Chapter Text
Nobody in Texas cares about hockey. Ilya’s not even on the Dallas Meteors’ roster; it’s doubtful that anyone will recognize him — a visiting Boston Raider — in some dim gay bar in Oak Lawn. That’s what he’s telling himself as he gets dressed and leaves his hotel room. It’s not a smart decision, but since when has Ilya been smart? He’s made plenty of monumentally stupid choices (eying up Shane Hollander in a communal shower, sleeping with Shane Hollander, doing it again, doing it again —), including some very recent ones (asking Shane Hollander to stay the night, making him a fucking tuna melt, calling him Shane —). What’s one more? It doesn’t even involve Hollander, this time; you could call this progress.
It has absolutely nothing to do with Shane fucking Hollander that Ilya had begged off from post-win celebrations with his team so that he could sneak out of the hotel and go to a gay bar. He’s just… horny, that’s all. It’s making him agitated. It’s nothing more than that. He’s tried to scratch the itch the usual way on the other stops on this road trip, but for whatever reason the women he’s slept with haven’t… satisfied him. He doesn’t feel any better. So, time to try something else.
He’s not even at the bar for very long. Two beers, both terrible, and he’s found a man to grind against on the dance floor. The man has shaggy blond hair and a lip ring, and he’s about Ilya’s height but much smaller than him — wiry. Something different, his brain supplies unhelpfully, and he tries to shove that thought aside. He has a pretty mouth, and he’s a good kisser, and he doesn’t seem to recognize Ilya at all. When he asks whether they should go back to Ilya’s place or his, he accepts Ilya’s line that he’s travelling for work, so going to his apartment works better.
He’s loud in bed, doesn’t seem to have a care in the world about his neighbours overhearing them, and Ilya takes great satisfaction in wringing every possible sound from him. He doesn’t mind that Ilya has an early flight and isn’t surprised that he won’t stay the night. They’re on exactly the same page about what this means: nothing. It’s just a good fuck in a city where they’ll never see each other again. If he ever gave Ilya his name, Ilya’s already forgotten it by the time he gets back to his hotel.
It’s a perfectly good night, and as far as Ilya can tell, no one had recognized him. But by the time he’s showered and lying in his hotel bed, he has to grudgingly admit that it hadn’t helped. He had hoped maybe he just needed to suck a cock to get it out of his system but he’s increasingly concerned that it’s a person he wants, not any particular kind of sex. But there’s no point in wanting that, because Hollander said it was over, so it is.
Telling himself that doesn’t make him feel any less awful.
It’s almost humiliating, to be lying in some random hotel room in fucking Dallas and realizing that, despite hooking up with four different people in the space of a week, he’s lonely. He feels pathetic. He can have anyone he wants, and the only thing he wants is for the one person who doesn’t want him back to be in this bed with him. Just to be able to hold him.
“Blyat (Fuck),” he mutters at the ceiling, and pulls a pillow over his face. Maybe he can fucking smother himself with it.
He pretends to be asleep when Carmichael gets back a while later, trying to let himself be amused by Carmichael’s clumsy attempts to be quiet so as not to wake him up. But it’s not until after about an hour of Carmichael snoring in the next bed over that Ilya finally manages to actually doze off.
Shane returns from the showers to find the locker room far more animated than when he left it. Everyone has their phones out, and when he sees Shane coming, JJ says, “Câlisse (Holy shit), Hollander, about fucking time! Ilya Rozanov got caught kissing a man.”
Shane is surprised he manages to stay upright with how fast the blood drains out of his face. JJ said “a man”, so presumably it’s not Shane? But people will surely be looking into things now, and Shane’s certain they haven’t been as careful sometimes as they needed to be. He’s ashamed to admit that it’s only after this has all run through his head that he thinks about Rozanov himself. About Russia. Fuck, it doesn’t matter if Shane’s not implicated, this is still so fucking bad.
“What?” he manages to say, maybe a beat too late, although no one seems particularly concerned.
“Yeah, man, Deadspin has pictures and everything.”
