression this was what you wanted.”

Ilya finally faced him, leaning against the fridge. “What happens next?”

“Not much,” Pasha said. “The team and the league will do their investigations, but they’ll drag it out until people have stopped caring, and they’ll find as few people responsible as possible. Definitely not you. There’s not going to be any real consequences. In a way it’ll be treated less seriously than run of the mill tampering, because they won’t want to admit this shit happens.”

“What do I do,” Ilya asked, hating himself for sounding – however that sounded. “How do I—I don’t want people to think I did this.”

“Do you want them to think your father did?”

Ilya swallowed and shook his head.

“Then I’m sorry,” Pasha said. “Rough time to start caring what people think of you.”

Ilya’s lawyer, via Pasha, had advised him to not discuss the matter with anyone, not while it was still unfolding, and he’d been following that advice except when he cleared things up with his teammates at the first practice since the story broke, because there was a code of locker room silence he believed in to a perhaps naive degree. As rough as it was for fans to think he’d had a foot out the door at any point, it was untenable to allow that suspicion go unchecked with the players he was supposed to captain. Some of them had partied with him the night he’d signed the contract.

“You really thought it was for me?” Ilya asked, and it was unfair. He couldn’t hold that against Pasha. “I mean, you didn’t feel the need to check?”

“It didn’t seem wise to check,” Pasha said. “You like being hands off. To be honest, Ilya, I’m still not sure this isn’t just you being hands off.”

Even if it hadn’t been Ilya’s doing in the way people thought, it was his fault. It was the inevitable consequence of refusing to deal with all the fucking responsibility that came with his wealth and fame. Almost anyone else would have known better. Cliff had his accountant over on thanksgiving, which Ilya had only ever mocked him for previously. Shane Hollander, suspected corporate lawyer by night, could probably recite his contract verbatim. Svetlana had never liked Ilya’s total reliance on Pasha, but she also turned down Ilya’s repeated offers to fire Pasha and hire her instead, so. She was equally to blame.

He wasn’t entirely sure that Pasha had been so oblivious of Ilya’s non-involvement, but he didn’t blame him either way. Presumably Pasha had gotten a cut; that hadn’t yet been established. Ilya hoped he had. He couldn’t reasonably expect anyone to make him their number one priority, overriding everything else. It didn’t make him trust Pasha any less, because concessions for things like this had been built into the trust from the beginning.

He could have talked about it to Shane, too – their code of silence was even stricter than that of a locker room – but the first time he went to Montreal after the story broke he had absolutely no intention of doing so. It had been three months since the first report got published, a bit over two since it really caught traction, and he and Shane had texted a few times without it coming up, which was insane. Ilya couldn’t get his hair cut without it coming up. He’d been playing well, and that helped him deal with everything else and probably soothed the fans’ hurt feelings too. They beat Montreal, and it made him feel like seeing Shane afterwards wouldn’t be as complicated as he’d for some reason been fearing.

It wasn’t specific to Shane, Ilya’s jangly nerves at the prospect of the hook up – the only sex he’d had since the story broke had been with Svetlana or while drunk. There was something off with him, all of his actions outside of hockey for the last couple of months clouded by panic, things that used to feel natural no longer feeling natural, and he was relying heavily on the high of beating Montreal to fix it.

He kissed Shane as soon as Shane opened the door to him, impatient to test the theory, and the kiss felt good, Shane felt warm, and Ilya felt a little reassured until Shane sort of sunk into Ilya’s grip in a way that was familiar but Ilya suddenly couldn’t remember how he usually responded to. He tensed his arms around Shane, holding him up, and if Shane noticed anything wrong he didn’t say, just kept kissing Ilya. Ilya walked them backwards but maybe a little too fast because their feet tripped over each other and Shane pulled away laughing, which was – nice. Ilya laughed too, and then there was a beat where probably Ilya would usually say something. Shane kissed him again, and pushed off his jacket, and finally some muscle memory kicked in and Ilya reached for Shane’s t-shirt. Which was so simple – no fancy shirt buttons – but his hands shook as they gripped the hem. And Shane noticed, broke the kiss, glancing down between them, like he couldn’t keep his shock in check.

“Sorry,” Ilya said, straight away, and then cringed. None of this had been his style, but that was definitely not his style.

Shane pulled further away, brow furrowed, looked him over. His hands landed on Ilya’s, where they were still shaking against his waist. “We don’t have to,” Shane said.

“I want to, I really fucking want to,” Ilya said, which was honest. If he hadn’t wanted he wouldn’t have shown up. That was always true.

“Okay,” Shane said, gentle. “So just kiss me, right? Just kiss me.”

Ilya kissed him, and they mostly otherwise stopped moving. They stood in the middle of Shane’s living room, Ilya’s jacket on the floor and Shane’s t-shirt bunched around his waist, and kissed. And Ilya got hard. He ground into Shane, got a hand on the back of Shane’s neck and squeezed to hear how it changed Shane’s breathing. Shane’s hand slid between them, undid the button of Ilya’s jeans and dipped in. Ilya was expecting a light touch, but Shane’s hand wrapped around him firmly, stroked once then twice, kept going, and Ilya had been pulling some loser shit thus far this evening but he wasn’t willing to settle for a standing fully clothed hand job. “I am not ill,” he said, against the corner of Shane’s mouth. “I can still fuck you.”

Shane laughed again, light and right against Ilya’s mouth, and Ilya kissed it. Shane squeezed his dick, pulled his hand away, sought out Ilya’s hand and squeezed it too. Broke the kiss and started leading Ilya to the bedroom. They stripped and Ilya lay sideways across the bed, Shane straddling him. It was Shane who brought it to the next stage, getting impatient, pulling at Ilya’s shoulders until Ilya turned them over. He pushed – or maybe Shane pulled – Shane’s knees up to his chin, and got his mouth on his ass. Shane, ever industrious, competent multi-tasker, stretched and reached for the lube and condoms as Ilya lapped at his hole, Ilya trying not to laugh at the sounds of the uncoordinated swipes against the nightstand. Shane’s loot landed roughly by Ilya’s elbow, and he took the hint, pulling away and handing the lube to Shane, holding his hand out. Shane, slightly more coordinated with Ilya’s tongue out of his ass, poured it on Ilya’s fingers diligently, spread it evenly across index and middle and, after some debate that played out on his pretty face, ring. Satisfied, Shane leaned back on the bed, and Ilya followed him up to kiss him as he worked him open. Kept kissing him, a competent multi-tasker, as he pulled on the condom. Shane’s hand joined his as he positioned himself against Shane’s hole, Shane bucking under Ilya’s mouth and Ilya’s kiss landing on his chin as he pressed in.

