Chapter Text
“Hollzy used to be a fucking animal on the ice, you know?” Who Hollzy? It couldn’t be Shane, so David? Which David? The David who didn’t even make sudden movements? The David who held Yuna’s hands like she was the precious china, even though she was the bull in the china shop?
“David?” Ilya couldn't line up his image of David with what they were telling him, so maybe Ilya would have to see it to believe it. He was sure these men would have videos, or photos, or something of their time in college, where David had told him they had all first met. He made a mental note to ask Yuna later for proof if they refused, though Ilya suspected David did not like his past as a defenseman. He had said as much to Ilya once, so he didn’t think David would want to dwell on old hockey glory. Ilya would have to be discreet.
The boys, as David called them, had finally found an evening Ilya could join them on game night, but Ilya didn’t see a round table, a pack of cards or any poker chips anywhere. Maybe they would bring it all out later?
Ilya was a good guest, so he had brought a bottle of his favourite vodka as a thank you, and had hoped David wasn’t springing him on them. David most definitely had.
“You are all drinking crap? I brought good vodka.” Ilya had set the bottle on the table with a thud when the group collectively goggled at him.
The ‘boys’, who all seemed to be in their fifties, had looked at him like he was the second coming when Ilya had walked through the door with David. Shane’s father had all the playfulness Shane and Yuna totally lacked, and loved being a little shit as much as Ilya did, which was probably why he had told his friends he was bringing someone along, but had neglected to mention who it was.
“I’m just bringing a friend of Shane tonight, he said.” Robert ‘Robby’ Malone mocked David when Ilya smirked at them, and David grinned so wide that Ilya had to look away from the brightness of it. Malone, who had told Ilya to call him Rob, was a former goalie, though he was now a civil engineer, whatever that meant. Ilya googled it under the table and wondered what Rob was working on now. What did engineers do besides build bridges and complain about budgets?
“Well, he is a friend of Shane’s,” David said, doubling down on proving he hadn’t lied. David had totally lied, but Ilya could see how much fun David was having.
“Little Hollzy joining us today?” asked Mike ‘Donny’ Donahan, like Shane wasn’t an almost six-foot professional athlete. Had this man ever babysat little Shane? Ilya couldn’t wait to tease Shane about being called little, though everyone here stood shorter than the almost seven-foot Donny. Ilya had felt small when Donny had stood up to shake his hand earlier, a shark grin on his face. This man had definitely been a defenseman.
“Not today,” David waved Donny off, “Shane’s in Montreal anyway, and you know he’s just as competitive as Yuna.” Maybe Yuna and Shane were a bit competitive, yes, but this big, wide defenseman would have nothing to be scared of, right?
Robby shuddered a bit more dramatically than Ilya thought he needed to. “Yuna almost killed me the last time she played with us. I can’t even imagine playing with the woman again, as much as I love her.” Well, maybe Yuna and Shane were a little too competitive. Shane had almost smothered Ilya the last time they had played a silly card game, not to mention his cute kitten face when they played hockey.
David slapped Ilya’s shoulder, and Ilya was glad he was paying attention because it would be a terrible impression to fall flat on his face from the blow. Where was David getting all this power from? Ilya didn’t even move when someone slammed into him on skates sometimes, but David had almost felled him. David usually ruffled Ilya’s hair, so Ilya hadn’t noticed how built David was. Did he still work out?
“But Ilya here,” David said, shaking Ilya with the hand on his shoulder, “is competitive enough for us, without always having to abide by the rules like Shane.”
“Your boy likes rules a bit much,” grumbled Alan “Richy” Richmond, the former right winger who apparently owned a jewellery store in the city. Ilya had wondered for a hot second if Richy was rich when he had been introduced to him, but the four rather thick gold rings the man had been sporting on his hand when he wrung Ilya’s hand had rid him of any doubts. Man was richy rich.
Ilya laughed with them. “Hollander and rules, yes.” Shane's love of rules was a bit of an understatement, if anything.
“Just little Hollzy. How did he not get the taste for violence from you, man?” Donny wondered out loud, and it must not have been the first time because no one bothered to answer the rhetorical question. Violence from who? David? “And lord knows Yuna is just as violent, if not more.”
Rob snorted and turned to Ilya. “Yuna once broke Donny’s nose with a solid right hook because he punched Hollzy. It was so hot I would have legit hit on her if she hadn’t been Hollzy’s girl already.” Ilya understood the urge. If Yuna weren’t Shane’s mother, and if she had been Ilya’s age, Ilya also would have hit on her.
