Chapter Text
January, 2016.
Shane finally sleeps mostly through the night on Thursday. It’s his fourth night back in the city. He wants to think that means it’s better, everything’s resolved, but the house settles weird around his bones, and even though he’d skated himself near-empty during his first practice back at the training rink, he’d still needed two sleeping pills and three hours of tossing and turning in his bed before he could fall under.
So it’s not better. Everything’s fucked.
He misses Switzerland; he misses a lot of things.
It doesn’t change anything.
The fifth day back in Montreal, he wakes up with a bone-dry mouth and a pounding headache. When he blinks up at the ceiling of his bedroom, it takes him a minute to recognize it as his. It takes him another minute to stop holding his breath and waiting for the mattress to shift next to him, for an arm to fling over his stomach and drag him back into a firm chest, for feet to hook around his calves and tangle their legs together beneath the covers.
It’s like he’s operating on a five-second delay, body and brain not in sync. Maybe it’s like jetlag, if jetlag also makes you feel like you’ve been run over by the plane too.
And it really doesn’t make sense for him to feel jetlagged still. He’s had almost a week to acclimatize back to Montreal. Five whole days of getting up in the morning here, of going to the rink before noon, of shutting everything down at ten at night for sleep. There’s nothing for him in Zürich anymore, and his body should know that as well as his mind does.
There’s no time for anything else; he’d gotten off the plane, a direct flight from Zürich to Montreal, and he’d hit the ground running. Everyone’s saying that the team has got to give 110% this season, to make up for the lost time. Crowell makes a big show of setting up a press conference in the MLH headquarters and professing his sincere gratitude towards the fans for sticking around during the lockout, telling them that the 2015-2016 season is going to be amazing. Worth the wait.
Sure, it’s going to start in the middle of January instead of October, and yes, there are going to half as many games as usual due to the compressed scheduling, but everyone in the MLH is dedicated and committed to bringing hockey back to North America—even if hockey only ever left in the first place because leadership in the MLH was driving for unfair changes to players’ contracts and salaries and protections, and and and.
The important thing is that this season is compressed, yes, but every hockey player is going to play their hearts out on the ice, leave everything out there for the fans. They’re all just so excited to be back. They can’t wait to make up for lost time.
Shane is so excited to be back in Montreal. He is so excited to be back in Montreal that he knows all of his lines. He started practicing on the plane back to Canada.
He can’t wait to make up for lost time, get going, take a crack at this season. The ice was nice in Zürich, but it wasn’t MLH nice. It wasn’t home ice nice. And his team—of course he missed his team. He missed being a captain, he missed his guys. Sure, it was fun playing with the Lions over in Switzerland. Definitely a learning experience, it’s a whole new kind of hockey out there, and the players are just phenomenal. And—yeah, of course, no. Yeah, go ahead, ask about Rozanov, haha. It’s expected. Yeah. Uh, yeah, playing on a team with Rozanov—it was good. He’s a special player. Good winger too, which Shane didn’t expect because he’s such a strong center, but hey, some guys get all the luck. Haha. And what, sorry, what was the question?
Oh, yeah. We did live together. Just for a few months. But, you know, neither of us spoke Swiss-German, so it just sort of made sense. To stick together. Be the two guys from the MLH figuring out Swiss hockey and Swiss traffic and Swiss grocery stores. Together. The Lions’ front office set it up. It just. It just sort of made sense.
Anyway, I’m so excited to be back in Montreal. We’ve got a good group of guys here, I think we can take it all the way this season. I can’t wait to get back out on the ice at the Bell Centre, ring in the season with the fans. Make up for lost time.
When Shane tilts his head away from the ceiling, his eyes land almost immediately on the hulking form of his unpacked suitcase, resting up against the wall of his bedroom. He hasn’t touched it since he got in.
He can’t remember what he packed. He can’t remember what he left behind, threw out, or gave away to the guys on the team because there was no point bringing it back to Canada. There was so much stuff. Shane hadn’t realized exactly how much stuff he was accumulating until it was time to do something with it.
A potato peeler, a bottle opener, a Swiss flag mug: all things he thinks he left in the house. The souvenir cup from one of the thousands of Chirstmas markets they’d walked through, he thinks—he threw it away. A pair of sweats that could have been either of theirs and smelled like the both of them—he isn’t sure.
He knows he kept a Zürich jersey, white and blue with a stenciled lion’s head embossed on the front and a border of red along the hem. He just can’t remember which one he grabbed in the flurry of packing up four months of his life in eight hours. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he opens his suitcase and sees a large 81 looking back at him. He doesn’t want to risk it.
He’s been trying not to think about it. It’s only been five days.
It’s already been five days.
Shane’s condo feels too big. So empty it’s like it echoes with every step he takes. He has the heating on high, and it still feels drafty, but that’s just Montreal in January maybe.
Tonight, Boston faces off against Philadelphia. It’s their first game of the season. Half the commentators think they should take another week, tee up some low-stakes pre-season games so the players can figure out how to meld with each other again after such a long break. The other half thinks it’s puck time, that they’ve waited long enough, that if the season doesn’t start now, it may as well not start at all.
Shane’s been trying to avoid all the press about the Boston game, but it’s splashed all over his Twitter feed and his Instagram feed. ESPN’s posting about it, of course. Banners with links to watch it take up half of the website. Welcome Back, Puck-Time, is what Shane’s greeted with when he clicks over to the official MLH homepage.
It’s a big deal, first game of the new season.
Shane wants to text Ilya so badly he thinks he’s going to be sick.