JJ gives Shane his phone, and right there on the screen is Ilya Rozanov kissing a man on a dance floor. The man has his hands on Rozanov’s ass and Rozanov has his fingers curled into the man’s blond hair, so it’s clearly a reciprocal situation. There’s a sick swoop of jealousy in the pit of Shane’s stomach, as though he has any right. As though that’s what’s important in this situation. He doesn’t know what the fuck to say.
“Wild,” he says eventually, and JJ gives him a strange look as he takes his phone back. Fuck.
“So I guess all those women were an act, huh?” says Comeau on the other side of the room, and he sounds almost gleeful about it. Shane wants to scream. He wants to tell Comeau that it’s not fucking funny. He wants to ask if anyone in this locker room has any idea what could happen to Ilya now if he has to go home. Shane wants to run away.
“Nah, dude,” Hayden says to Comeau, shaking his head. “I once saw him straight up fingerbanging a woman in a hallway of a hotel. If it’s an act, he’s really fucking good at it.”
“Guys,” Shane hears himself say, “This is kind of fucked up of Deadspin, I don’t know if we should be —”
That draws a few laughs from the room, which is the exact opposite of what Shane wanted to happen. “Loosen up for once, Hollander,” Mitty says, chucking one of his gloves at Shane’s head. “I promise fucking everyone is talking.”
“That doesn’t mean we need to be spreading the pictures around, or anything. He must be having a terrible time right now.” The Raiders are still on the road, if Shane remembers correctly, but he doesn’t know what city they’re in.
“Oh, I hope he is,” Koch says with a snort. “If he has some off games we’ll pass Boston in the rankings.”
“We’re not spreading shit, Hollander,” JJ says, ignoring Koch and still sounding playful. Amused. “The Internet has that handled.”
Shane doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do right now. He wants so badly to tell everyone off, but he’s already getting some odd looks just from the mild pushback he’s offered. Defeated, he shrugs and starts pulling his street clothes on. His skin crawls with shame as he gets dressed as quickly as possible without defending Rozanov further. He mumbles something about his parents wanting to talk to him after practice as he passes Hayden on the way out, and doesn’t look at anyone’s face.
He manages to drive almost halfway home before he has to pull over to have a panic attack about it all. Fuck. Why the fuck would Rozanov do something so reckless? How are his teammates reacting? How is his coach reacting? Shane’s heard LeClaire can be a dickhead, but he has no idea what he would do about this. What about his family back in Russia? Maybe… even if they are prejudiced, maybe they love Ilya enough to look past this? To have his back? Shane doesn’t have a good feeling about that scenario, though, based on what little he knows about that situation — the way Rozanov had sounded on the phone last time Shane saw him —
Fuck, he absolutely cannot start thinking about that now. He feels terrible enough already.
He just hopes that Ilya has someone there with him. Someone he can talk to. Someone on his side. Shane has a feeling that if he tried to reach out, Rozanov wouldn’t answer.
“Sveta,” Ilya says into the phone, smiling for the first time all day. He’s standing by the elevator of the team’s hotel in Anaheim; a bunch of guys wanted to go out for lunch before the game, and he’s decided to join them. Probably better than sulking alone in his room, again.
Before he can even say anything else, like hello or how are you, she starts speaking, too fast for it to be anything good. “Are you at your hotel?” she asks, and Ilya nods before he remembers to confirm it verbally. “Good. Don’t go out. There are photographs of you kissing a man.”
“What?” he says. He’s sure he misheard somehow. He’s been speaking English too much and now he doesn’t understand Russian, because that can’t be what she said.
“You went to a gay bar? In Dallas?”
Fuck. Fuck. “No one would recognize me in Dallas,” he says, but it’s a useless thing to say, because he had been recognized. Maybe he just wants her not to think he’s a complete fucking idiot. Even though he clearly is.
“Someone did, Ilyusha,” she says, unnecessarily but not unkindly. “Deadspin has an article up. I saw it on Twitter.”
Marleau chooses this moment to emerge from his and Ilya’s room, joining him by the elevators to wait for the rest of their lunch group. “You okay, Rozy?” he asks, a frown on his face.