Part of Ilya’s problem was that he’d forgotten what sex normally felt like, how it normally went, which made comparisons tricky, but he knew this was different. They were quieter, for one, neither of them saying much, and Shane felt different to him, heavier in some way, less elusive. Ilya felt different in his own skin, maybe less aware of who he was, which was not a normal side effect of sex for him. He usually felt most himself during sex, most who he was supposed to be. This time they were just bodies, all the theater they loved stripped away. It was just their bodies, the fundamentals of sex, the physiological response to closeness and the right kind of stimulation. In a way they could have been anyone, from any point in time.

After, wrapped in blankets, they migrated to Shane’s kitchen and shared a bowl of cut up fruit. Once the post-orgasm bliss had faded enough for Shane to get annoyed by Ilya letting juice drip on the counter, Ilya's unease that Shane wasn't raising the scandal returned. He was usually, frankly, nosy. Finally he asked, unconvincingly casual, “You doing okay?”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“Good,” Shane said, and went back to the fruit.

Ilya watched him for a few moments and couldn’t take it. “You don’t want to ask me about this one?”

Shane cocked his head, glancing up, had the grace to not pretend he didn’t know what Ilya was talking about. “You don’t seem to want to talk about it.”

Ilya huffed out a laugh. “This does not normally stop you. You have no questions?”

“Not really,” Shane said. “It’s obviously not true, so.”

Ilya clenched the counter to stop himself from doing something stupid. “No smoke without fire,” he said.

“Well, it does seem like maybe something kind of fishy happened,” Shane said, sounding apologetic. “I just mean I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I’m sorry it’s getting dragged out like this. My mom says she bets way more contracts than we realize get done this way, and they’re using you to make an example.”

Ilya looked at him. Shane’s mom was his manager, and this was a big hockey story, but it still felt insane, like he’d slipped into a parallel universe, to contemplate Shane talking about him to his family. He tried to imagine bringing up Shane in conversation with his dad or his brother and wanted to laugh. Then he thought about Svetlana and his mom and the amusement faded. “What does your mom think is going to happen to me?”

“It’ll fade,” Shane said, and Ilya couldn’t tell if he was answering the question or sharing his own opinion, because it sounded very much like he believed it. “It’ll just pass. Most things do.”

Ilya nodded. If somebody had asked him all those years ago how long he thought it’d take to get Shane Hollander out of his system, six months would have been pushing it. Most things passed.

5.

The night of Shane Hollander’s first MVP win, he ended up in Ilya’s bed. Ilya’s hotel bed, but still – Ilya got smug about it. The awards ceremony had been held in LA so there were a lot of other options, even for someone as fussy as Shane. Ilya didn’t think about what it meant that he’d chosen to spend the night in his room alone with Shane, too.

At five in the morning they hit a point where they’d normally be done for the night, where Shane should start to leave, but Ilya found he didn’t want him to. At least, not alone. It probably had something to do with shortly returning to Russia – sleep felt like wasted time. He needed to do as much as possible while he still could. And he needed to make this night as memorable as possible, because Shane was going to be asked about it, his first MVP win, for months to come, for the rest of his life, and Ilya wanted to make it hard for Shane to not think about him. 

Ilya extricated himself from Shane, who was loose and relaxed except for his tight grip on Ilya’s wrist that Ilya couldn’t think about, and rummaged around in his suitcase.

“What are you doing?” Shane’s voice had an edge to it, not as soft as the last time he’d spoken maybe fifteen minutes earlier, and when Ilya glanced behind him he saw Shane had pulled himself into leaning against the headboard. Rather than responding, Ilya started pulling on the swimming shorts he’d found. Starting what he wanted to do next before explaining it always worked on Shane, got him antsy, impatient, feeling like he was being denied. Like a kid left out of a schoolyard game. God, so many of Ilya’s moves worked on Shane. He always had so many options. It got heady.

“You’re hardly going swimming,” Shane said, and pulled himself off the bed, standing there uncertainly.

“This place has nice pool,” Ilya said. “Big. I want to try.”

“So try in the morning,” Shane said.

Ilya shrugged. “We will have it to ourselves if we go now,” he said.

“We?” Shane repeated, and laughed, which made Ilya smile.

“It will be empty,” Ilya said, and watched Shane realize he was serious. His arms squeezed around his waist.

“But someone could come down, see us.”

Ilya shrugged. “If they do, they see us racing, they think fuck, these two will compete over anything.”

That got Shane to pause like Ilya had known it would, because they really would compete over anything. He shifted his weight. “You want to see who has the quicker lap?”

Ilya smiled. “You brought shorts? If not, is okay, you can go naked.”

“Shut up, of course I brought shorts,” Shane said, and then pursed his lips, like he’d just caught up with his mouth and realized he was going to do it.

Ilya went down to the pool by himself, letting Shane head back to his own room to get ready, which took a certain amount of trust that Shane wouldn't talk himself out of it in Ilya's absence. Swimming was probably Ilya’s favorite work out other than a run, and he was excited to do it with Shane. Shane would, undoubtedly, be good. Quick, strong, graceful. Ilya loved getting to see his hair wet. He dead man floated as he waited, because if he warmed up at all Shane would call it an unfair advantage.

The pool was open twenty four hours, but Shane crept in like he was breaking a rule. Ilya righted himself and sunk the bottom half of his face under the water to smile as he watched Shane slip out of his sneakers and pull off his t-shirt, fold it neatly and look at a loss as to where to put it. Ilya outstretched an arm to point at where he’d left folded towels for them, and Shane saw because his eyes had been on Ilya the whole time, like he was waiting for something. He placed his t-shirt with the towels and then slipped into the pool, no splash. Ilya floated closer. The light was low and the way it refracted off the blue water lit Shane up very prettily, made him a little unreal, dreamlike. Ilya wouldn’t kiss him yet, though.

“Want to race?” Shane asked, and Ilya nodded, even though he anticipated them being too closely matched for it to work without someone else there to adjudicate. If they really wanted to know they’d have to swim from one end to the other separately and time each other. He imagined Shane knew this too, and didn’t care either.

They lined themselves up against the tiled wall, holding the edge with their bodies outstretched, Shane smiling wider than Ilya had ever seen him except for when he’d won something. Ilya let Shane count them down and then launched forward. He could feel the rhythm of the water pulsing off Shane as they swam side by side, some version of touch. It was a big pool, twenty five meters long, but it was still over quick and, as Ilya had predicted, basically simultaneously. He had no idea who had won, and Shane didn’t try to pretend he did either.

“Time each other?” Ilya asked, once they’d settled down.

“Yes,” Shane said. “You go first.”

Ilya cocked his head. That had come out quick, insistent, but Ilya couldn’t work out the strategy behind it. “Why?” he asked.

To his delight, Shane flushed. “I just want to see. You’re so...” Shane frowned, like there was one perfect word he needed to think of for what Ilya was so. “Graceful.”

