Chapter Text
From the first day he shows up in the Boston locker room, fresh off the high of being the number one draft pick, Ilya Rozanov is a fucken weird dude. Not, like, interpersonally, or whatever, because he’s charismatic as fuck even when he only has heavily accented and overly-suggestive English to work with as a cocky rookie. No, he’s weird in that absolutely none of the Bears knew anything about him for the longest time, but none of them notice. Cliff’s mom had once referred to his dad as having a cult of personality, but it’s not until Rozanov comes to Boston that Cliff understands what that means, how someone can make you feel like you know them without ever actually giving you anything real.
He’s never been the brightest bulb in the box, but Cliff knows people, is good at people. He’s a boy’s boy, knows how to tease and chirp and joke without taking it too far, but he’s also a mama’s boy and was raised right, so girls have always liked him too. He likes being a confidant for the rooks, prides himself on being a sounding board to the veteran players, and has never once broken a confidence. Rozanov is a whole other beast, though.
As a rookie, he’s nothing special. Well, that isn’t entirely true; as a player, he’s fucken phenomenal: fast, lethal, aggressive and can read play like he’d been born to do it. But he’s come to the Bears as a brash, mouthy, overconfident little shit, and had thrown himself bodily into the shitty side of hockey culture with a recklessness that startles senior players and management alike. There’s been booze, girls and fast cars, nights out and bar fights, a life lived fast and loose. Cliff’s experience with people like that is that they tend to burn bright and burn out just as fast, but Rozanov has always been different. The self-destruction has just… continued, but never quite to the point of tipping right over into full-blown catastrophe. A lot of that can be attributed to Svetlana, Cliff suspects. She’s as wild as Rozanov but without the bitter edges, always able to drag him back from the precipice. Cliff knows they hook up semi-regularly, and he’s glad Rozanov has her. But then that starts to change, too.
It’s no secret that Rozy has a girl in Montreal. Almost right from the start he slips away after a game with a wink and smile, refusing to answer questions or respond to the good-natured teasing with anything more than feigned ignorance. He’s back by morning, rumpled and smiling, red marks fading from his throat and chest. He’ll be languid and loose-limbed at breakfast, trading easy quips and jokes with the boys. He spends more time on his phone, smirking down at the screen for hours at a time when they travel, huffing soft laughs beneath his breath as it vibrates with yet another incoming text.
Then he’s made captain, and his obsessive devotion to the game kicks up into an even higher level of intensity. It similarly increases the drinking and sleeping around, and heightens the edgy, competitive side of the guy. The thing with Montreal Jane continues, and Rozy gets even more intense about that, too. Oh sure, there are girls in other cities, something Rozy swears Jane knows about and doesn’t have a problem with, and for all his faults Rozy would never fuck around with someone else’s woman, or around on his. Cliff presumes, because apart from Jane and the semi-casual thing he has with Svetlana, Rozy doesn’t actually have a woman, not in the traditional sense. He asks about it once, a little disapproving when Rozy and Jane hook up post-game on the Monday, and Rozy then takes home a gorgeous husband and wife duo on the Tuesday.
“Is just a little fun, Cliff, relax,” Rozy grins at him, finger hooked in the front pocket of the husband’s designer jeans, his wife between them in a dangerously short dress with an arm around each of their waists. “My Jane fucks who she wants, I fuck who I want-” this makes the husband grin, dark and hot, “and we fuck each other when it’s convenient. What you Americans say? No sad feelings?”
“No hard feelings,” Cliff corrects, still mildly concerned, but somehow warmed beneath the weight of Rozy’s regard.
“No hard feelings,” Rozy parrots, then flashes his own insanely perfect grin. “Well, feeling something hard, uh?” he adds, winking when the wife’s hand drifts down from his waist and slides out of view.
“Fucken beauty, Roz,” Cliff laughs, watches him lead his company for that night from the club, the three of them clustered together as close as they can be without a public indecency charge.