“Stay in your lane, Robby.” David could be territorial? Tonight was opening Ilya’s mind about David and Yuna in a way that he hadn’t expected. Ilya liked knowing more about the Hollanders, even though everything didn’t feel like enough.
Donahan—Donny—pointed a long finger at David. “I only punched you a little bit, and your girl totally overreacted.”
“That was because you punched Hollzy after the whistle,” Robby said. This man was clearly the instigator for most of their arguments. Ilya could see him not even trying to suppress his glee as Donny and David took the bait.
“I hit him during the whistle, don’t lie!” Donny retorted, pointing his finger in David’s face, the argument well-worn from the eye rolls he got. David didn’t look the least bit riled up, more amused.
David slapped Donny’s finger down from where it was poking at his nose. “During the whistle isn’t even a thing.” Of course, during the whistle wasn’t a thing. What did that even mean? How quickly could Donny punch?
Ilya watched them argue with a kind of fascinated amusement. These were fully grown men with mortgages, professions and children, arguing about whistles from three decades ago like teenagers in a locker room. Ilya loved it. He hoped he could be like these people when he retired. Maybe not with Shane, however. Ilya loved Shane, but Hollander would probably spend their retirement doing yoga and researching how they could live forever. Ilya couldn’t wait to retire with Shane, but wondered if he could convince some of his Bears to move to Ottawa eventually so they could do something similar.
Ilya poured vodka into the nearest empty glass without asking whose it was. The glass disappeared into Donny’s giant hand as he continued to argue.
“Kid pours expensive,” Richy said, stealing the glass from Donny and taking an approving sip, squinting at the bottle like he needed glasses. He probably did need glasses, but he still wouldn’t be able to read the Russian on the bottle.
Rob leaned toward Ilya conspiratorially. “You might want to hide that before Richy finishes it.”
“I heard that.”
“You were meant to.” Maybe David liked that he could act like his college self around these ‘boys’. Ilya could see it was an escape for them from the boredom of their adult jobs and financial issues, and the humdrum of everyday life.
Ilya tilted the bottle slightly out of Richy’s reach anyway. The vodka was a gift, yes, but not a sacrifice as far as Ilya was concerned.
“So,” Rob said, leaning back in his chair with a freshly poured glass, “are we actually playing tonight, or are we just drinking the kid’s vodka?”
“Both,” Richy said immediately, reaching across the table for the bottle again.
“Both,” Donny agreed, laughing at Richy, who was already through his first glass. What the fuck? Even Ilya didn’t go for vodka that fast.
David pushed a battered cardboard box toward the middle of the table, and Ilya leaned forward curiously. Ah finally!
The cardboard on the box was peeled off to reveal a chaotic mess of cards held together with rubber bands, plastic chips, and something that might once have been a rulebook but now looked like it had survived several floods. Ilya leaned forward, studying the cards with interest. The cards just had big, ugly numbers. Wasn’t this poker night?
“This is not poker?” Ilya asked cautiously. Did game night mean something else to Canadians?
“Not poker,” David confirmed, whispering conspiratorially to Ilya, “Poker got banned thirty years ago because someone cried.”
“Cried?” Ilya had seen his fair share of men cry over poker, but it was no reason to ban a whole game. Why the fuck were these men crying over poker anyway? What was this set of cards and chips for then? Why were there small black chips at all?
It was Richy again. “I didn’t cry!”
“You definitely cried.” Robby threw a piece of something small at Richy’s back as he came back with a big bowl of popcorn from the kitchen. Richy picked up the popcorn Robby must have thrown at him and popped it into his mouth.
David started shuffling the cards, as Robby and Donny continued arguing. Ilya was so engrossed in hearing them that he didn’t notice the man barreling into the room until the man was in front of Ilya, stopping mid-rant about a call from the previous night’s game. “If the refs had eyes, Rozanov would’ve been in the box by—what the fuck is Rozanov doing here?” Would Ilya have to leave? Ilya hadn’t considered that some of David’s friends wouldn’t want him there.
“So you are not Centaurs fan then?” Ilya asked with a forced laugh when the silence became too much for him. Donny dragged the new entrant into a chair beside him, letting him continue to bluster about Ilya’s presence at their game night.