Ilya dipped the bottom half of his face under the water again. He wasn’t sure he’d been called that before. Emerged and asked, “What is good, for this?”

Shane half smiled. “If you don’t keep it under twenty seconds I’ll stop finding you attractive.”

It was a joke, but Ilya still found it exciting, and smiled back.

Shane got out of the pool and used the corner of a towel to dry his hands so he could use the stopwatch on his phone. Ilya set himself up against the other side of the pool and got ready. He swam pretty regularly, but endurance rather than sprints, and he’d never paid attention to his speed in short bursts before. He watched Shane sit himself down at the other end of the pool, his legs dipping back into the water, his chest shining, and was nearly too dazed to start when Shane called go.

Ilya went, feeling that single-minded determination that hit like a drug, that sometimes felt like cheating, an unfair advantage over his opponents – except for Shane, who surely felt it too. It was over too quick again. After he touched the tile he stayed under and bit Shane’s shin, getting a real grip and shaking his head. Shane kicked at his chest, pretty hard, but when Ilya released him and breached the surface, Shane was laughing. “Animal,” he said, and Ilya smiled with teeth.

“How fast?” he asked.

“18.3,” Shane said, and raised his eyebrows. “Cutting it close.”

It was. Ilya could feel in his body that he’d done well, but it was still within two seconds of what Shane deemed the outer limit of acceptability. He loved when Shane had high standards.

“Swap, swap, swap,” Ilya said, and Shane dropped neatly into the pool as Ilya climbed out. He reached for Shane’s phone but Shane made a sound.

“Dry your hands first,” he said.

Ilya shook his hands and Shane made another sound. “No, towel,” he said, and Ilya should probably find one word commands like that insulting, but he complied anyway, made a show of it, and Shane made a show of rolling his eyes.

Ilya sat himself down on the side of the pool and belatedly marveled at Shane trusting him with his phone – marveled at himself for not having had any impulse to exploit the trust. He didn’t have time, anyway, because Shane was swimming back to the far end of the pool to start, and Ilya had to watch. Shane’s pace was leisurely, not wanting to expend his energy, and there was something about seeing his body underwater that made Ilya feel untethered. If Ilya was graceful, there wasn’t a word for Shane. Uncomfortable against the cold wet fabric, Ilya’s dick started to fill out, and instinctively he rested his hand on it. When Shane emerged from the water, turned to face Ilya, he was too far away to notice.

“I’m ready,” Shane called, and Ilya used his free hand to give a thumbs up before grabbing Shane’s phone and calling go at the same time he pressed start on the stop watch. Then he pulled his dick out and worked his hand over it. Shane was moving quick enough at this point to be blurred by the water, and Ilya was more getting off at how Shane would shortly react to seeing him hard and exposed.

Shane reached him and Ilya dutifully tapped stop, because it wouldn’t do to get Shane mad. Shane pulled up from the water and exhaled with his eyes closed, already smiling, so sure of himself. Then he opened his eyes and his smile dropped. “What the fuck.”

“What?” Ilya said.

“Don’t jerk off in the pool,” Shane said automatically, and getting him to say that meant the night was already a success. “That’s so gross.”

“Either I jerk off into the pool or I jerk off into your mouth,” Ilya said. A lot of their best fucks had started with Shane declaring something gross.

“That’s not fair,” Shane said, drifting closer. Or unfair.

“You have come twice tonight, me only once. Is this fair?”

And of course that worked, because Shane would hate to think for a single second that he was getting more out of their arrangement than he was giving. His hands landed on Ilya’s knees, his eyes on Ilya’s dick. Ilya breathed out a curse. Shane said, “Well, just. Tell me how quick I was.”

“So quick,” Ilya assured him, and dragged his eyes away to glance at Shane’s phone screen. “18.8 seconds.”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. “No fucking way,” he said. “There’s no way you stopped it as soon as I touched the tile, you were too busy being a perv.”

This was possibly true, but it was not the time to litigate it. Ilya pressed his thumb into Shane’s bottom lip and Shane let his jaw fall obligingly. Ilya kept his thumb tucked into the corner of Shane’s mouth as he fed in his dick, Shane’s lips cold and his mouth hot. But Shane didn’t move, his mouth staying just over Ilya’s head and not fully closed around it, either. Ilya thought maybe Shane wanted Ilya to direct, so he got a grip in Shane’s wet hair and tried to move him, but Shane made a noise of protest – which felt very nice – and pulled off. “You didn’t tell me to blow you,” he said, looking up at Ilya wide eyed. “You said you’d jerk off in my mouth.”

And then he got his mouth open again and let Ilya rest the tip of his dick on his tongue. Ilya started stripping his length. He kept his hand in Shane’s hair, squeezing tight, and hoped it felt like praise. There wasn’t a chance in the world of him lasting, not with Shane looking up at him and waiting like that, and when he came the noise he made echoed shockingly in the open space. Shane didn’t swallow often but he swallowed then, because spitting would be gross.

Of course Ilya had known it was a stupid thing to do. He’d known it the whole time.

Only seven hours later he flew back to Boston, where he’d stay for a week because the team had asked him to stick around and meet some draft prospects, which worked as an excuse to delay going back to Russia a little longer. Boston hadn’t had a decent draft pick at any point in Ilya’s career, and while he took pride in having been taken number one overall himself he had a bias towards the teammates who’d been found in the later rounds, so he was happy to make an actual effort.

On his third day back in Boston his phone rang as he finished up his breakfast. He reached for it without thinking, and then stared in disbelief when he saw Shane’s name, the shock as much of a wake up as coffee. Shane had never called before. Ilya felt nervous answering, knowing whatever it was would be intense. “Hello?” he said, and it came out sounding like he didn’t know who was calling.

He heard something, maybe a breath or fabric shifting, but no words.

“Hollander,” Ilya said, after a few moments, and was met with more silence.

He was just moving to hang up, embarrassed at his strong reaction to what was seeming like an accidental call, when he heard Shane say, “Hi.”

“Yes, hi,” Ilya said. “What is wrong.”

“Fuck, maybe everything,” Shane said, less quiet. “We fucked up really bad. Oh my God.”

“Tell me how,” Ilya said, cutting through. It wasn’t great, not being able to see Shane. Touch him. He didn’t much like talking on a phone with him, he found.

“The stupid fucking pool,” Shane said, with so much loathing Ilya flinched.

“What,” he said, although at this point he supposed he knew.

“Somebody saw us,” Shane said. “I think it’s someone who works there. They took a picture, they have a picture.”

If that picture had been widely shared, Shane wouldn’t have been the only one calling Ilya. “They contacted you?” Ilya asked.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “It’s not a good photo, it’s not really clear it’s us. Well, actually, sorry, it’s maybe a little clear it’s you, but I don’t think it’s clear it’s me, but it doesn’t really matter, because they’ll just say it was me, and why would they lie.”