He doesn’t though. There’s not much to say. They lived together for a few months in Zürich. It was the Lions’ idea. It just sort of made sense at the time. Rozanov became Ilya around the end of October, and Shane keeps trying to remember to call him Rozanov again, in his head, but he keeps messing it up, like maybe the version of himself that could look at Ilya Rozanov and see a rival, a last name, a guy he wanted to keep at a distance, is lost forever. Perpetually out of reach. Only a memory.
Add it to the fucking list.
In practice, Shane keeps shooting the puck to empty ice and expecting to hear the sound of it catching against a stick that’s just not there. Hayden keeps sending him these long longs, all wide eyes and slanted brows. “I know,” Shane says, every time, before Hayden can even speak. “Fuck. I know.”
It’s never what he wants to say, but what he wants to say is way too cruel. Uncalled for.
Ilya would have been there. Ilya would have completed that fucking play.
It’s no use anyway. Ilya’s five hours away, back in Boston where he belongs. Playing as a 1C for the Raiders, like he hasn’t spent the last four months being the best right wing Shane’s ever had. He wonders how many passes Ilya’s missing, how many shots he’s still trying to send Shane’s way despite the distance between them.
He hopes a lot, even though he knows it’s selfish.
He knows he could probably text Ilya and ask and Ilya would tell him, because it’s not like they sat down and decided they’d never speak to each other off the ice ever again or anything.
It’s not like they took a break out of packing the house to re-package themselves back into, like, the people they’d been when they first arrived. It’s not like they talked about it, the aftermath of it all.
It’s not like there’s much to say.
They lived together for a few months in Zürich. It was a small house, owned by one of the Lions’ owner’s brothers who only ever spent the summer there. Two floors, three bedrooms, a nice kitchen even if someone decided to paint it this fugly yellow color, a tiny balcony overlooking a narrow street that Ilya would smoke out on at least once a week. It was conveniently located, close to the training rink and a few tram lines for getting around the city, even though Shane rented out a car the second he got off the plane. It was convenient. It was a nice place, small but not so small that they had to live on top of each other or anything.
They just did that anyway. It was a choice they made.
And Shane can’t unmake it, the same way he can’t stop misfiring pucks on the ice and making enough pasta for two and waking up disjointed and confused, reaching out across his mattress for a body that’s five hundred kilometers away.
But texting Ilya—or not texting Ilya—that’s still something he can control. Missing him is a different beast altogether, out of his hands and a battle he’s been losing since he boarded the fucking plane back to Montreal. Since before that. Since he’d pulled all his clothes off the hangers in Ilya’s closet and put them in his suitcase, maybe. Since before that. Since they got the call that the lockout was over, maybe. Since before that. Since before Zürich, maybe.
He just didn’t have the word for it back then. Or he did, but he’d only had the one word for it, and now, after knowing Ilya for four months, he has a hundred new words for it. For all the ways he misses him.
But texting him? Shane can put his foot down there. Rein it in, pull it back. Sometimes you can’t help how you feel, but you can definitely decide what to do about it. That’s what a coach had told him when he was eleven, after the first and only time he’d gotten so mad at a missed goal he’d broken his stick on the metal frame of the net.
Sometimes you’re gonna feel things you don’t know what to do about. But the important thing, hey, Shane. Listen to me. The important thing to remember is that you control those emotions up until the second you let them control you.
The problem is that they’d been sort of stupid, in Zürich. It’d been a convenience thing at first, a live-in hook-up that was always as up for it as the other guy. And then it’d become an avalanche of feelings Shane couldn’t ignore, syrupy sweetness in the early mornings and late-night whispers breathed out in the space between their pillows. They’d lost sight of who they were in Switzerland, where no one cared about them outside of the hockey they played. They’d toed the line of being more, of being something, and then they’d catapulted themselves across it in wordless agreement. They’d spent four months living out some sort of fucked up parody of domestic bliss, except the love wasn’t really mutual and they weren’t building towards any sort of future except the next tomorrow morning.
And then the MLH pulled them back, two dogs on leashes with collars cutting into their throats. And there’s no point arguing against it or pretending otherwise. They both got on the plane. Separate planes. Heading towards separate cities they’d have to relearn how to call home.
There’s not much else to fucking say.
January, 2016.
Ilya groans, long and low as he tangles his fingers through Shane’s hair and tugs. This is his favorite sensation in the world, paired with one of his favorite sights: Shane Hollander on his knees for him, gagging for it. Gagging around the length of him and still trying to take more like he’s starving for it. Like it’s been months in between this, instead of just a few hours.
It feels good. Every fucking time it feels so good that Ilya thinks he’s going to lose his mind. Shane pulls back, just a little, and runs his tongue up over the underside of him; Ilya’s helpless against the urge to buck his hips forward and throw his head back.
“Fuck,” he curses when his skull connects with the wall behind them with a loud thunk. In front of him, he hears Shane hum in something that sounds like amusement. It’s garbled though, muffled by the cock in his mouth.
“Is something funny, solnyshko?” he asks, tearing his focus effortlessly away from his own pain to instead center around Shane. Shane makes another noise, blinking up at him with smug laughter lines blooming around the corners of his eyes.
It makes Ilya want to be mean. Well, it makes Ilya want to be a lot of things, say a lot of things, do a lot of things, but it’s safest just to be mean. It’s the least risky of all his emotions, all his desires when it comes to Hollander. It always has been. “Other than the fact that you cannot take all of me down your throat, even after all this practice, hm?”