Ilya nods jerkily. He can’t imagine how he must look right now. “I have… small issue to deal with,” he says, and hopes Cliff won’t notice the fact that his voice is shaking slightly. “I will get room service. See you all at rink later.”
Marleau lets him go without argument. Ilya slips back into their room and sits down heavily on his bed. His ears are ringing. “What the fuck am I going to do?” he asks Sveta, and by now it’s completely obvious from his voice how much he’s not holding it together.
Before she can reply, his phone starts chiming and vibrating endlessly. He’s not sure what is making it happen, and he doesn’t want to look.
“I don’t know,” Sveta says slowly. She’s only a year older than he is, but she always knows what to do, and hearing her sound lost makes him feel completely unmoored. “Do you want me to fly down?”
Ilya forces himself to swallow the yes, please, right now that wants to burst out of his mouth. “No. No, we are back in Boston tomorrow.”
“Call your agent?”
“I don’t think I have an agent anymore. Or I won’t once I tell him why I’m calling.” There’s always the possibility of a miracle, but his agent came up in the Russian league and lives in a stately penthouse in St. Petersburg, so he’s not feeling optimistic.
“Fuck, Ilyusha,” Sveta sighs. She sounds despondent, now. “I will ask Papa if he knows any US agents who would be willing to have you.” They both know that whoever takes him on after this will be after his money, and not so much his well-being, but he has to be represented by someone. Someone better at English than he is, who will at least know his rights, if nothing else.
His phone is still going wild in his hand, and also Ilya’s pretty sure that if he has to stay on the line any longer listening to Sveta sound so defeated, he’s going to completely lose it. So he swallows hard and says, “I have to go.”
“Ilyusha —”
“I will call you if I need to,” Ilya interrupts her. “And I’ll speak to you after the game. I love you.”
“Good luck tonight. Score a goal for me.” She’s trying hard to sound more cheerful, Ilya can tell, but she’s not managing it. “I love you too.”
As soon as he hangs up, his phone starts ringing with a call from his coach. There’s no way Ilya can take it. He’s in very serious danger of bursting into tears as it is; his throat has gone tight. Almost without thinking, he hits the button on the side of his phone that declines the call. He’ll be in even more shit for that, but he just can’t.
The second he ends the incoming call, his screen lights up with notifications. The team group chat is pinging with messages faster than he can read the pop-ups, but someone has definitely linked the article. Most people seem to be confused right now, but he knows that won’t last. Sveta would have mentioned if there was any chance it wasn’t him in the photos. At least one person has already sent a puke emoji. The team doesn’t seem like they’re going to come down on his side.
He covers his face with his hands and takes a few of the slowest, deepest breaths he can manage. That’s not saying much, but it’s enough to pull him back from the brink.
His phone starts ringing with another call from LeClaire. He knows only bad things will come of dodging it a second time, so he picks up. “Rozanov,” LeClaire says without any further greeting, “you’re scratched tonight.” He sounds like he’s barely restraining himself from shouting. Like he might be talking through his teeth. “If anyone in the media contacts you, don’t fucking comment. You and your agent will be expected at a meeting with management once we get home, but until then, I don’t care about any explanations, so just save it.”
“Yes, sir,” Ilya says.
“There will also be a team meeting before the next practice. You can apologize to your teammates there. In the meantime, try not to do anything else fucking stupid.”
Then LeClaire hangs up on him. Well, it could probably be worse. Maybe.
He goes into the group chat only long enough to mute it, deliberately not looking at any of the messages. As he does, he gets a text from Cliff.
Marly
Are the photos real?
Ilya considers ignoring him, but Cliff is (was?) his closest friend on the team and hadn’t started off by calling him a faggot, so maybe he wouldn’t be contributing to the puke emojis in the group chat if Ilya at least answers.
Ilya
Yes. I assume. I haven’t seen them. After our game in Dallas?
Marly
That’s what the article says, yeah. So you’re gay?
Ilya
Bi. I like both. I am scratched tonight, so you might be moved to second line with Joey. That’s where I would put you anyway.
Marly
OK.
He doesn’t say anything further, and after a few minutes of waiting for another text to arrive, Ilya lies back on his bed. That wasn’t so bad. Now he just has to survive the next… forever.