“Say hi to little Hollzy’s friend Turny.” Okay, so Donny was a little shit too. Ilya could see how Donny and David had made a great pair of defensemen. They reminded him of Seb and Hammer, and Ilya had a brief pang from missing the Bears, whom he should reply to soon. The little worriers would wind themselves up and show up at his doorstep if he didn’t reply, but Ilya was in his second season with the Centaurs, so he should also really give his new teammates more of a chance at some point.
Frank ‘Turny’ Turner shook his head at Ilya. He hadn’t told Ilya what he did for work. “No, no, we’re Centaurs fans, kid, we’re just not fans of you yet.” Fair enough.
Ilya couldn’t let that go, at least not in front of the other hockey players. “You will soon be a fan, yes? Since I am Hollander’s friend and everything.”
“Hollzy did say it was not a PR thing,” Turny glared at David, who shrugged and continued to shuffle the cards, which were probably on their way to being in order with how long David had been shuffling them, ”obviously, I didn’t believe little Hollzy was friends with you of all people.” Ilya told himself never to call either Hollander Hollzy because that would cross too many wires in his brain.
Turner, because Ilya was not going to call a grown man Turny, made Ilya want to mess with him, bringing all that drama to the table, even as David glared at Turner on Ilya’s behalf. It was sweet of David, but Ilya could fight some of his own battles. “I contain multitudes?”
David stopped his glaring to laugh at Ilya’s use of the word. “Multitudes is his word of the day,” David explained when Robby raised his eyebrow. David had explained the word to him in the car on the way here when Ilya admitted he hadn’t understood what it meant.
“Is good use, yes?”
“Yes, Ilya, it’s a good use,” David grinned at Ilya, “and don’t mind Turny, he just needs to squawk his feelings out.” If David could tell Ilya was worried, Ilya needed to be more aware of his face, but still, it made Ilya unbearably glad to know Turner was just dramatic and didn’t really hate Ilya.
“Are we playing now?” Ilya couldn’t watch David shuffle the cards another time.
Richy clapped his hands and leaned forward. “No thanks!” Ilya was so confused. Why did Richy look so enthusiastic if he didn’t want to play? Was there gold involved?
“You do not want to play this game?” Ilya blinked sideways at Richy. Ilya could hear Turner still muttering to himself on the other side of the table from Ilya.
“No, no,” Rob said, counting out loud, eleven chips each in little piles, “No Thanks! is the name of the game.” Well, it definitely wasn’t poker.
Turner stopped muttering to stop Rob from giving out the piles of chips. “Nine each now that they are six of us.” Was that a bad thing? No one seemed to bat an eye when Rob removed two from each pile.
Ilya reached across to grab his nine counters and picked one up, rolling it between his fingers. It had neither the weight nor the quality of a casino chip, but he rarely saw markers like the ones from places he used to frequent anyway. Donny flipped a card up onto the table with unnecessary force and suddenly stopped to look at Ilya. Was he supposed to do something? “Rules for the new guy.” Ah, he didn’t know how to play yet.
“Each of us starts with nine chips,” David said from beside Ilya. “When a card is flipped, you either take the card or you say ‘no thanks’ and put one of your chips on it.”
“If you take the card,” Rob continued, “you can also take all the chips that people put on it.”
Ilya nodded slowly. “But I do not want to take cards?” What was a game that didn’t want a player to collect the cards? How did he win then?
“Yes, you don’t want the cards.” That told him nothing! What did they mean by Ilya could put a chip instead of taking a card, but he could also take cards with chips on them? It all seemed contradictory.
“How bad are cards?”
Turner pointed at the twenty-eight Donny had flipped up. “Very bad. The numbers are from three to thirty-five, in case you were wondering, and there is one of each.” That was going to be Ilya’s next question.
“Unless the others make it worth taking by always using their chips,” Donny added, juggling a few chips, “like it’s worth it to get punched if your team gets a power play.” Donny must have gotten punched a whole lot from what Ilya saw, but Ilya understood the game a little more now, the risk versus the reward.
“If you have eighteen, nineteen and twenty, for example,” David explained, “it only counts as an eighteen.”
“Oh.” Ilya nodded again. That was a clever rule, and Ilya liked loopholes.
Rob pointed at Ilya like it was a warning. “Keep your counters hidden, kid, so no one knows how many more you can afford.” Did that mean Ilya could count theirs? This should be fun.
Ilya kept his shark smile hidden, saving it for when he won, and he would win. “Highest score is asshole?”
“Richy loses a lot,” Donny said helpfully and dodged the popcorn Richy threw at him.