“Is okay,” Ilya said, and he’d somehow entered some mode of being where it was okay. Where it was something he could handle. “They told you before they shared it, this means we can pay them off. Easy.”

“I don’t want to give them my fucking money,” Shane said. Ilya had never heard this tone from him before. It was weird, because he’d thought he’d made Shane angry, and he’d thought at least once or twice Shane had genuinely hated him, but this was something else.

“My money, then,” Ilya said.

“I don’t want them having your money either,” Shane said. He was a little calmer, but there was an edge in his voice Ilya didn’t want to argue with. Sometimes Shane wore that edge out himself.

“Okay, so we find other way,” Ilya said. “Don’t you have publicist, team?”

“I didn’t hire them for shit like this,” Shane said, and then his voice broke. “And I don’t want my mom to find out.”

Jesus. “Are you still in Montreal?” Ilya asked. “Are you alone?”

“Yes,” Shane said, after a pause. “But I’m okay.”

Ilya made a non-committal noise. That wasn’t why he’d asked.

“God,” Shane said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think to check, what time is it where you are?”

Ilya smiled briefly. “It is ten in the morning,” he said. “I am in Boston.”

“Oh. Good,” Shane said. “Not—I just mean it’s good I didn’t wake you up, or anything. If you were in Russia.”

“It is evening in Russia,” Ilya said. “There was much higher chance of you waking me up here.”

Shane laughed, which seemed positive.

“Look, Hollander,” Ilya said. “You are very good, and this is new for you. Is not new for me. These things happen, and we handle them. I know how to handle them. It’s very simple. You want to know my secret?”

“What?” Shane asked.

“I call my agent,” Ilya said. “So I’m going to do that. I need you to send me whatever this person sent you.”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “Okay.”

“I am going to try very hard to keep your name out of this,” Ilya said. “When I call my agent. But I don’t know I’ll be able.”

Shane didn’t say anything.

“If I can’t, it’s okay,” Ilya said. “My agent, he is very hush hush. He keeps all my secrets. Sometimes even from me.”

Shane cleared his throat. “It actually didn’t occur to me you might be able to keep my name out of it with them. Thank you.”

Well. Ilya moved on. “My agent loves to chat, so it might take while, okay? But at latest I will call you in hour. If I don’t you can call me and text me as much as you want. Like crazy ex. Okay?”

“Okay,” Shane said.

Ilya moved to hang up, then pressed the phone back to his ear. The screen was getting warm. “Don’t worry,” he said, but it didn’t come out like reassurance. It was an order, the way he’d say don’t come. Not one Shane would find all that easy to follow, but Ilya knew he’d try.

Ilya pulled on his jacket and grabbed his wallet and keys. Until he was by his car he didn’t think about why – had maybe thought he was going to see Pasha, but he wasn’t. It was a five hour drive to Montreal, and Ilya liked long drives.

He sent Pasha what Shane had sent him, an email address and an image Ilya didn’t open because he didn’t want to get distracted, and then called him, putting the phone on speaker as he pulled out of his driveway.

“What the fuck am I looking at here,” Pasha said, breaking from his script, and Ilya hoped to God Shane hadn’t been in denial when he said he wasn’t identifiable in the image.

“I let a boy blow me in a hotel pool,” Ilya said, because it had turned out that Pasha legitimately did not seem to care about Ilya’s sexuality. “It was five in the morning but someone still saw.”

“How much do they want?”

“I don’t want to pay them off,” Ilya said. “Can’t you threaten to ruin them or something? Blackmail is a crime, it’s an invasion of privacy, shit like that.”

“Maybe,” Pasha said. “I’ll say this. It’s not really an invasion of privacy, kid, because you were somewhere public. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Jesus. Ilya couldn’t just do whatever Shane wanted. “If it comes to it just pay them off,” he said. “Obviously.”

“Uhuh,” Pasha said, and hung up.

Ilya called Shane at the next red light, and said, “Okay, my agent is handling it.”

“Good,” Shane said. “How?”

“I told him not to just pay them off,” Ilya said, which was only sort of a lie.

“Right,” Shane said. “So if he’s not going to pay them off, how is he going to stop them?”

“I don’t know,” Ilya said. “It is his job.”

Shane took a few moments. “You think a sports agent’s job is intimidating blackmailers?”

“My sports agent, yes,” Ilya said, because if he could get Shane annoyed at him that was a lot better than what he’d been on the first call.

“Jesus,” Shane said. “But, no, seriously, tell me what he’s doing. I can handle it.”

Ilya frowned. “I am not keeping it from you,” he said. “I really don’t know. I don’t ask questions. But he is very good, trust me.”

He heard Shane swallow. Maybe asking him to trust Ilya was too much. Shane said, “This kind of thing happens to you a lot?”

“Not a lot,” Ilya said. The life Shane imagined him leading was somehow a hundred times more debauched than Ilya’s actual reality. “Most things I don’t mind people knowing. Once before, stuff about me with another man might have gotten out. And my agent made it disappear.”

“So he knows you...”

“Yes,” Ilya said.

“That’s nice,” Shane said.

“Sure,” Ilya said, because he didn’t want to ruin it for Shane. It wasn’t like he and Pasha had had any heart to hearts about his sexuality. Pasha was many valuable things, but not really a shoulder to cry on. Maybe that was unfair; maybe it was just one of the things Ilya had never asked him to be.

“I remember reading an article about someone getting blackmailed and the blackmailer just kept asking for more money,” Shane said. “Like, the person paid them off, but the blackmailer just asked for more again. What do we do if that happens?”

Ilya had a lot of money to go around, but he didn’t bother saying that. “I cannot answer these questions,” he said. “Do you want to talk to my agent? He is very nice and friendly.”

“No,” Shane said, hurriedly. “No, sorry, just. Okay. I guess I have to trust – that it’ll work out. Okay. You really think he can handle it? Like, what’s his success rate?”

Ilya thought about his second contract and dismissed it as irrelevant. “He has never let me down,” he said. “We will be okay.”

“Okay,” Shane said. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Thank you. I’m sorry. I’ll go, thank you. Just let me know when you hear anything.”

He was obviously off kilter, but he didn’t sound like he was fully spiraling, so Ilya let him draw the conversation to a close. He’d see him later, anyway. Before hanging up, Shane cleared his throat and said in a hurry, “And I’ll try not to worry.”

Even if he hadn’t gotten it in his head to go to Montreal, Ilya might have spent that morning and afternoon driving. It was soothing, helped him focus and feel in control. It was like working out, but he could only work out for so long. His surroundings got rural, beautiful, and he stopped somewhere in Vermont for lunch. Barely noticed the taste.