That’s on Tuesday. There’s a socialite on the Friday, who comes out again on Saturday. The following week is Sveta, and later an ‘influencer’, which as far as Cliff can tell is someone who posts half-nude photos on Instagram, not that he or anyone else minds. After that it blurs: pretty puck bunnies across both Canada and the U.S., actresses in Tampa and New York, then back to Boston and what from all reports sounds like an orgy with the Boston College coed cheerleading team. It absolutely blows Cliff’s mind that Rozy can casually fuck dudes, or at least fuck adjacent to other dudes without anyone on the team so much as batting an eyelid, but the questions are explained away with a laughing round of Gay or European? which, given the whole Rozanov of it all, generally comes down to European.
The pattern continues over years, and the list of shit Cliff knows about Rozy stays oddly short: he was eighteen when he was drafted to the Bears, he’s from Moscow, he has a semi-regular secret girl in Montreal, he’s borderline-obsessed with American steakhouses, he’s only mostly straight, he’s a monster on the ice, his appetites for all things pretty and dangerous are insatiable, the dude always hugs like he means it, and he fucken talks in his sleep- worse when he’s tired or stressed, and always in Russian. That’s it. For the first five or six years that they work together, that’s it. Sure, there are the odd little things like favourite songs, changing tastes in clothing, television, women and food, but Rozy is a slippery sucker, and has a knack for turning personal questions back on the asker, making them feel flattered to be interesting enough to warrant his attention. All the tabloids and formal interviews use the same words: charismatic, sexy, playboy, elusive, flirtatious, womanising, non-committal. Much is written about the constant bevy of beautiful women in and out of his apartment or any given nightclub or bar, and nothing at all, ever, about the men. There’s constant amazement at the amount of energy he manages to bring to the ice after these nights of debauchery, and the boys love to share articles to the group chat of his international exploits while on summer breaks.
But eventually, gradually, and only if you’re paying attention, little things start to slip through. The odd phone conversations in angry Russian, often late afternoon, that end with Rozy storming off and returning an hour later in an absolutely filthy mood. The way his English improves month by month but gets worse after Montreal games- win or loss. The way his visits back to Russia get progressively shorter each time, and he’s so much more unsettled upon each return, taking longer and longer to get back to his usual cocksure self. The way the sleeptalking gets worse on the same schedule, no longer random muttered words but full sentences, sharp and pleading or… frightened, maybe. Those are the nights that Cliff discovers a new clumsiness, stumbling into Rozy’s bed hard enough to jostle him awake, or to drop something noisy on the bathroom tiles to unfortunately wake his buddy up.
And progressively, so slowly that it’s surprising when Cliff does eventually notice it, Rozy’s use of his phone goes from convenient to… well, not obsessive, exactly, but intentional. Rozy starts waiting on it, staring at a sleeping screen, casually flipping it face down when in company, and answering with a weird eagerness that fades to a vague disappointment the majority of the time. Sometimes, though. Well, sometimes that eagerness is followed by a smile, a soft, gentle thing that Cliff never sees anywhere else. It’s strange the first time he notices it, but Rozy just mutters something about a niece which implies he had a fucken sibling somewhere. It’s a shocking one-two punch, and Cliff feels like the worst kind of friend. He knows, logically, that Rozanov hadn’t sprung out of a frozen Russian pond somewhere, fully formed with a stick in his hand, but he’s never asked, has never thought to. God, he knows more about fucken Liam Vogler, and he only spent a season on the Bears’ bench three years ago. Still, Roz is squirrely as fuck about personal questions, so Cliff just files this new information away in his mental Facts About Roz box.
They make the playoffs but narrowly miss the cup, and life is sweet, all fun times and parties and celebrities and headlines, and Rozy is disappointed but he looks happier, more settled than Cliff is used to seeing him. The new season starts back up and the team is dialled in, ready to bring the cup to Boston this season. Then something happens around Sochi, something bad. He comes back… still, completely pulled into himself in a way Cliff’s never seen before, and he’s almost quiet when he forgets to be loud. He’s weird up to the NHL awards, and despite winning he still can’t seem to shake his funk. Then six months later he goes on an absolute tear, and if the boys had thought him wild before, what comes after the awards is an order of magnitude worse.