It’s supposed to be harsh, maybe mocking, because whenever he uses that tone with Shane, Shane goes shivery all over and tries so hard to be even better at whatever he’s doing. Sucking cock, riding it, letting Ilya split him open. As if he isn’t already the best Ilya’s ever had.
So he wants to be harsh, but his hands haven’t received this message. His thumb is too busy stroking tender lines along Shane’s cheekbone, over the spray of his freckles while the other hand pets over his hair gently. Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to reach for cruelty around Shane, even the feigned kind. It doesn’t fit right around him these days, like he’s reciting lines for a part of a play he doesn’t want to be cast in anymore.
The most frightening thing about that is that if he’s honest with himself, that was true before Zürich.
“Maybe this is for the best though,” Ilya listens to himself say. Shane’s eyes are closed, but he nuzzles his head into the brush of Ilya’s fingers like he can’t help it either. “We have dinner reservations.”
It’s a nice spot too, some place Nimar told them about during practice that had Shane looking quietly interested in the locker room afterwards. It’s very, very early January, still technically the holiday weekend, which means Ilya can probably convince him to order the full fondue experience the restaurant’s known for instead of whatever birdfood diet-friendly meal he’s planning to subsist on for the rest of the year.
Ilya is excited for it. He’s even dressed up a little more than normal, but he doesn’t think anyone can blame him. He’s taking Shane Hollander out to a nice, quiet, candlelit restaurant in Zürich for a dinner that’s just the two of them, and no one will care. No one will take pictures of them on their phones, no one will post about it later.
They will have a nice dinner, just the two of them at a restaurant, all the rest of the world left outside on the doorstep to wait. And then they’ll come back here, to their house, and they’ll fuck each other stupid in their bed the way they’ve done pretty much every night since September. And then tomorrow, they’ll wake up all tangled together in fresh sheets, because Shane will make them change the bedding before they go to sleep, and they’ll drive to practice together. And then they’ll play hockey. Together.
If someone told Ilya that sequence of events two years ago, he’d have accused them of wasting his time with nonsense and fever dreams. But it’s not nonsense. It’s just his plan for the night.
His daily fucking schedule involves Shane Hollander sitting across from him at a restaurant, laughing and covering his mouth with his hand while he hooks their ankles together beneath the table.
It also involves, as of five minutes ago, meeting Shane at the door of their home, ready to leave with his phone and wallet in his hands, only for him to receive a very reproachful, almost angry look before Shane’s sunk down to his knees in front of him.
Like it’s Ilya’s fault Shane’s so desperate for it all the time.
“I can suck you off and we can still make our dinner reservations,” Shane mumbles, pulling back enough to speak. His voice is rough. Ilya knows logically it’s probably because he yelled himself hoarse during practice today. His dick twitches at the sound anyway, a learned response.
“How many times do I have to tell you,” Ilya scolds, brushing his fingers through Shane’s fringe again, helpless. “I am a gentleman, Hollander, I would have to get you back.”
Shane flushes a deep red, and his eyes fall down. “That won’t take long either,” he mumbles, and Ilya groans. It is always so good with Shane. He is always so sweet like this. So earnest. Somehow, six years into this and four months into having this all the time, it still catches Ilya off-guard.
It still makes him feel weak at the knees, but then—he’s always been a weak man when it comes to Shane Hollander.
“Okay, this is what we will—” Ilya starts to say, only to be cut off by the harsh and unwelcome sound of Shane’s phone ringing from the small table next to the door.
On his knees, Shane tenses, automatic. He pulls off of him completely, sits back on his heels.
“No, Hollander, get back here, please,” Ilya whines, only partially joking. He’s already lost him though, he knows it. Shane’s never once in his life ignored a fucking phone call. He’s the only person under the age of fifty Ilya even knows that keeps his phone’s volume on high.
“It could be an emergency,” Shane tells him, not for the first time.
“It could be Hayden Pike,” Ilya says, but he’s been beaten by Hollander’s sense of responsibility and duty, and he knows it. At least just the thought of Pike is enough to make his dick begin to soften.
Shane pats his thigh, only a little condescendingly, before he stands. “And Hayds could be having an emergency,” he reminds him reproachfully, like Ilya’s supposed to care very deeply at the thought of Pike’s hypothetical emergency.
“This is emergency, Hollander,” Ilya growls playfully, tugging Shane into his arms and pressing his hips up against the matching bulge in Shane’s dress pants. Like he always does, Shane melts into his touch for a moment, wrapping his arms around Ilya’s neck and tucking his smile into his chest. Ilya’s so fucking glad he didn’t put on his jacket; he can feel the edges of Shane’s lips pressing into his skin. “This needs immediate attention.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Shane tells him, but there’s no sting to the words. He kisses him to take it away, right over his pulse. Then he lingers for another moment before pulling away.
Ilya thinks that he’ll be grateful for the rest of his life for that—for the fact that Zürich taught Shane to linger in his arms. Or maybe just that something in the last four months has softened within him and he’s allowed himself learn.
“It is the restaurant calling because we have missed our reservation,” Ilya predicts, leaning back against the wall as Shane stomps over to the entryway table. He almost trips over his own shoes, lying discarded next to the shoe rack from where Shane kicked them off after practice this afternoon, and Ilya has to focus on stuffing his dick back into his pants so he doesn’t ruin everything right then and there by saying Shane Hollander, I love you.
Shane shoots him a dirty look over his shoulder. “We have plenty of time,” he argues, but it’s weak because they both know he’s never been good at keeping track of things that aren’t already divided into twenty-minute periods.