It was June, so the sun was still high and bright when he arrived in Montreal, which felt wrong. He parked a fifteen minute walk away from Shane’s because it was what Shane would want, even though he hated delaying seeing him even longer. He’d only checked Shane was alone at his place that morning, he could have easily left since then – or invited someone over, some good, trusted friend to comfort him. Ilya couldn’t turn around and drive back to Boston, but just the thought of it got him wondering something else – when the fuck would he go back to Boston? He had to be there for tomorrow afternoon, to work out with some of the prospects, but would he stay the night at Shane’s?

Fuck it. Only one way to find out. He arrived in the street behind Shane’s place and pulled out his phone, his thumbs tapping out I’m here on instinct.

When Shane opened the door he looked newly shocked to see Ilya, like he hadn’t believed the text. Even if it was from doing something inexplicable, Ilya always enjoyed throwing Shane off. “Hi,” he said.

Shane didn’t say anything, just threw the door open wider and stepped aside. They went up to Shane’s place, and once inside Shane stared at him again. Then he said, “How was your flight, was it busy?”

Ilya held in his laughter, but couldn’t stop his smile. Shane did that sometimes, what Ilya had first thought was clumsy small talk but turned out to be a genuine interest in randomly chosen tiny details of Ilya’s life. When Ilya came to him in a second floor hotel room, Shane asked if he’d taken the elevator or the stairs. Ilya ran out for condoms and Shane asked if he’d used cash or card. Ilya had only tried to make fun of it once, saying, God, you’re like media, and Shane had looked hurt and said, No I’m not. And Ilya hadn’t understood, but he’d known not to say anything like that again.

“I did not fly,” he said.

“Oh,” Shane said. “You drove?”

“You didn’t know I could?”

“No,” Shane said, and Ilya raised his eyebrows. Shane rushed to clarify. “Obviously I knew you could drive, I just mean – it never occurred to me we could just drive. Between Montreal and Boston.”

“Five hours,” Ilya said, but it didn’t sound as reasonable as it had in his head when he’d started out. He had wanted to see Hollander and to touch him, and now he could see him. Great. What kind of touch could he spare? It wasn’t like they hugged. Was he going to squeeze his shoulder, pat him on the back? Jesus.

“Five hours,” Shane said.

“Yes, and I thought maybe by the time I got here Pasha would already tell me it is fixed. It probably already is fixed. We will get call in next hour telling us it’s okay.”

Shane nodded and Ilya reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Shane’s eyes briefly closed.

“Why did you come here?” Shane asked, in that tone of his that made questions that should have been rude just curious.

“Because you were freaking out,” Ilya said. His hand was still on Shane’s shoulder, applying rhythmic pressure. “And you do not want your parents to know about it.” What he meant by that was that Shane shouldn’t have to be alone, but he couldn’t quite put it in those words.

“How are you not freaking out?” Shane asked, stepping out of Ilya’s grip and walking to the living room. Ilya followed, sat down beside him on the couch. He didn’t know if he’d ever sat on this couch before. He’d fucked Shane on it twice.

“I don’t know,” he said, because he really didn’t. If he was being honest, he wasn’t sure how much he hated the idea of that photo getting out there. He’d hate it because Shane would hate it, but if nobody knew it was Shane, if only Ilya was identifiable – Ilya knew, logically, that it would be bad for him, but he wanted to know specifically, exactly what would happen. How it would feel. It would mean never going back to Russia, which hurt but would also end a lot of his problems. It’d be a way out.

“I guess you’re used to people talking about you,” Shane said, looking at his hands on his lap. “Your sex life.”

“Well, exactly,” Ilya said. “I have all these stories, and am I out of the league? Am I any worse at hockey? Am I less rich? Okay, a little less rich, but still rich. Do people love me less, think I am less handsome?” Shane rolled his eyes, smiled, and Ilya cupped his cheek. “Did you stop fucking me?”

“No,” Shane whispered, like it was a secret.

“So why would I give a fuck about anything else?”

Shane’s eyes closed, and Ilya kissed him even though he’d told himself he’d wait until he really knew how Shane was doing. He wouldn’t escalate it, because he wasn’t sure what Shane was ready for and he’d be happy just kissing him, sometimes wondered what it would be like to just kiss him, but Shane was lowering himself back on the couch and pulling at the neck of Ilya’s hoodie so Ilya came down with him, covering him, and fucked him on the couch for a third time.

Shane was pulling his clothes back on when Ilya’s phone buzzed with a text. Dealt with, and no money changed hands. Ilya tugged Shane into sitting down beside him and held his phone up so Shane could see as he copied the text and put it through a translation app. Ilya turned to see Shane’s face, expecting a smile but not getting it. Shane fell back into the couch, head tilted up and eyes closed, eyebrows slightly twisted. He looked in disbelief.

“I do not think he knows it was you, either,” Ilya said, although Pasha might very well have found out from the person who’d taken the photo. He wouldn’t say if he had. “Do you want me to ask how he did it?”

Shane took a few moments to respond, and then said, “Please.”

Ilya texted Pasha to ask for an explanation and the first reply was, Seriously? The second was longer, and Ilya didn’t read it before putting it through the translation app and showing it to Shane. Then Ilya sank back into the couch too, his mind and body plummeting out of survival mode. That could have been really, really bad. And it was entirely on him. It hadn’t been fair, getting Shane to do something in that pool, but it had been his intention the whole time. He’d already made Shane come twice, and Shane was always so easy for him like that. No resistance at all.

"Your agent's kinda psycho," Shane said, but he was finally sounding a little lighter, and Ilya opened eyes he hadn't realized he'd closed. Shane looked at him and frowned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and Ilya forced himself to sit up straight and look back at Shane.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Shane looked unsettled.

“For what?”

“For everything that just happened,” Ilya said. “I was stupid, selfish, doing that. I don’t want to get you in trouble, ever.”

“Doing what?” Shane asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Getting you to blow me,” Ilya said, though he didn’t feel like he should have to. “Getting you to come down to the pool.”

“Oh my God,” Shane said, and then straddled Ilya, a funny move when combined with his expression. He looked pissed off. “You’re not, like, seducing me, I’m not some blushing virgin. Your dick isn’t actually magic. Everything we do I choose to do.”

“Yes, but I talk you into it,” Ilya said.

“I let you,” Shane said, quiet. “Because I like it.”

Ilya couldn’t help squeezing at Shane’s hips, Shane's words changing the feeling in him, flipping it over. Whether or not it was his fault Shane was in this situation, it was because of Ilya that he was safe, now. Ilya had kept him safe; he almost didn't want to let Shane keep talking, wanted to devour him, or if he did have to talk Ilya just wanted him to say whether he felt it, felt kept safe. Shane settled in more firmly and considered him. “You know, I was thinking about it recently,” he said. “How I used to get in trouble when I was a kid.”