He’s never been choosy beyond his hookups being mind-bendingly hot, but there’s been a pattern that Cliff hasn’t thought about too hard, has chalked up the way he turns down offers whenever they’re in Montreal to whatever Roz has going on with Jane. Which, in hindsight, is kinda weird, because for a guy who never shuts the fuck up about how hot someone is, Rozy has never once described her. Not her hair, not her legs, not a single filthy detail. Just… Jane. Like that’s supposed to cover it. And his Montreal social disinterest is never in a ‘not interested’ kind of way, but more of a ‘better offer’ kind of way, and given that Jane is the closest to a regular thing in Rozy’s life, that seems within his particular brand of normal. After Sochi, though, Cliff’s pretty sure Roz fucks half of Montreal out of spite for something, barely sharing a drink with the team before he’s off to get his dick wet, completely ignoring curfew only to stumble back to the hotel with just enough time to shower and make an airport transfer, reeking of sex and perfume and smoke in a way that’s less playboy and something much more desperate, like he’s trying to overwrite something.
Cliff had been to an intervention once, had sat in his sister’s living room to confront one of Janey’s best friends about a prescription drug addiction. It hadn’t gone well. Cliff didn’t know much, but he sure as shit had known it wasn’t going to work from the get. Which it hadn’t; Candace had said some of the most vile, horrific things Cliff had ever heard, on or off the ice, screamed until her face was almost purple, unrecognisable from the sweet girl who had helped Cliff with his english homework in school, and trashed half the living room in her effort to escape it. She’d died of a fentanyl overdose a couple of months later, and the pain of it had never really left Janey after that.
So he’s determined not to make that mistake with Roz, instead dragging him out and getting him absofuckenlutely hammered on shitty vodka and shittier tequila shots. Roz goes so hard Cliff is legitimately concerned they’re going to need the hospital, but Roz is made of tougher stuff, and while he’s paralytic to the point of requiring a heavy assist he’s able to talk. He admits to fucking up his thing with Jane, ghosting her and missing her and catching feelings in spite of trying desperately not to. Cliff laughs in his stupid face.
“You can’t honestly be that dumb,” he says, knowing full well that guys are always stupid where girls are concerned, himself included.
Roz narrows bleary eyes at him. “I could be, asshole,” he slurs, almost tipping back into the George Robert fountain.
Cliff grabs the front of the customary black tank and holds him steady. “You’ve been in love with this bitch forever, what do you mean you tried not to?”
“Do not call her that,” Roz snarls, immediately ferocious in a way that makes Cliff wince and think of Candace. “She is… she is everything.”
“Okay, man, sorry,” Cliff says, at the same time thinking gotcha. As Boston cap, Roz has pretty quickly stamped out that kind of talk, and the boys have willingly followed where he’s led. “So… she’s everything, huh? Why have you been ghosting her, then?”
Even as fucked as he is, Rozy’s walls remain up. “Is complicated.”
“No shit, brother,” Cliff laughs, bracing against all two hundred and some pounds of weight swaying back towards the water. “Uncomplicate it for me.”
Roz squints up at him, suspicious and wary. “What you care?”
And that… hurts, a surprising amount, actually. “Because I love you, you cunt, why do you think?”
The laugh that follows is definitely not a giggle, and Cliff will testify to that. “Ah, you are good man, Marly, I-” Then he trails off into a stream of unintelligible Russian, including several curse words Cliff recognises, others with particular emphasis, and, bizarrely, Hollander, twice.
Cliff blinks at that, files it next to all the other weird Rozanov shit that doesn’t quite add up, and decides he’s too drunk to play detective. He just sighs, waits until Roz is done and then pulls him to his feet. If he’s fucked enough that he’s devolved to cursing out Hollander, the night is a wash. He bundles them both into a cab, makes a mental note to hit Rozy up for the five hundred bucks pays the cabbie for the puke Roz mostly managed to get out the window but down the paint job, and drags him up to his apartment to put him to bed.
They don’t talk about it after. Looking back, that probably should be the moment it clicks, but hindsight’s a bitch like that.