“Tell them that we are running very late because Shane Hollander is moy dorogoy,” he grins, flashing his teeth in a smarmy enough way that Shane’s rolling his eyes and coloring up automatically.
That’s something Ilya’s learned in Zürich: say something in Russian like it’s dirty, and Shane’s never going to demand a translation, probably too embarrassed by all the possibilities of what Ilya could have said. And Ilya can survive Shane thinking he’s calling him a desperate slut or something even worse, if it means he can really look at him and say my beloved, no follow-up questions asked.
It’s wrong, probably, to take advantage of the fact that Shane doesn’t speak the language that Ilya finds himself reaching for to convey his rawest emotions. It’s also become the only thing keeping him sane since they started living together. If he couldn’t release the pressure building up inside of him, he thinks he’d have blown it all back in October, September. Maybe earlier than that.
“Haha,” Shane says, and then he accepts the call without looking at the ID. “Hello? This is Shane Hollander.”
Ilya adjusts himself in his pants, splitting his attention between his own hands and Shane’s face in case it really is the restaurant calling. He’d used Shane’s telephone number to make the booking a few weeks ago. He’d been a bit stupid; he’d put down the reason for the occasion as anniversary. It’d felt like a joke at the time, given that today is technically the anniversary of the day Russia beat Canada to win the Prospect’s Cup in 2010, but it feels like it lands wrong now. If the restaurant is calling Shane to ask about it. To confirm something or another.
“Wait, Hayds, I can’t understand you, dude, slow down,” Shane demands, and Ilya has a moment to feel the normal pang of irritation he feels when Pike rings Shane. It happens far too often, in Ilya’s opinion. Doesn’t Pike have children? A family? Shane is in Switzerland, it is not as if he has gone overseas to fight a war. He does not need to be looked after from afar. Ilya is here, from up close.
But before he can even paste his usual exaggerated and expected Hayden-Pike Grimace across his face, Shane blinks and takes a half-step backwards, like he’s just taken a hit.
His eyebrows crease together. The smile lingering in the edges of his mouth melts away, like it was never there at all.
Ilya’s chest constricts automatically; his heart beats once at its normal pace, lagging behind the stimuli his eyes have documented, and then it’s in freefall, because Shane looks blindsided. No, he looks devastated.
“What is it, Hollander?” Ilya hears himself ask, and Shane’s eyes snap to his like they’re magnetized. His shoulders are at his ears, Ilya doesn’t know if he’s seen him breathe yet. His phone is still in his hand, fingers white-knuckle tight around it.
Something is wrong. Pike is still talking, and it’s loud enough or maybe everything else is just suddenly quiet enough that Ilya can hear him. Not the words, but the steady blur of noise screeching through Shane’s phone.
Something is wrong. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Ilya knows it. He can feel it in his gut. He’s felt it before. Like missing a step on the stairs but you never stop falling. There’s a lurch and then nothing. There’s a door, ajar by just a few inches that Ilya knows better than to push all the way open. But maybe he’s still that child who pushed open the door anyway, even when he knew he shouldn’t. Maybe he’s still twelve years old, just grown up a bit more, because he takes a step closer to Shane.
Shane, who looks—
“Shane, what has happened?” Ilya asks, and it’s not a plea except it is.
He should never have let Shane pick up that phone, he thinks nonsensically. They could have ignored this. This didn’t have to happen if he didn’t let Shane pick up the fucking phone. And now something is wrong because Shane looks—
“Yeah, I hear you,” Shane says, hollow, and his dark eyes are fixed on Ilya’s face, roving over it like he’s trying to find any hint of comfort he can. Ilya takes another step forward automatically, hands reaching out to offer it to him. He doesn’t need to ask. He never needs to ask.
Hayden, okay. Ilya tries to think. Pin the thoughts down into some manageable order. Shane loves a plan, loves actionable items and things he can control. Ilya can do this for him if he needs it. Okay. Something is wrong with Hayden Pike. They will need a car. To the airport. Which means they will need a ticket. Ilya will need Shane's passport information to get him a ticket. They will need to talk to the coaches, mark Shane as a healthy scratch for the game.
Maybe for multiple games, because something is wrong and hearing about it has made Shane look wrecked, devastated, like the aftermath of a flood: everything you know and recognize and love is still there, but it’s different now. Misplaced, broken into new and strange configurations.
“It is Hayden?” Ilya asks, unsure and wrong-footed. He cannot help if he doesn’t know the problem, but Shane’s still on the phone. “Is Pike okay, Shane? His family?”
Shane’s eyes are wet. Ilya steps closer. There is nothing in the world strong enough to keep him away.
“Yeah,” Shane says into the phone, and he blinks. His eyes fall down, then up, then over Ilya’s shoulder, and then he’s turning away completely, no, don't, focusing on the other side of the entryway hall where they’ve hung a poster of a New Yorker cover—no frame, just fraying tape holding it up that Ilya’s been meaning to replace for the last month and a half. He’ll get to it later, it’s fine. It’s not important. Not right now, not when—
“Yeah,” Shane says, like he’s agreeing with Ilya, but he’s not even looking at him. “So excited, dude,” he adds in a monotone. “I’ll let you know, alright? About dates. Soon though, I guess.”
His face is a mask when he hangs up his phone, and Ilya’s stomach is a mess of knots. It’s hard to breathe around the fierce desire to wrap his arms around Shane and hide him away from the world.
Shane blinks at him and opens his mouth. His eyes are still distant, even as they look straight at him, like he still hasn’t quite come back to himself.
No, the coward in Ilya wants to say, even if it’s useless. Even if it’s too late. No, wait, I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me, solnyshko. Please.