But Shane had things to say, and Ilya would devour him later. He frowned. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Shane said. “It’d surprise most people, I guess. It almost surprises me to think about.”

“When you were teen?”

“No, no,” Shane said. “I was—” and he gestured at himself “—by then.”

“Boring?” Ilya asked, smiling.

“Responsible,” Shane said, firmly. “When I was young – before hockey got serious, I think – I was like, a real handful.” Ilya squeezed his hips again and Shane rolled his eyes. “And sometimes it was like, fun and cute, stories my parents still tell, but sometimes it was kind of deranged. I don’t know what it was, if I just had too much energy, or if I wanted attention, or what.”

“What would you do?” Ilya asked, quiet. He couldn’t not, but he wasn’t sure if he should. He wasn’t sure if Shane should be telling him this.

“Really stupid stuff,” Shane said. “I’d hide things a lot, my parents’ things, and I wouldn’t tell them where. And it would like, genuinely fuck up their day sometimes. Like if it was their wallet or something.”

Ilya laughed, even though Shane didn’t sound amused. Ilya didn’t know many details of Shane’s personal life, but he knew he didn’t have siblings, and if he hadn’t known he’d have been able to guess. There was something about how Shane stood away from things, even when he was the center of attention. An only child.

“One time I locked my little cousin in my room,” Shane said. “And I pretended I couldn’t remember where the key was, as though anyone believed that. My cousin was crying. I think I was jealous over something. That’s actually pretty horrible, isn’t it?”

Ilya shrugged and Shane smiled. “Not enough to impress Ilya Rozanov, huh. You must have been a nightmare.”

“I was angel,” Ilya said, automatically, not a single thought of his childhood passing through his head, and maybe his unwillingness to reciprocate made Shane finally realize what he was doing. He looked a little embarrassed.

“Anyway,” he said. “I don’t know why I said all that, just…”

“So I guess,” Ilya said. “Of course you would grow up to let me jerk off into your mouth in hotel pool.”

Shane smiled. “Yeah, exactly,” he said, and knocked his forehead against Ilya’s. Ilya hoped he’d be allowed to stay until the morning.

6.

The next season there was a gambling scandal across multiple sports leagues and a few corners of the entertainment industry that had nothing at all to do with Ilya, except that it turned out two years previous he’d been at a poker night that had been fixed. He was an innocent dupe so that still shouldn’t have been a big deal, except that when the case advanced against the organizers, and documents related to that night started going public, camera stills and witness testimony, everyone including Ilya learned that the beautiful woman he had left the poker night with was married to a famous movie director, who was a little more directly embroiled in the gambling. Ilya had known she was married, and had seen her husband there, but he hadn't known he was supposed to be able to recognize movie directors.

He liked to think he wouldn’t have slept with her if he’d realized, because he’d always been wary of fucking with real celebrity. This reservation was proven wise in the coming weeks. All of Ilya’s prior scandals had been hockey scandals; this was the kind that got paparazzi out. Pasha temporarily hired him security, and started making Ilya vet the people he had over, which turned out to be easier than Ilya had imagined when the policy was initially introduced because he stopped having people over. Sometimes there were photographers on the street outside his house.

He couldn’t get a good sense of how long this would last; it being tied up in a court case meant it might be more than the normal flash in the pan scandal, because court cases could go on for years. But his role was very tangential, and the couple weren’t getting divorced, which Pasha said made the story more forgettable.

The real test of Ilya’s patience, his ability to grin and bear it, was Montreal coming to town. The initial frenzy had died down but there were still unexplained cars on Ilya’s street, and Ilya really didn’t want to have to go without Shane over something as stupid as this, but it didn’t seem like they had much of a choice.

In the locker room before the game, cross in his mouth, he got a text: I had a dream last night that when we beat you you announced your retirement.

It gave Ilya five different openings, and Shane knew it did, Shane loved doing that, but Ilya was too wound up to play along. We should not see each other after game. Pap outside my house and stuff.

Shane took a few minutes to respond, and Ilya another few to see it, because before a game he couldn’t just stand around waiting for Shane to text. He was about to say a few words to his team when he checked his phone again and saw, That’s bullshit. Ilya frowned, figured Shane must have been talking about the situation at large rather than Ilya deciding not to see him, which Shane should obviously be on the same page about. I know, he texted back, and got to rabble-rousing.

Montreal did beat them, and at the end of the game Shane shot him a smile like it was an inside joke. Ilya wanted to announce his retirement for the bit. Shane had seemed in better form than Ilya would have imagined, considering they were going without, and he tried to not let it affect his ego. He himself had been feeling righteously angry, but that usually stood to his play.

He was halfway home when Shane dropped a pin. Sent a follow up: room 474, just come straight up.

Ilya laughed, blood thrumming with fresh adrenaline. God, Shane was – something. Special. There hadn’t been anyone waiting for Ilya outside after the game, but he knew that didn’t mean nobody was following him, he knew it was a risk. Ilya liked that. And if Shane was already safe, tucked away in that hotel room, then he was insulated from the risk.

The hotel wasn’t ostentatious but it was definitely upmarket, Shane snobbier than he liked people to know. Ilya didn’t think Shane would be able to appreciate the humor of renting a room like that for a single fuck, neither of them intending to spend the night. He should try bringing Shane to a motel some time.

When he knocked on the door it opened too quickly, like Shane had been waiting. Ilya loved when Shane had been waiting. He was dragged into the room, pushed against the door as it closed, but not kissed or otherwise touched. Shane looked him up and down, heaving out a sigh.

“You surprised me with this,” Ilya said, and didn’t know what else to say, what other element of his reaction to Shane getting them this room was safe to share. He walked further in, warmed when he heard Shane follow, footsteps soft on the carpet. Shane had pulled all the blinds.

“Yeah, well, it’s bullshit,” Shane said, and Ilya turned around, cocked his head.

“What is?” he asked.

“Everything,” Shane said, with a vague gesture to match the sentiment. “The – the idea that you and I wouldn’t see each other. Because of some stupid fucking story that doesn’t matter. Like I should have to pay for that, like I don't get to fuck you because she fucked you once.” He said once so disparagingly, like only fucking Ilya once was a badge of shame.

“Standing by your man,” Ilya said, smiling.

Shane flushed furiously. “Shut up. It happened a couple years ago.”

“Yes,” Ilya said, unsure why that would matter. Why Ilya of two years ago would be held to different standards than Ilya today, why Ilya today wouldn’t be responsible for the actions of Ilya two years ago. He didn’t feel like he’d changed at all. Although, present company excluded, it had been a while since he’d fucked someone ill-advised. Maybe months. Not a full year, surely. He’d have to check with Svetlana. “It does not bother you, what I did?”