By a minor miracle Roz has maybe remembered enough to have some thoughts about it, and he eventually pulls himself together and goes back to… well, not normal, but closer than where he’s been recently. After that, Rozy gets quieter about Montreal. Not in a way anyone else notices; he still chirps, still plays like a man possessed, still disappears after games sometimes. But the bragging stops, and for Rozy, that’s loud as fuck. For a while things are better than they have been, and that has to count for something. Even if that means Rozy is rediscovering his obsession with his phone.
Cliff knows Shane Hollander the way most people know Shane Hollander: from a distance as a near-mythical figure in hockey, a borderline-savant with the stereotypical Canadian good-boy pleasantness that the press eat up. He’s the polar opposite of Rozy, the light to his dark, and Cliff likes him well enough. He’s a demon on the ice, a perpetual thorn in Boston’s side, and particularly capable of getting beneath Cap’s skin. He’s beautiful to watch in motion, an economy of movement that speaks to his innate understanding of how the ice and the game work, and insanely, ridiculously, impossibly fast.
Outside of their games against Montreal Cliff hasn’t had much to do with Hollzy- the odd awards ceremony, All Star games, fundraisers. He’s quiet and intense, and oddly watchful, taking in the movement of bodies in a room the way he watches players on the ice, tracking exits like pucks, smiling at all the right moments with shoulders stiff as boards. No one else seems to notice it, but again, Cliff is good at people. He sees shit, notices things early. It’s part of what makes him a good forward, and how he’s so good at creating playmaking opportunities. He might not know what Hollander’s tension means, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice it.
With retrospect, there’s a lot to notice about the way Hollander notices Roz, and how he’s never surprised by him. Not on the ice, not in a room, not even when Rozy comes in loud and late like a fucken storm system. Hollander’s eyes will flick over, quick as anything, like he already knows exactly where he’s going to be. And Hollander is polite with everyone, the same small smiles, same measured responses, but every now and then Cliff catches something slip when Roz gets involved. Not a reaction, exactly. More like… a correction, his shoulders stiffening a little more, his jaw setting for a half second before he intentionally relaxes it again. It’s almost like he’s bracing for something that never seems to come.
Sometimes Cliff thinks that Rozy clocks it too, but if he does he’s uncharacteristically silent about it. Which is its own kind of peculiar given the whole Rozanov-Hollander rivalry thing the league loves to jerk off over. There should be more… something between them off the ice. Chirping, tension, whatever. But even when Rozy does take a crack, Hollander never bites, not really. He’ll take it, sure, give a little back sometimes, but never in a way that escalates, never in a way that sticks. Roz also sticks it to him in a weirdly controlled way, only ever up until a point- whatever that might be- and for a pair of guys that competitive, that’s also weird as fuck.
So for years there’s just a random collection of half-noticed and uncategorised moments noticed on both sides of the Hollander-Rozanov equation, nothing concrete and nothing to really make the puzzle-solving part of Cliff’s brain kick into gear. Then once, after a particularly nasty collision, Roz stays down a beat too long and Cliff sees Hollander take a step forward. Not toward the play, toward Roz. He catches himself almost immediately, pivots, gets back into position like nothing’s happened, and Cliff figures it’s just good sportsmanship. All very above-board, very normal captainly concern, and whatnot. But the way Hollzy looks at Roz is not good sportsmanship at all; that game, he’s the only person who reacts to Roz like he matters… and Cliff finally realises that Roz is the only person Hollander ever loses control over. After that it’s all ones and zeroes, Matrix-style, as six years of observed data comes flooding in, and holy fucken jesus, Shane fucken Hollander is Rozy’s Montreal Jane.
It honestly rocks Cliff to his foundations, but after a couple of days sitting on the biggest scandal to never make NHL history, it actually… makes sense? Hollander is to Rozy as structure is to chaos: the only thing that gives it shape. And, now that he really turns his brain to it, isn’t everything Roz is as a person and a player shaped by who Hollander is to him? What their competition has turned him into? It’s a hell of a thing to realise. It also probably explains whatever the fuck’s been going on with Rozy, and knowing Rozy even the tiny amount that he does, Cliff suspects the fuckup was his, and equally suspects that Hollander is now making him pay for it. What else- who else?- but Hollander would have that kind of power over Ilya Rozanov?