“They’ve reached a deal,” Shane says, hollow. “The MLH and the Association.”
Ilya’s heart lurches. His knees sting, carpet burn from the feeling of the rug being yanked out from beneath his feet.
“The lockout’s over. They want the season to start by mid-January, so they’re calling all the North Americans players back from Europe as soon as possible.”
No. Nono.
“They’ll call you too, soon,” Shane says. But it’s not Shane speaking. It’s Hollander. It’s the Captain of the Metros, face set into hard lines like he’s staring down an opponent across a face-off circle. “Time to go home.”
“But—” Ilya starts, but there’s no good way to finish the sentence.
There’s nothing to fucking say that would change any of it.
But I like living here with you. But I love you. But this is home. But we have dinner reservations. But I talked with Paolo and he agreed we could repaint the kitchen for him, get rid of the yellow you hate. I was thinking maybe blue, light blue, but you know it can be whatever makes you smile the softest. I was going to ask you about it tonight, I have already found a store that can send us swatches of options.
But, but, but.
But I don't want to go.
“I need to—I’m gonna take a walk,” Shane decides, and his voice wavers. It makes Ilya’s chest ache. He slides his phone in his pocket, tries to shove his feet into his shoes. He has to bend down to put them upright first though; when he’d kicked them earlier, one had landed sole-up on top of Ilya’s boots.
Ilya bites at the inside of his cheek.
“Shane—”
“I need to call my mom,” Shane says with a shake of his head. His hands are stuffed inside his pockets, and he glances at Ilya once before he turns away quickly, like it hurts to look at him. He grabs a jacket off the hook by the door; it’s Ilya’s. “I need to get tickets for the flight back. They want us back as soon as possible. We need to—to talk with the Lions. I need to pack.”
There’s an unfamiliar burning sensation at the backs of Ilya’s eyes, and it gets worse with each word Shane says. “But,” he tries to say, and Shane stops. He looks back at him, waiting with something like hope splashed across his face, like he thinks maybe Ilya can still save any of this if he can just find the right words to stop a moving train in its tracks.
But he can’t. He can’t find any words. Doesn’t know if there’s anything he can say in any language that would make Shane stay.
He can’t stay. Neither of them can. They knew that going into this, that the moment the lockout ended, they’d be called back to the MLH and their teams, back to the way things are supposed to be. That this was a little slice of a summer’s day that was never going to last the deep winter’s freeze.
It doesn’t matter that Ilya loves Shane and the way he can’t ever remember to rinse out the milk container before throwing it out or put his shoes on the rack by the door when he takes them off. It doesn’t matter that Ilya loves living here with him, that this little, ugly house in Zürich is the first home Ilya’s ever really allowed himself to sink into. It doesn’t matter that they have reservations for dinner tonight or that they have teammates they enjoy playing with or loose, nebulous plans to see the upcoming spy movie in theaters next week.
None of it matters. The MLH has reached a deal with the Players’ Association, and the lockout is over.
This was always temporary and this is how it ends—with nothing left to say.
January, 2016.
JJ texts him around midnight, just a Youtube link and a series of laughing emojis.
Shane’s awake even though he shouldn’t be, because of course he’s awake. Everything’s fucked and his body’s keeping score, even if his brain’s trying to forget the how and the why’s of it all.
The page loads slowly, and then it kicks into gear; the video plays automatically without Shane having to press anything.
Ilya smirks at him from the screen. He’s partially undressed, hockey pads still on his shoulders and curls slicked back with sweat. He looks good. But then, he always looks good.
There’s three microphones at the edges of the shot, beat reporters hungry for the first scoop of the season, and Ilya’s entertaining all of them with the detached demeanor of a predator who’s already gotten his fill of his kill and is allowing the other, lesser members of the pack to take their nibbles. Boston won, then. Shane knows it in his gut just from the way Ilya’s holding himself.
“Ilya, how do you think the lockout will affect your team’s chances this year?” One reporter asks, and Ilya turns to look in her direction, tilting his head this way and that as if he doesn’t already know exactly what he’s going to say.
He probably practiced the same script Shane had on his flight to Boston. He is probably so excited the lockout is over, so excited to be back in Boston, so excited to play with his team, so ready to skate on home ice and leave everything out there for the fans.
“I think if all teams play like Philadelphia now after lockout, then our chances are very good,” Ilya says. “Demonstrably.”
Shane bites hard at the inside of his cheek, feeling the word land like a physical blow. Demonstrably. Ilya’s English has always been pretty good, as far as Shane’s concerned, and he’s listened to the subtle ways its improved and his confidence has grown every time they’ve met since 2009.
This is just the first time he’s ever heard Ilya use a word that Shane was there to teach him. It feels like he’s in on a secret, something only the two of them understand.
He wonders if Ilya was thinking about Shane when he said it, if he was remembering that night in October when he’d ruined a pan trying to make a fancy chicken dish to prove he was a better cook than Shane and how Shane had laughed himself sick but still helped him clean the kitchen while they waited for food to be delivered from the restaurant a few doors away.
I think it’s safe to say one of us needs eyes on him at all times in the kitchen, Rozanov. And it’s demonstrably not me.
Hollander, you can keep your eyes on me all you want. I will never complain about this.
“Ilya, you played hockey in Switzerland over the lockout, do you think that experience in a different league will affect your game now?” Another reporter asks, and Ilya shrugs, all long and languid and beautiful.
He doesn’t hesitate before he answers though; he doesn’t even pretend to. “I am better player now,” he says. “It was a good experience. I learned a lot.”