Shane’s jaw tensed and relaxed. “Did you know she was married?”

Ilya nodded.

“Okay,” Shane said. “Well, yeah, I think that’s shitty.”

“I do not think I was ruining nice happy marriage,” Ilya said. “If she was okay picking up stranger at party she went to with her husband.”

“Please don’t try to justify it,” Shane said, flatly.

“So it bothers you but you still came,” Ilya said. He wasn’t trying to taunt Shane, he just really needed to work it out for himself. “You were too mad to see me when I was out on suspension.”

Shane seemed to take a second to get what Ilya was talking about, and then it looked like it shocked him. “You didn’t ask, back then,” Shane said. “You didn’t text me.”

“Yes, I was mad at me too,” Ilya said.

“I wasn’t mad, I just didn’t think...” Shane faded off, looking frustrated. “You were going through a lot. It seemed silly to ask you to fuck me when you were going through all that. Selfish. I mean, your friend had been arrested. What happened to him, actually, is he okay?”

“Yes, he is good,” Ilya said, trying to keep his face straight. “And I like you selfish, Hollander. You should not forget this.”

“Actually, I think you like me generous,” Shane said, his mouth quirking.

Ilya’s only possible response to that was that he liked Shane Hollander however Shane Hollander showed up, so he redirected the conversation. “That was waste, us not meeting,” he said. “We will only get to do this so many times.”

“Don’t say that,” Shane said, quick and sharp.

Ilya looked at him, a little surprised. Cautiously he said, “Is true.” Even if they kept this up their whole career, careers only lasted so long.

“I know, but…” Shane shrugged a shoulder, less intense. “It’s sad.”

It was too much, saying all this stuff without saying it. “Let’s not be sad tonight,” Ilya said, and stayed in place as Shane nearly stumbled toward him.

The sex was almost exaggerated, like they had something to prove. Shane got his calves on Ilya’s shoulders which Ilya knew he didn’t like doing after a game, and Ilya said stupid, outrageous things, going for shocking in a way he hadn’t bothered to with Shane in months, and Shane seemed bordering on angry, which also, somehow, hadn't happened in months. Ilya pinned Shane’s wrists beside his head and Shane said, teeth gritted, “Fuck you for trying to get out of this.” Ilya put the tip of his finger up against Shane’s rim as he thrust into him, pressing lightly, and Shane said, “Do it, Jesus, do it.” And Ilya said, maybe the stupidest thing he’d ever said during sex, “Why do I ever fuck anyone else.” But maybe Shane didn’t hear, because he was coming.

Ilya followed shortly after, fell on his back beside Shane, felt like his lungs were incapable of taking in breath. Fragments of old thoughts flashed in his mind, the roof of a skyscraper, the open door of a speeding car, Shane Hollander trying to kill him, in his own way.

7.

Ilya wasn’t going to re-sign with Boston, and it wasn’t like he’d announced it but the months pushed on without any news of progress on the contract negotiations and people started to talk, fans and reporters alike. It was far milder than other stories he'd been at the center of, unlikely to warrant a note on his wikipedia page, but it got under Ilya’s skin more than anything. The most common theory was that he was frustrated with Boston’s failure to repeat the success of the championship year, even in terms of regular season dominance, and that he was likely lining up some other contender to join, giving up on building it from scratch. It kind of made him want to put out a statement saying he was going to Ottawa, but not even Ottawa knew that yet. He didn't know whether or not that would make it easier for fans to swallow – that he was not leaving them for bigger and better things, but rather something considerably smaller and worse. He supposed more than anything they’d want an explanation, and he’d never be able to give them that.

Not never. Just not for years.

Reporters and fans who had defended him his whole career and dismissed the controversial remarks and the sex and the drugs and that one weirdly persistent rumor of a secret illegitimate child back in Russia – this was what was getting them to turn. It felt somewhat ironic to lose them this season, given that Ilya had never been better behaved in his life. If people noticed those other scandals falling away they didn’t care. It was like he’d always known: as long as he showed up for them on the ice, they’d love him. That had always been reassuring. He hadn’t thought he’d ever stop showing up for them on the ice.

The fans talked, the reporters talked, and then the players talked. Ilya told Marks that he should look into building endurance over the off season and Marks said what the fuck do you care. Sort of vague, but everybody instantly understood the meaning. Ilya wouldn’t be here next season. Marks could keep getting gassed by the end of the first period and it wouldn’t change anything for Ilya. Marks was the first to even halfway acknowledge the rumors but he wasn’t the last. In the past he’d have been the last, because Ilya would have immediately smacked that slight hint of discontent out of his team, but this time he lacked the credibility.

And so the stories that had fed the players now got fed by the players. Rozanov has lost his locker room – should he lose us, too? It was not the first time Ilya’s locker room had been described as in turmoil, but those kinds of reports were, if anything, comforting to fans when the team was playing poorly, which was the only time they had popped up before. It meant the players cared. It was a little more concerning when it was on the foot of a six game win streak.

Cliff wanted so badly to have Ilya’s back, and he tried. He called out comments and made it clear not accepting Ilya’s leadership wouldn’t be tolerated. But he clearly had questions too. After another win – and Ilya had this hopefully irrational idea that the team sort of wanted to lose, that it would make them feel vindicated if Ilya stopped doing right by them – Cliff kept Ilya back in the locker room.

“Shit’s been weird,” he said, blunt.

Ilya nodded.

“It’s kind of your fault,” Cliff said. “You can’t really blame them, can you?”

“No,” Ilya said. “I couldn’t blame you, either.”

“That’s the problem,” Cliff said. “I know you too well to be angry, man. I know you wouldn’t want to take the easy way out, I know you wouldn’t just give up on the fight. And it can’t be money, because nowhere can pay you more than we can. There’s something weird going on, and I also know you’d tell us what it was if you could.”

Ilya nodded again. He really didn’t feel up for this. Cliff seemed to sense that, sighed. “Look, we’ve three days off, it’s a good time to decompress. Why don’t you come over tomorrow? Maybe we could invite a couple of the guys, maybe not. But let’s just. I don’t know, chill. Try to forget about this.”

That was what Ilya should do; it was what he should have suggested himself, as captain. Some team bonding. It was what he’d do if the team was his top priority, but this whole mess was happening because the team wasn’t his top priority. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.” And he couldn’t explain why he couldn’t, either.

“I’m worried about you, man,” Cliff said, quiet.

“Don’t be,” Ilya said, immediately. “It’s good thing.” He tried not to laugh at Cliff’s look of disbelief. “This part, this part sucks. But I am doing it because for me it is worth it. I am sorry it sucks for you and for the whole team too. But for me it is worth it.”

Cliff leaned back against his locker. “Holy shit,” he said, eyebrows up. “It’s – is it your girl in Montreal, is it Jane?”