Shane feels like he’s in a dream. A really weird, bad dream, one that will have him feeling fucked up all morning after he finally wakes up. He avoids ESPN, afraid they’ll be talking about it. He tries to distract himself by playing MLH 2017 but gives up after ten minutes, unable to concentrate and not wanting to fuck up his (fictional) team’s playoff run. Ilya grins at him from the cover of the game and Shane catches himself staring at it for way too long. At least he got to be on the cover this time, because he would never have been asked after this.
Over the last six years, Shane has imagined countless scenarios where he and Ilya weren’t careful enough and got caught out. He’s lost sleep over it, he’s worked himself into a panic over it, he’s mentally drafted dozens of hypothetical statements for hypothetical scenarios. Somehow, never once did this scenario occur to him: one of them outed, while the other stayed safely in the closet.
Maybe he should feel lucky, or relieved or something. But he doesn’t. He feels sick and guilty, even though he doesn’t strictly have anything to feel guilty about. Worst of all, some tiny part of him — one that has absolutely no interest in reason — wishes that it were him in those photos with Ilya. That they were in this together, as a team. And maybe he hates this other man, just a little bit, for getting to kiss Ilya like that. Even though it was Shane who ran away, so he has no right to be jealous.
At 8 PM, Shane puts on the Raiders v. Geese game. He normally wouldn’t bother watching unless the Metros were playing one of the teams soon, but he needs to see Ilya with his own eyes, see if he’s okay, and he can’t think of any other way to achieve that right now. Maybe Boston is backing him up — if not for reasons of genuine support, then because Rozanov is an amazing fucking hockey player who brought the Stanleigh Cup back to Boston for the first time in thirty years. If they’re backing him up, maybe even talking about extending him, maybe he’ll be safe. He can apply for a green card or something. Surely the Raiders can see that keeping Ilya Rozanov is just good business sense, regardless of who he’s kissing.
The news that Ilya is a healthy scratch is the first sign that Shane has been way too optimistic.
“Maybe they're resting him up so early in the season but I'd put money on it being about the Deadspin article leaking photographs of him in a scandalous position in Dallas two nights ago. What do you think, Jim?” one of the play-by-play announcers says, as if it’s just an interesting thought experiment rather than a sign of something terrible coming down the pike. They cut to Ilya in the press box, and he looks pale and drawn. His eyes are red-rimmed. Shane’s chest hurts. He wants to reach into his TV and pull Ilya to safety.
He can’t help himself anymore. He picks his phone up from the coffee table and opens his text thread with ‘Lily’, ignoring the twinge he feels when he sees the most recent set of messages from several weeks ago. He writes, re-writes, and deletes several drafts before he finally sends a simple, Hey. Are you OK?
“I would’ve played Rozanov tonight if I were LeClaire,” Jim says. “Boston hasn’t beat Anaheim on their ice in four years now, so I’m sure they’d like to break that drought. I think it’s more likely to be about the photos of him kissing a man that were leaked earlier today, as you suggested, Tony. Whether it’s interrupting team cohesion or Rozanov doesn’t feel like he can get his head in the game for tonight, we’ll have to wait until LeClaire gives a statement.”
Right, of course. Maybe Ilya’s just not feeling able to play. Shane tries to let himself feel relieved — to ignore the fact that Rozanov is known for thriving on adversity.
It’s a hard-fought game on both sides, with Boston squeaking out the win 2-1. Shane doesn’t bother listening to the talking heads analyze a high-sticking penalty one of the Geese took in the third period that led to Boston scoring the game-winning goal on the power play, instead just anxious to know whether Ilya has media availability.
He doesn’t, and when Coach LeClaire is asked about him, he doesn’t manage to hide his disdain. “Rozanov's well aware of our expectations. He knows we expect our players' focus to be on the team and the game, and he knows he hasn't met that expectation this week.” He refuses to comment on the photos, but there’s a muscle jumping in his jaw.