“What did you learn from having Shane Hollander as a roommate?” Someone asks, and the beat reporters chuckle and shift, swaying closer to Ilya like a rising tide.
For a moment, Ilya’s face freezes in a half-smirk. It’s such a small thing that Shane isn’t sure anyone else can see it, and then in the next second, he’s moving again, looking alive. His eyes are bright. “We shared a house, not a room,” he tells the guy, scratching at his cheek before turning away slightly, obviously searching for another question. Obviously unwilling to talk about it. Obvious to Shane, maybe. Not to anyone else.
“How was it sharing a place with Shane then, Ilya?” A different reporter asks, shark in bloody waters maybe or just looking for any gossip she can find. “Didn’t know they made houses big enough in Zürich to fit the rivalry between you two.”
There’s a new tension in Ilya’s jaw, Shane thinks. He can feel a matching tightness in his own chest. Obviously he’d known people were going to ask about it. But it’s one thing to anticipate. It’s another thing altogether to experience.
Especially because it’s not him staring down the question. It’s Ilya. And that means Shane can’t do anything about it except brace for impact.
Then Ilya smiles, a small sliver of a smirk that doesn’t really reach his eyes. “We had quiet days,” Ilya says in the video. “I am sure is normal with all roommates, no? We are not special.”
“Oh,” Shane breathes, an exhale, and he doesn’t even mean to allow the sound to leave his mouth. It just does.
It’s not a lie. They’d had their share of adjustments, of quiet days, of learning to give space and give way. Once, back in November, they’d been so angry at each other that they’d only spoken in Russian and French all evening, even as they fucked on the couch in the living room. It wasn’t like it was perfect.
It’d just felt like it, more times than not.
“C’mon, man,” someone says on the video, “give us something. One thing.”
There are so many things Ilya could say, Shane knows it. Obviously not the sex stuff, which is a relief. Obviously, he’s not going to tell Johnson from PuckNet that by the end of December, Shane’d hated sleeping alone so much that he’d risked catching Ilya’s flu just to curl up next to him in his bed.
Or that they’d accidentally swapped over half their closet of athleisure wear without even realizing it and a teammate had to point out that a shirt Shane wore to practice once had Cyrillic on the back.
Or that Shane hated mornings even if he always forced himself out of bed before the sun rose and it took him two cups of coffee before he felt human, but they discovered in November it only took three soft morning kisses from Ilya to make him feel human again.
Like, obviously Ilya isn’t going to tell Chester from Crease Talk about the morning kisses.
But Shane’s chest feels tight like he is. It isn’t—he doesn’t—
On the screen, Ilya is looking thoughtful. “Hollander is a very good roommate,” he says finally, firmly, like he’s daring someone to argue. Shane’s mouth is dry. “I liked living with him in Zürich, was good experience. Less good experience almost tripping over shoes by the door every morning, but it has made me best skater in the league, I think. It sharpened all my reflexes.”
“Hollander’s shoes?”
“Yes,” Ilya says, and he scratches at his cheek again, glances down and away from the reporter with the very first smile that looks real curving softly across his face. “He takes them off and leaves them at the door. Right in front of the door, always. First time, I told him we are on same team now, no need to try and kill me with broken neck. Second time, I put them away for him in nice, convenient shoe-rack also by the door, and he thinks I stole them.”
Shane’s stomach flips over itself, and he lurches upright in bed, half-afraid that he’s going to be sick.
With shaking fingers, he exits the video, leaves JJ’s text unanswered, and tosses the phone facedown on his bed.
There are a thousand things Ilya could have said, and it’s not like the story he picked is bad or anything. It’s probably one of the best things Ilya could have mentioned, if Shane’s thinking about it logically. It’s harmless, the sort of small everyday annoyance that housemates learn to live with. It probably, like, humanizes Shane or something like that. He could have said way worse, something that would feed into all the conversations on Twitter that are always happening about how weird and frigid and stiff Shane is off the ice.
He could have said that Shane hated having his food touch on his plate or hung up all his clothes to dry as soon as the washing machine was finished so nothing got wrinkled or folded his socks or vacuumed every Sunday before lunch. He could have been crueler, maybe.
They hadn’t talked about it. What they were going to say when people asked them about living together. Apparently, it wouldn’t be enough to gloss over it. Apparently everyone wanted the details, one thing, just a little small thing they could pull apart and write articles about and tweet about and repurpose and repackage and sell.
So Ilya didn’t—it wasn’t wrong, the answer he gave. It was probably a perfect answer, but Shane feels wrong anyway. Small and unstable, like a glass teetering on the very edge of a counter.
It’s just shoes. But it’s theirs. It was theirs, and now it’s everyone’s.
He’s grabbing his phone and calling Ilya before he knows what he’s doing, hands working on instinct to reach out for the person his body’s spent the past week crying for.
And even though it must be past midnight now, Ilya picks up within three rings.
For a moment, they just blink at each other through their cameras, both maybe equally taken aback at the sudden reappearance of the other.
“Shane, hi,” Ilya says. He looks tired. There are dark shadows under his eyes, ones that Shane had thought were the results of a bad camera angle or shit lighting in the Boston locker room. Except he’s taken them home with him now. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping well.
The background behind him is flooded with lights, despite the late hour. He has a streak of something that looks like creamed butter across one cheek, and his curls are being pushed off his forehead and held back by a bandana that makes his hair stick straight out. It’s ridiculous. He looks ridiculous.
Shane’s throat feels so fucking tight, it’s hard for him to breathe, and each breath he manages to drag in feels shallow, like it can only fill him halfway up. He hasn’t felt like this since he left Ottawa for the first time to play in Calgary as a teenager.