This would probably be too close for comfort for Shane, Shane would want Ilya to deny it, but Ilya found he couldn’t. He’d never actually told an outright lie during any of this, just kept everything to himself. “Yes,” he said.

“Holy shit,” Cliff said again. “Fuck, bro, why don’t you just tell us? We’d get that. Well, no, leaving your team for a girl is still crazy, but it’s better than what a lot of us have been thinking. Why is it a secret?”

Ilya breathed out heavily through his nose. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. “She is – very private,” he said, and couldn’t help smiling a little. He still hadn't lied.

“What, she’s famous or something?” Cliff said. “Pretty selfish, making you upend your life—”

“No,” Ilya said, even though he wouldn’t care if that was what had happened. He liked Shane selfish. “I am the one doing this. It was my idea, my choice.”

Cliff nodded. “She couldn’t just move to Boston?”

“She hates Boston,” Ilya said.

“Wait, fuck,” Cliff said. “Tell me right the fuck now you’re not signing with Montreal, Rozanov. For your sake if nothing else, the fans will straight up murder you.”

Ilya smiled. He was still a little bit Boston, even if he was leaving. “I would rather fucking die.”

Shane and Ilya had been planning for the three days off since the schedules had dropped, because miraculously Shane had time off too. It was the only time their schedules lined up like that the whole season, the only time they’d get two nights together, uninterrupted, alone. Ilya left the next morning when it was still dark, not bothering to put the Vermont address into his phone. He knew the way. They’d only gotten up there twice before since the start of the season, but Ilya had every facet of the modern, glassy condo Shane had bought in the tiny tourist town memorized. Shane could tut at Ilya’s designer jackets all he wanted, but he’d bought a luxury fuck pad for his lover that he’d use for less than a calendar year. Shane hated the term fuck pad, it turned out. He called it an investment property, so Ilya started calling his cars investment vehicles. The difference is, Shane said, my investments have never been shot at.

Ilya was driving faster than Shane would approve of, hoping to scrape ten minutes off the journey. Another article had dropped over night, some retired player making the case that Ilya was everything wrong with today’s league, and Ilya needed Shane to wrench it out of his head. He wasn’t sure how hard Pasha was working to curb the media tide, because the writing was a little bit on the wall for him too. Ilya had told him, had had to tell him, that he wanted to sign in Ottawa, and Pasha wasn’t going to move to Ottawa. He’d stay Ilya’s agent, but he’d only be his agent. All the hands on work would have to go elsewhere.

Shane must have left before the sun rose too, because he was there when Ilya unlocked the door. Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane’s shoulders and put all his weight on him, making Shane laugh and stagger a couple steps back. He was surprised when he felt Shane’s hands under his jacket, moving to dislodge it, but he went along with it, letting it fall to the floor and pulling his sweater off for good measure. Shane smoothed a hand over Ilya’s bare chest and then pressed his cheek to it. “I didn’t get much sleep,” Shane said. “Can we get in bed?”

Ilya almost felt like crying from how much he wanted that. The two of them stripped down to their boxers on the way, and then crawled under the sheets. The blinds were still pulled from the last time they’d been there, the light in the room dim and gray.

“I have needed this,” Ilya said, and his voice came out not entirely steady.

“Oh, baby,” Shane said, squeezing him. “My poor baby.”

Ilya wetly kissed the skin closest to his mouth. Shane’s forearm.

“I’m getting so mad,” Shane said. “Whenever I see anything about this. I keep wanting to defend you, they’re being so unfair.”

“No,” Ilya said. “Well, yes, maybe, what you’re seeing. National media. For me I am mostly just seeing Boston stuff. And they are not being unfair.”

“Players leave teams all the time,” Shane said quietly, a pretty weak defense.

“I am not any player,” Ilya said, also quiet, with none of the normal bravado and earning none of Shane’s normal exasperation. It was just true. Ilya was the team, the team was Ilya. If he left there were three other rotation players who’d probably have to go too, their value plummeting if they didn’t get to play off him. “We always have to say we love the fans,” Ilya said. “But I really do. They made it a lot easier, when I first came here. I care about them.”

“I know,” Shane said, and slid a little lower on Ilya’s body, propped his head up to look down at him. “I do think I’m probably your biggest fan, though. And I still love you. I’d love you no matter where you were.”

Ilya craned up to kiss his cheek.

Shane swallowed. “I’d love you if you stayed in Boston.”

To this point it had been a variation of a conversation they’d had before, something Ilya felt vaguely ashamed of, not being able to get over it. This, however, was new. Ilya scanned Shane’s face. “You feel guilty?” he asked.

Shane nodded, and Ilya stroked down his back. “I am not just doing this for you,” he said. “You would be enough, but I have other big reason too.”

He really did need to get citizenship somewhere else. The problem was he couldn’t say that to his team either, because even if he was done with Russia he was still protective of it, and he didn’t want a bunch of Americans knowing how desperate he was to never go back again, especially when he couldn’t tell them why.

“Yeah,” Shane said. “I was thinking – maybe this won’t make sense to you, I don’t know. But this year being hard is like… We’ll know, you know, what we’re getting into. Once you come to Ottawa. Not exactly, but we’ll know what it’s like to sacrifice to be together. We’ll go into it with clear eyes.”

Ilya nodded in the absence of any better response. It did make sense to him, and he knew it should be how he felt too, but it wasn’t quite. They weren’t sacrificing to be together, they were sacrificing to be together in secret, with shedding that secrecy a distant prospect. Ilya already felt half-ready, which was worrying, because half-ready was more than enough for him to take a leap, and he could recite all the reasons that was a bad idea. Shane would have to teach him patience. Sometimes he still thought about that picture from the pool, wondering how explicit it was. If it was just the suggestion, if nobody could actually see Shane’s mouth on his dick, Ilya wasn’t sure how much he’d mind it getting out. There could be no worthier cause for which to blow up his image. He wanted people staring at them, he wanted people speculating. It wouldn't even have to be something that obvious, just the slightest hint of them, and people would talk. No smoke without fire, they could say. There was fire, so there should be smoke. He knew he couldn’t ever even hint at that desire to Shane.

He rolled over on top of Shane, pressing him into the mattress. Shane laughed into his hair and that was what today was about, Shane laughing into his hair, nothing outside. “It is just us here,” Ilya said, and it was all he needed to say to get Shane on the same page.

“Yeah,” Shane breathed. “They think they have you but they don’t, do they? They’re always trying to break pieces off of you.”

Ilya raised his head, raised his eyebrows. Shane said it as though the world had failed, as though despite everything Ilya remained intact, whole. Shane didn’t have scandals, but he had brand deals and day time TV interviews. Trying to break pieces off him. “All of me is here,” Ilya said, resting his head back down. “With you. Yours.”