Chapter Text
“You spoil me, Sveta.” Ilya raised the glass to his lips, letting the vodka burn him clean from the inside out. Svetlana insisted on putting it in her unbearably fancy crystal shot glasses, even though Ilya always sipped his nice and slow. She had found a corner store that stocked their favorite brand, the good stuff, about six months ago. They saved it for this, their monthly ritual where they reviewed the twenty or so submission tapes they’d received since last time.
The first girl barely got a sentence out before Svetlana picked up the remote with a shudder. “She looks twelve.”
Next up was a bearded man with enough bulk and body hair to do some period pieces as a king or a blacksmith for the "elevated" porn crowd. The ones who liked bougie arthouse videos with nice costumes and establishing shots. With a scowl, Ilya gestured to the parts of the screen that showed his messy bedroom behind him. “Strike one.”
They were equal stakeholders in the company, but Ilya always referred to it as hers. She was the one who had started it as soon as she had her business degree in hand. She was the one who had picked up her life from LA and moved into his Boston apartment when he couldn’t afford the rent anymore. She was the one who handled the logistics, delegated tasks, found shooting locations and talent and hired the developers for the website. Ilya just had loud opinions and was pretty good at fucking.
And the filming. This past year he had stepped back from starring in as many videos so he could control the main camera. He figured out pretty quickly that if they invested in good equipment and doubled the number of cameras, they had twice as much footage to work with without overworking the talent. Svetlana had banned any sort of performance enhancing pills after a scary heart rhythm incident, and he started getting picky about angles and spent more time in the editing room.
Making fun of audition tapes was good stress relief, but it was also good to vet the talent. They had made their name off of hiring genuinely hot actors and paying them well, with the added benefit of people tuning in to see Rozanov humiliate himself. Luckily, the people it appealed to had stayed. They currently had around five thousand subscribers, giving them a monthly budget of $30k before one-off video purchases. It was enough to cover all the business expenses and marketing to bring in new viewers, plus the big apartment overlooking the commons. Life wasn’t as lavish as it would have been with an MLH career. But it was enough.
The bearded man on the screen executed a perfect backflip in the section where they were supposed to demonstrate "special skills”, and Ilya whistled an impressed low note. He scrolled through the text on Svetlana’s laptop to read more about him. “Female partners only, preference for single partner scenes. Coward.”
When he glanced over, Svetlana was glued to a text conversation on her phone. Ilya got bored waiting and skipped to the next video submission, which started in the middle of someone’s personal sex tape. Loud moans and the slap of skin meeting skin filled the apartment. That got her attention and she squealed, covering her eyes theatrically. “Ugh. His ass is so hairy.”
With a few clicks, she had deleted the video for not following submission protocols, but she didn’t start the next one, going back to tapping frantically before she met Ilya’s curious gaze.
“You’ll never guess who Rose and Miles just ran into at Cubbyhole. Apparently he was a guest on some Twitch livestream of the game.”
The two had gone to New York for the weekend to visit Rose’s brother and catch an Admirals game. Rose was easily their top female performer in videos, and she was secretly Ilya’s favorite to direct. She had good instincts, and she seemed to know what he wanted even when he stumbled over finding the right word in English.
Ilya picked up his vodka again, polishing off the shot and refilling it. “What the fuck is Twitch?”
“You watch people play video games mostly, I think. Not the important part.”
“What's the important part?”
“She’s in a booth with Shane Hollander.”
Ilya choked a little on his next sip. Svetlana watched him sputter with very little concern and too much amusement.
Hollander.
Hollander who politely interrupted a cigarette break in their rookie season just to show off his freckles. Hollander who told him he was an awesome player to watch and then proved it by sitting in the highest seats to watch him train. Hollander, a hockey savant sidelined by a devastating knee injury in the middle of a meteoric rise. Ilya had watched him do the analyst thing for a few seasons, the occasional podcast appearance. But it was nothing like the month he couldn’t watch his favorite channel because they ran Hollander’s ginger ale ad twice an hour until he had it fucking memorized.
Ilya dropped out of the league a few months after being drafted at number one. Shane followed with his injury six months later, leading to an article in a sports magazine that mentioned them both and the league season that “could have been”, if they hadn’t lost their top two draft picks.
“Give.” Svetlana handed over her phone with an amused grin. Ilya could hear the pounding pulse of club music over the line, the same rhythm as his heart in his ears. “Rose? I will give you two thousand dollars if you convince Hollander to do a video.”