Three days of mulling it over and Cliff’s had enough. He shows up unannounced to Rozy’s place with the lasagne from the sketchy looking place by the subway stop closest to the barn, walks in when Rozy steps aside as though he’d never doubted his welcome even though he absolutely had, reheats the pasta and dishes them up an enormous plate each. They sit opposite each other at the table, and Roz looks tired.
“Tell me,” Cliff says, calm and as gentle as he’s capable of being, and he almost chokes in shock when Roz does.
“I’ve been fucking Hollander,” he announces, calm as you please. “For nearly seven years.”
And yeah, Cliff had connected some of the dots, but even he can count back by seven and- “Rookies?” he asks.
Roz nods. “He’s Montreal Jane.”
Cliff nods. “Yeah, I figured,” and doesn’t that get a response.
“You what?”
He looks panicked, and Cliff just shakes his head. “I don’t think anyone else could figure it out, I just know you, is all. And I see shit.” He shovels in another mouthful of lasagne and waits for Roz to relax enough to do the same. “You’re in love with him?” Rozy doesn’t look up, just nods and keeps his eyes on his fork, hanging loose in his hand. He looks like he’s been slapped, hectic colour high in his cheeks but otherwise pale, looking for all the world like he’s braced for another. “You fucked it up, huh?”
He flicks a rapid little glance up at Cliff, assessing, before he nods.
“You gonna fix it?”
Rozy sighs, sounding all kinds of things, but mostly regretful and exhausted. “I’m trying. He is… he’s making it very difficult to feel like I deserve the second chance.”
“Of course you do,” Cliff says instantly, with absolute certainty, and that makes his friend smile. “You guys’ll be good together.” He pretends not to see Rozy scratch his face to brush away the tear that absolutely isn’t there, another thing he’ll testify to.
They eat in silence for a while, until Roz eventually straightens his shoulders and looks Marly right in the eyes. “That’s it?”
Marly shrugs. “You got this, brother. And if you need anything, I’ve got your back, like always.” He can tell his response isn’t what Rozy’s expecting, but he holds his intense stare because he fucken means it, and his Cap should know that.
They get wasted after that, because something needs to lighten the heaviness of their conversation, and Cliff stays the night. Before bed, though, Roz hesitates after saying goodnight, then turns and walks straight into him, trusting that Cliff means what he says. Cliff just hugs him close, good and tight the way his mom always does, just sort of holding the guy in the dark hallway, a little bit awkward but with a lot of love.
“‘Night, Cap,” he says, only after Rozy’s gotten what he needs and steps away first.
“Goodnight, Marly,” Roz replies, soft as anything, and slips silently away.
Cliff wishes shit magically improves after that, but it actually seems to get worse. Rozy’s quiet sadness gives way to confusion and frustration, and wild swings of anger that come out of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, out of his phone, it seems, and everyone is so fucken tired of bag skates they’re considering an uprising. They go to Cliff before it gets to that point though, and even though he’s the A, he’s not looking forward to the chat he and Roz need to have.
“Oi dickhead, can you cut it the fuck out?” is what he says, panting and sweating like a motherfucker while Oregan might actually be stroking out, flat on his back in front of the goal. Could’ve been more subtle, but it gets Roz’ attention, wild eyed and terrifying as it is.
“The fuck did you just say to me?” he demands, and Cliff catches LeClaire about to step out from the bench to intercept, but he shakes his head.
“I fucken said cut. it. the. fuck. out,” he enunciates clearly. “We’ve trained hard, we’re fucked, and whatever you’ve got going on needs to be sorted off the ice.” Rozy looks fully ready to go him to work out some of whatever he’s in his head about, but Cliff squares up, presses his height advantage and prepares to take it on the chin. “If this is what you need, Cap, you know I’m always down for a donnybrook. But leave the rest of the boys out of it, alright?”