Shane turns off the TV then, not giving a shit what LeClaire has to say about Boston breaking their Anaheim drought or whatever other bullshit. Rozanov still hasn’t texted him back. He goes to bed, but doesn’t fall asleep — he can’t stop thinking about Ilya, the miserable look on his face as he sat out the game in the press box. What he must be going through right now, and how alone he probably feels. And Shane wants to talk to him so badly, but he can’t, and it’s his own fault.
Rushing out on Ilya like that the last time they saw each other was, Shane’s pretty sure, one of the stupidest things he’s ever done. Heartless, almost. He hadn’t been thinking about it that way, obviously — he’d been panicking — and he hasn’t really been able to bring himself to think about the whole incident ever since. He’s done such a good job of not thinking about what it means about himself that he enjoys sucking Ilya Rozanov’s cock so much that he counts down the days until they see each other next. He’s managed it for years, and then Ilya called him by his first name and it had suddenly all come crashing into clarity — the way things had changed between them over the past year, the way they’d started actually texting each other and not just sexting, the fact that Ilya had asked him to stay and the fact that Shane had wanted to. It wasn’t just sex, not anymore, and Shane had barely been coping with ‘just sex’. He couldn’t handle the sudden realization that he’s caught feelings. He’d panicked, and he regrets it so much that it makes him feel physically ill.
He’s also terrified that he’s never going to meet the “right” girl. Sure, he hadn’t made much of an effort, but the thought of trying to date a girl feels so exhausting on top of all the hockey. Meanwhile, one of the rookies just got engaged, and Hayden has just announced he and Jackie are expecting a fourth child. And instead of dating, putting himself out there or whatever, Shane spent the recent off-season sitting on his couch, smiling at his phone, texting Ilya. When was the last time he’d even tried to think of anything but Rozanov when he jerked off? He’d tried watching some porn, concentrating on the girl, but he could barely keep an erection.
But it’s not just that they’re girls, it’s that they’re not Ilya Rozanov. That’s the part that really fucking scares him. He doesn’t know how he let himself end up in this position, but here he is anyway, and he’s already completely screwed it up. And now Ilya is in a really bad spot — maybe even in danger — and Shane can’t shake the feeling that he needs to do something, but he has no idea what to do.
Against his better judgement, he grabs his phone off his sidetable and opens Google. He knows that Russia isn’t good about gay rights, but he has no idea how bad. Is being gay illegal? Will Ilya get hanged? Does Russia have capital punishment? The results he gets are… well, not quite as bad as he expected, but still extremely fucking bad. He’s going to have nightmares for sure after some of the articles he’s read. And yeah, any vague hopes he’d had that maybe Ilya’s high profile enough that he could go back to Russia without any insurmountable complications have been completely crushed.
He hasn’t breached his contract and there’s no way the league can spin it like he has, so he’s safe until the end of next season, but after that? Will the Raiders keep him? Will they be willing to give him an actual long contract, or will he be stuck on a series of bridge contracts that keep him in limbo, unable to guarantee anything past the next year or two? What if he gets put on waivers? Shane has no fucking idea how immigration law works, and he quickly gets overwhelmed trying to Google it.
Despite his lack of law degree, there’s one thing he can think of that would be, relatively speaking, an easy path for Ilya to get a passport from a country besides Russia — to get a Canadian passport.
The thought stops him cold. He sits there, tangled up in his bedsheets, hands frozen around his phone, breathing shallowly, and then he lets out a hysterical giggle.
It’s insane. Completely insane. He absolutely cannot ask Ilya Rozanov to marry him. He clearly needs to go the fuck to sleep.
But he can’t let Ilya be ostracized from the MLH and sent back to Russia to be… disappeared, or tortured, or… he can’t even bring himself to think about it. His stomach lurches dangerously when he tries. He can’t let that happen, he won’t let that happen, because Ilya Rozanov is a brilliant person who doesn’t deserve any of this, and Shane is realizing right now, at what is possibly the most inopportune time imaginable, that he might be in love with him.
He sits there. He lets out a few more hysterical giggles. He lies down and puts his phone back on the bedside table. And then he finally closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He’ll revisit this fucking insanity in the morning to see if he has any better, less crazy ideas once he’s gotten some rest.