Homesick. It’s the only word he knows to describe the feeling. It’s a relief to be able to label it, but that does nothing to cure it.
“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “Um, sorry. For calling, I don’t think I meant to.”
It’s lame, the words weak, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Ilya calls him on it. If he says, okay, then hang up.
But Ilya doesn’t, which is kind of him. His eyebrows furrow, and he works his jaw as he stares at the camera. He used to look like that doing crosswords too, out on their little balcony in Zürich. Hayden had sent Shane across the ocean with a book of easy crosswords for the trip out there, ‘something normal people do on planes when there’s no game tape to review, buddy,’ and Ilya had appropriated it sometime in early October.
Is good for the mind, Ilya had said once, primly, flipping from the current puzzle he’d been working on to the back where the answers were. He’d only ever write down a word once he’d confirmed he was right, and then he’d written it down in pen. It’d driven Shane crazy. It’d probably been one of the things that made him fall in love with him, in the end.
That’s how Ilya’s looking at him now though, like Shane’s a puzzle to be solved. Like he’s trying to translate a clue he’s been given into the right language to understand it.
“You can always call me,” Ilya finally says, slowly and carefully, like it’s important.
Shane huffs and rubs at his eyes, like that’ll dissipate the tightness he can feel building behind them. “We never did though,” he points out. “Before.”
Before Zürich. Before Switzerland. Before they learned the ins and outs of each other and all their small, inconsequential shortcomings and endearing habits.
Before the lockout, Shane never would have called Ilya Rozanov. They texted, infrequently and mostly about the sex they were planning to have, sometimes about the hockey if the hockey was good enough or bad enough to be worth mentioning. They didn’t talk about anything else. Back then, Shane didn’t know about the way the tip of Ilya’s tongue stuck out of his mouth when he tied his skates up, and Ilya didn’t know about the shoes.
“I saw your interview,” Shane rushes to say before Ilya can reply. He can’t figure out what Ilya will say, and the not-knowing is the dangerous part. The only thing worse would be the knowing.
Ilya hums. He moves, sinks down onto something. It’s weird that Shane doesn’t know what Ilya’s house looks like. They’ve never—it’s weird, is all. Every time Shane closes his eyes, he can see the mismatched furniture of their house, the light green of their duvet cover and the fiery orange of the throw blanket on top of it. But he can’t picture what color sheets Ilya’s are in his actual house, his Boston home. He tries to picture it now, but he can only see him wrapped up in green.
“I score one goal and get two points in the first MLH game of the season,” Ilya says. He sounds as tired as he looks, but he also sounds soft. Teasing. “And Shane Hollander calls to talk about interview I give where I mention him. This is very narcissistic behavior, solnyshko.”
Shane’s ears burn, which is either in response to the nickname he doesn’t understand or the way Ilya’s right. Shane doesn’t want to talk about hockey. He wants to talk about—
About—
“You told them about the shoes,” he says. It’s mostly a whisper. The words don’t want to leave his throat, but he forces them past his teeth anyway. They can’t stay inside of him, there’s not enough room in the tight crevice his chest has become.
On the FaceTime, Ilya blinks and leans forward like he can’t help himself. It’s just a few inches though; it’s nothing compared to the kilometers separating them. “You are upset,” he says. Not a question.
“No, I’m not,” Shane says. It’s a lie as much as it isn’t. He isn’t upset, because it’s a harmless story. And it’s not even bad, it’s the definition of a harmless media soundbite, the kind he’s been trained to give out since he was sixteen. The kind Ilya’s been reciting for just as long.
But before it was a media bite, it was just theirs. And now it’s not, and if Shane's upset, which he's not, but if he were, then it's because—because he doesn’t want to share. Not any of the pieces he has of Ilya. They’re his. It’s all he has left of him, except for phone calls and bi-annual hook-ups. Maybe when they play Boston, he’ll invite him to his house. But it won’t be the same. One of them will always be the guest. Zürich will get further and further away, trapped in the rearview mirror, an anomaly and a memory, and Shane will spend the rest of this season standing in front of the post-game scrum and having to share small fragments of the Ilya he knew there with the world.
It’s what’s expected.
But suddenly he can’t think of anything he wants to tell them. Anything he'd want Ilya to say. All of it should be kept safe. Bundled away. The shoes and the crossword and the potato peeler and the New Yorker poster Ilya had been thrilled to find in a market stall back in November.
Ilya rakes his hand through his hair on the screen, which pushes his bandana off his head, but he doesn’t look angry. He just looks the way he did when Hayden had called to let him know that the lockout was over.
Helpless. Frustrated. At a loss, which is exactly how Shane’s been feeling since he got back to Montreal. Like he's toeing the edge of a loss so enormous he can't bear to wrap his head around it.
“We did not talk about it before,” Ilya says, exhaling in a rush of air. “I did not know what to say when they kept asking. I’m sorry, Shane, if the story was--”
“No, don’t—” Shane interrupts, shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. It’s stupid. I’m sorry, I know—it’s stupid. It’s me.”
“Hollander,” Ilya says, and Shane instantly misses the Shane the way he misses the man who’s saying it, “we are not dating. Tell me what you are thinking, do not tell me it’s not you, is me.”
But Shane doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He doesn’t even know why he called. Or at least, he can’t think of a good enough reason to tell Ilya, one that would be the truth but still be survivable to say.
Ilya said it himself: they’re not dating. It’s a necessary reality check, even though he’s had checks on the ice that have hurt less slamming into him.