Roz is properly about to spit nails, but then he deflates all of a sudden, the breath gusting out of him and he drops his shoulders, his head, then his stick. “Go home,” he tells the team, and they may not know what’s going on, but they love their captain almost as much as Cliff does, and instead of filing off the ice like they should they huddle around him instead, pressing in close and holding him safe for a moment, slapping his back and messing up his sweaty hair. There’s a chorus of ‘love yous’ and ‘here if you needs’ and ‘fuck you I can’t feel my legs, hope you’re okays’, and Cliff loves them all. He meets LeClaire’s eyes once more, sees his own concern mirrored there and nods once, short and sharp. He’s got this, and it might be his job first, but it’s Rozy most importantly.
He passes Rozy his stick and they skate silently while passing a puck back and forth, up and down the ice, nice and easy at first but getting faster and faster until Cliff careens around the back of the net and his skates slide out from beneath him, sending him crashing down and fouling Rozy’s legs, too.
“The bag skates were mostly for you,” Roz pants, the asshole, and Cliff just laughs as ice water seeps through his jersey, catches his breath with Rozy’s head pillowed uncomfortably on his bad knee, the little prick.
“You good?”
“Probably not,” Roz sighs, but Cliff has faith.
“We’ve got a game in a couple of days,” he says. Against Montreal, and Cliff is… concerned.
“Yes.”
“You going to be alright?”
Roz shrugs.
“Probably not, eh? Hollzy’s been looking real cute lately.” It’s a gamble, fuck is it ever, and he freezes horribly for a second, just long enough that Cliff’s heart rate quadruples and he calculates whether or not Rozy’ll be too cooked to catch him before he leaves the ice at a dead sprint. Then he starts to laugh, a godawful hiccuping thing that sounds more distressed than it should, until Cliff drops his gloved hand down onto Roz’ face, which irritates him enough to stop whatever the hell the noise had been and start bitching instead.
Roz looks rough when Cliff pulls up to collect him on their way to the airport.
“Feeling alright, brother?” he asks, waiting for the seatbelt to click in and hand Roz a coffee from the place he likes, extra large and extra hot.
“I think the thing with Hollander is over,” he says, his voice thick and strange. “I don’t want to talk about it. At all.”
Cliff glances over at him but he’s staring out the passenger window, and Cliff lets him be, just squeezes his thigh above his knee in solidarity, feels the tension in the muscle there. He passes his phone over so Rozy can choose the music- a rare privilege in a Marlow vehicle- and focuses on not committing vehicular manslaughter because the Pike is homicide inducing in the morning.
Fucken Olsson has bananas, again, and if he keeps fucking them up at customs Cliff is going to have him benched for the rest of the season, and ensure his name isn’t engraved on their cup. Still, they’re checked into their hotel by ten, the same one they usually stay in, and Cliff’s not wasting any time getting his hands on some fucken cheese curds. Those squeaky little things are the best thing about Canada, and he won’t hear different. Roz’ stuck in his own head again and needs to sleep off the residual hangover, and Cliff pretends he doesn’t see the way he’s curled around his phone as he channel surfs to find something to fall asleep to.
He walks for longer than he’d planned, needing to shake off some of Rozy’s second hand misery, and it’s actually a little shocking to have Montreal Jane himself almost walk right into him where he’s opening his curds. He looks about as good as Roz, which is to say not at all, all purple shadows beneath his eyes and a frown that looks carved into his forehead.
“Marlow,” he says, clearly as thrown by their meeting happening somewhere so out of place. There’s an awkward pause. “How are you? How was your flight?”
He’s awkward alright, but he had been right during training, Hollander was actually pretty cute. He smiles. “Quiet.” They both pause, and to smooth over some of the awkwardness, Cliff just holds the bag of curds out, curious to see what Hollzy does. He takes a couple, sticks one in his mouth, looks less stressed. Cliff’s got nowhere to be, and knows how to exploit Canadian niceness, so he just makes a vague gesture at Hollzy and he begins walking, presumably back in the direction of his home, Cliff following.
He offers more curds, shows Hollzy his stash when Hollander looks like he’s about to refuse. He laughs, brief and soft, and takes more. They keep walking, and the weather slowly starts to turn.
“Been a while since we’ve played against each other,” he finally says.
Hollzy sighs. “Yeah.”
“How’ve you been?” He’s genuinely curious, because he’s only seen Roz’ side of things, and it’s… not great.
Hollander looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or puke, and takes far too long to answer. “Yeah, not bad,” he lies, badly.