David grinned when Turner grumbled about bringing a shark to their table. Rob tapped at the twenty-eight again, “Alright, Turny, old man, you first.”
Turner looked at the card, then at his chips, then at the card again, and flicked a chip onto it. “No thanks.”
Donny barely glanced at it, but he seemed to have taken the time to think. “No thanks.”
Another chip landed from Rob. “No thanks.”
David did the same, as did Ilya and Richy, and the pile of chips on twenty-eight grew when it went another round.
Richy groaned when it was his turn again, and there were eleven chips on the card now. “Damn it, I’ll take it.”
Rob won the first game by the sheer number of counters he collected from the cards in the thirties, which had cancelled each other out because they were consecutive.
David shuffled the cards again, and Ilya helped by counting out the chips. “Why do you play these games?”
“Couldn’t play poker back after college, and not just because of Donny’s sobbing,” Rob said, jerking his thumb at Donny.
“Fuck off.”
Ilya pushed the little piles of chips toward each player again, after carefully counting out nine for each of them.
“Back when we started, all of us with student debt, some being from blue-collar homes, nearly washed out of hockey, we were broke as shit.” Richy twisted a ring around his pinky, his stubby fingers barely holding onto the gold. It was earned gold then. “We didn’t want to bet money we didn’t have.”
“Speak for yourself,” Turner muttered.
“You lived in my basement,” Richy shot back.
“Temporarily!”
Donny laughed loud enough to shake the table again. “For two years, man.”
“Short games made it easier,” David interrupted the argument, sliding the newly shuffled deck onto the table, “someone had to leave early, someone had a kid to watch, someone’s wife texted.”
“Someone’s wife yelled,” Donny corrected.
“Just yours, Donny.” Rob tapped the table and looked away from the newly flipped nineteen to Donny before dropping a chip onto the card. “No, thanks.”
The game went around the table while Donny and Rob argued about a call from their junior year that neither of them remembered correctly, with David occasionally interjecting when they veered too much off reality.
Ilya waited for a thirty-one to run four rounds before he took it. He would have liked to let it run another, but Ilya knew Donny only had one chip left, so he took it with twenty-two chips. It meant he actually only took a nine, and Ilya shrugged. It was a good haul.
The next number was a thirty, which would reduce Ilya’s points by one, and he couldn’t let it run a round because of Donny, so he took that too. Donny barked out a laugh loud enough to make the popcorn bowl jump when he caught the look Ilya shot him. “The kid caught on fast.”
Ilya immaturely poked his tongue out at Donny and flipped a twenty-seven next, letting a chip go for Rob, who had a twenty-eight from the first round. “No, thank you.”
Ilya was getting the hang of this.
“You are trying to trick me.” Ilya leaned back in his chair and folded his arms when twenty-nine arrived near the bottom of the stack, and David showed his empty hands to make it clear Ilya wouldn’t get the card if he let it go another round.
Ilya supposed it depended on how much David wanted to win compared to how much he wanted Ilya to lose, but Ilya knew David had at least two chips, probably hidden in his pocket. Even if David didn’t have any chips left, he would lose if he had to take the card, so it would be a win-win for Ilya. He let it go another round. “No thanks.”
“Not me,” Richy said and dropped a chip on the card, “but I might have to give up a ring if you let it go another round, kid.” One of his gold rings? Ilya hadn’t known it was an option.
Turner made a clicky noise when he saw Ilya’s pondering expression. Turner already had twenty-six and twenty-seven in front of him. “Nothing but a chip is an option, Rozanov.” Well, Ilya tried.
“Ugh, why?” Rob groaned after Donny dropped a chip like he had plenty left, adding one of his own to the growing pile on the twenty-nine.
David rubbed his face like he was trying not to smile. “You can take the card,” David said mildly.
“I know!” Ilya knew David had a chip or two in his pocket, and he had been right.
“Take it,” Rob said sweetly, his grin directed at Turner.
Turner pushed the last card away with a finger as if it were contagious. “You take it.”
“Not my turn.”
“Oh, this is bullshit.” Turner slapped the table and took the card, which, to his terrible luck, was a thirty-three.
Ilya sipped his vodka and waited for the men to count the score. He knew he would win by a landslide, and he was right.
“You should come back, kid,” said Turner, clapping Ilya on the back. The others were shrugging into their jackets, ready to head out. Ilya was going to take it as a compliment that the man who had come in saying Rozanov like a swear word had warmed up to him.
“Thank you for having me.”
Ilya was definitely going to come back.