But at least there’s this boundary. This line he can build his emotions against and make sure he doesn’t cross.
He clears his throat, buys himself some time. “You have, uh. Something on your cheek,” he tells Ilya, tapping just beneath his own eye. “Are you baking?”
Ilya gives him the sort of incredulous look the question warrants, but he leans closer to the camera to look at his face himself. He swipes his finger through the line of yellow. It smears slightly. “No,” he says. “I am painting.”
Shane blinks. “You paint?”
“You have seen me paint, Shane,” Ilya reminds him, and it’s so sweet to hear the Shane again that he doesn’t even register the eye roll. “I made those very pretty watercolors for our Christmas cards.”
Pretty is a bit of an overstatement, from what Shane can remember. Still, “Yeah, I know, but that wasn't at—” he peers at the clock by his bed. “12:17 in the morning.”
“I am an artist,” Ilya says with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. “Inspiration strikes no matter the hour. You would not understand this, of course. Too hockey-brained.”
It’s ridiculous enough that Shane lets out a huff of laughter, and Ilya grins at him like he’s won something. It’s a disarming sort of smile, or maybe Shane’s just so fucking in love with Ilya Rozanov that every smile he gives him makes him want to start tearing down his defenses.
He pulls his knees up to his chest so he can rest his chin on them and admits, quietly, “I’ve been having trouble sleeping too,” because he can’t think of another reason Ilya would be out of bed and painting after a hockey game. He must have practice tomorrow. He looks tired, like he wants to be asleep. Maybe his body is being stubborn too.
The words linger in the air between them, and Ilya’s face softens into something Shane recognizes from Zürich but doesn’t know how to handle in Montreal.
“It’s the jetlag,” he says quickly, an expert in pulling back after so many months of forcing himself to learn how.
“The jetlag,” Ilya repeats, and then he nods, like the word makes sense. “Okay.”
He doesn’t say anything else and neither does Shane. The silence feels awkward now, tense and heavy with something unsustainable. Ilya still has yellow paint on his cheek. It looks more mustardy now that Shane’s looking at it closely. Less creamy. It reminds him of their kitchen in Zürich, that awful color that’d been spread over the walls and the cabinets, the color that Ilya had cheerfully called cat vomit spread over a Nashville Night Stalker’s jersey, like it was the best thing he’d ever seen.
Shane doesn’t want to think about this. It’s probably not healthy. It’s definitely not productive.
This time though, Ilya beats him to the punch before he can make his excuses. “I should go,” Ilya says. He looks off-camera and then back at Shane. “I must go watch paint dry,” he adds. “Is very thrilling. Definitely more fun than talking with you.”
“Haha,” Shane says, but he can feel the way his lips tug up in an honest smile. He doesn’t even try to hide it; that feels dishonest. This is Ilya’s. It belongs to him.
“Goodnight, Hollander,” Ilya says, and Shane’s transported back a week, a month, two months. Back to every time Ilya would say the same thing before turning off the lamp by the bed and kissing Shane on the forehead or the cheek or the nose, like those sorts of kisses had to be reserved for absolute darkness.
Goodnight, Hollander, he’d say, and then he’d slip into bed next to him and tug him into his arms like Shane wasn’t almost six foot and two hundred pounds of muscle himself. Like he was something to be held through the night and into the morning.
It’s that memory that loosens the words in Shane’s throat. He pushes them free, gives them up to Ilya in a voice that sounds small to his own ears. “Don’t tell them about the shoes,” he says, and Ilya blinks, confused maybe.
Maybe Shane can play this off as just him being private. He is private. He doesn’t like it when the media scrum pushes for more of him than he wants to give. He’s wanted to play good hockey since he was a kid; someone else had to tell him that meant being a household name too.
But it’s not the whole truth, and the Ilya that kisses him on the eyelids after whispering goodnight, that Ilya deserves the whole truth. Doesn’t he? “It’s ours,” he says, and he wants to wince when he hears the way his voice wavers. “It was our house.”
It borders on nonsensical. And it’s definitely not a solution for the next time it happens, because of course they’re going to be asked again, and of course they’re not going to be allowed to say nothing. To ask for privacy in this trying time or whatever. It’s stupid and it’s illogical. Shane isn’t doing anything other than throwing a fit like a little kid who hasn’t been given his way, but it feels important to say all the same. It's true. It was their house. Only theirs.
“It was,” Ilya agrees, just as quietly. His crossword expression is back, but it’s softer this time. Like he can’t help it either. He takes a breath and then exhales it slowly, a sigh that makes him concave, shoulders slumping inwards. “Okay, Shane. You are right. We will think of something to tell them, but—I will not say anything about your stupid shoes.”
“And I won’t say anything about the hat-trick of stupid basil plants you killed,” Shane says. It’s the first thing he can think of, and he says it like it’s a joke, but even as the words leave his mouth he knows he’d never tell anyone about Ilya’s bad luck with houseplants and herbs, his stubborn black thumb that had him killing every plant he brought home. The threat’s empty; he’s already decided that that’s his too.
But it makes Ilya laugh a little, even though he still looks so tired. Just around the eyes. “Good,” he says. “You are right. That would be terrible for people to know. I have a reputation as lady killer, not plant killer.”
“Ha,” Shane says. He hopes it sounds less hollow than he suddenly feels, or at least that Ilya’s not paying close enough attention to him to notice. “Alright, well. It’s late, you gotta be tired, so. I’ll let you go now.”
Which, Shane is learning, is easy as fuck to say and so much harder to do than he ever imagined.