Christ, they’re as bad as each other. Cliff sighs, decides to just go for it and say the thing. He shoves his sunglasses up and grabs Hollzy’s elbow to get him to stop. “Look, Hollander, I like you, man. But if you’re not into my boy, then you need to cut him loose, okay, because he’s properly fucked up over you, and you seem like too decent a guy to string him along like this.” It’s a phenomenal breach of trust, but hey, if he can manipulate the innate Canadianness Hollander has to go for a walk and share some cheese curds, maybe he can use his powers for good in other ways, ways that benefit Cliff’s best friend.
Hollander looks hunted, but to his credit he doesn’t try to deny it. “How do you know that?”
Maybe he doesn’t know that Roz and Cliff are friends. “He told me?”
“Rozanov told you he’s fucked up about me?” Hollander clarifies.
“Oh. No, god no; I think Roz’d rather drop dead in the street before talking about anything that actually matters to him. He told me you and him had a thing, but given that that’s been going on for literal years now, I figured out pretty quick that it’s not a casual thing. Not for him, anyway.” Once he’d figured it out, that was more or less the truth.
“So how do you know, then?”
Because I have eyes in my fucken head? he wants to say, but settles instead on, “I know my boy. The last few months he’s been properly obsessed with his phone, like he’s living and breathing for a text from Jane.” He shakes his head, embarrassed to think about how long it took him to figure it out. “You guys are not subtle, by the way. And he’s been off for the last couple of weeks, distracted, snappy. He’s sad, too, I think. Talks about you the way he talks about his mom, sometimes.” Another thing they’ve never talked out loud about, but Cliff knows what the shape of a person long gone looks like.
“It’s complicated,” Hollander says eventually, sounding just like Roz.
It makes Cliff laugh. “No shit,” he says, echoing himself, and laughing a little because he likes the parallel. “Doesn’t help that you’re both idiots who lack basic communication skills, either.”
“Fuck off,” Hollzy says, but it’s not combative the way it might have been. “When was the last time you got Ilya to talk about anything that actually matters to him?” Ilya, Cliff thinks, then watches as Hollander’s expression doesn’t change so much as it just gets reeeal neutral. “He… did he ask you to tell me this?”
Cliff feels his own face tighten, wonders if Hollzy would trust a threat from him right now. “Are you fucken kidding me? He’d murder me to death if he knew we were talking about this,” he said, attempting menace and missing by a mile. “He’s my best friend, Hollander, and I want what’s going to make him happy. That’s it.”
Hollander watches him, then nods once and Cliff suspects Rozy will never know about this conversation, whichever way the mess ends up going. He waits patiently as Hollzy works through some things, and marvels at the risk Roz must’ve taken in approaching him- which he’s certain is how it went- because Hollander’s face doesn’t give away shit.
“If I tell him… the things I want to tell him, the… the way I feel. About him, I mean. If I tell him, he’s not going to want to hear it.”
Oh, that’s love. Like, love-love, forever love, Cliff realises suddenly. And he knows that’s not always enough, knows that Hollzy and Roz are up against it bad enough that even a fucken miracle might not be able to save them. Still. “Of course he’s not,” he says, because that’s the biggest truth he’s figured out, even bigger than Montreal Jane. “That kid believes he’s terminally unlovable, and that he doesn’t deserve to have nice things. I guess it’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s worth your time and effort to convince him otherwise.” Cliff might not know much, but he knows that love is a choice you have to keep on making. He suspects that these two idiots might be able to do it.
He reaches out and pats Hollzy’s shoulder. “Think about it. And maybe never, ever, ever mention to Rozy that we had this chat, yeah?” He grins, hopeful for them, and turns back the way they came as snow starts to fluff down around him. Fuck, he’s so lost. “See you tomorrow night, Hollander.”
It’s quiet, but Cliff thinks Hollzy’s, "bye,” sounds maybe just a little more hopeful than the rest of the conversation had gone.
Yeah, this could go real bad. There’s a good chance he’ll wind up scraping Rozy’s heart up off the floor, but he just pops another cheese curd in his mouth and decides that’s a problem for future Marly.