Chapter Text
Since that afternoon in Boston, Ilya had been in a terrible mood. He had dubbed it the "tuna meltdown," and that was how he felt. The team suffered greatly from his emotions, and Marlow tried everything to cheer him up, but it didn't work.
Cognitively, Ilya knew that it was for the best. He had tried to leave Shane more than once and failed every time. So he should be glad that this time, Shane had left and it wasn't in up to him to fix anything. But it hurt so much! Their little glimpse of domesticity and everyday life had been the most perfect day in a very long time, and it had felt as if they were on the same page. But then, he had said Shane's name and Shane had freaked out. They just couldn't be anything more. He wanted it so badly, but their rivalry, homophobia in hockey, and his home country were all very good reasons individually, but combined, there was nothing they could do.
So he spent his evening doomscrolling on Twitter, when he saw a picture that froze his blood: Hollander leaning against a wall, and a blond curly head covering his crotch area. Shane was naked, his hand buried in the curls and his eyes closed, his face showing pure ecstasy.
Ilya was intimately familiar with that picture. He had cropped himself out and kept only the part he couldn't stop looking at: that look on Shane's face. It had been a gift. A private one.
Now it was on a generic account called user123456, with no message, no threat, and four thousand retweets.
Public Wi-Fi. He had sent it through public Wi-Fi, like an amateur, like someone who had never been told that people existed who made a living out of this.
Well, at least he hoped so. Seeing him with Rose had twisted something in Ilya's chest. They were beautiful together, and he had said that he liked women…
Ilya had stared at one of the paparazzi pictures, where they were holding hands, and his brain had supplied over and over again that he would never be able to give Hollander what he wanted or deserved.
Yeah, almost… Ilya scrolled through the comments and felt feral when he read all the people objectifying and drooling over Hollander. He checked his emails, but there was no mail trying to blackmail him or anything. So either they didn't know they got it from him, or they wanted to harm Hollander, since he was undeniably recognizable. Ilya felt guilty for sending it via an unsafe network. Was this his fault? Was this now the last nail to his coffin, and Hollander hated him for good?
He had no idea how to react and what to do. Should he contact Hollander and apologize? Should he comment publicly on it and congratulate him? He decided to keep waiting to see what angle Hollander would try before reacting. But what he would do was leave a comment with his secret Hollanov account. He had stumbled upon that corner of Twitter a few years back and was quite an active member now. Swapping fanfiction, gossiping about Hollander and himself, and sometimes sprinkling a few truths here and there, just to be able to talk about the most fascinating man he knew.
His tweet was a bit unhinged, but he loved the picture and would have made it his phone background in a second if that wouldn't lead to a ton of problems.
At 10:45PM, Hollander tweeted about his 'long-term girlfriend Lily'.
Ilya almost choked on his Coke. He had expected many different things, but that had definitely not crossed his mind. He read it three times. What the hell?
But it probably made sense. The Raiders also knew about his Jane, so Lily wouldn't be a big surprise. It was just quite ironic to have him acknowledge her the moment they finally ended their situationship. Ilya sighed. If he was very honest with himself, he liked being called Hollander's long-term [girl]friend. When had they become so much more than a hook-up? Ilya suspected that it wasn't really new, but since they both behaved as if it were a situationship, they didn't have to think about what they were feeling, and Ilya definitely hadn't tried to analyse any of it.
As expected, TMZ started a series of crazy headlines. It really was the sport's equivalent to those gossip magazines for women.
It sounded absurd, but somehow, they were something like high-school sweethearts. Ilya clearly remembered that December day in 2008 and how instantly infatuated he had been with this beautiful Canadian boy and his freckles. He had behaved like a total idiot, but somehow, Hollander always came back. Their pull was out of this world.
He still hadn't heard anything from Hollander and was still very unsure how to behave. So he did what felt easiest and commented with Lily on all the stupid news. Naturally, his algorithm tended to show him the Hollanov discussions, and when Max talked about Hollander feeling bad about being just one of many, his chest hurt.
After thinking so much about the tuna meltdown, he had realized that he might have given exactly that impression when talking about the women he had slept with. He had tried to figure out if Hollander was gay or bi, but he suspected that his quick deflection, claiming that he didn't like him as a person and only liked his mouth, hadn't exactly helped.
Hollander had never been just one of the many hook-ups, but did he know that? Ilya wasn't sure. So all he could do for now, was leave a suggestion on Twitter.
Not that he expected that Shane knew about this account, but it felt good to let out his thoughts about their… thing.
With each interview, Ilya got more confused. Hollander said all those lovely things about Lily, but they felt as if they were true about Ilya as well. Was that the intention? Was Hollander really complimenting Ilya? They were about him, he told himself. These were things about him. Not for him. A man could say true things about someone and still mean nothing by them, couldn't he? It was a talent. Politicians did it all the time.
Except Hollander wasn't a politician, and he had never in his life said a sentence that was meant to be more than it was.
When Kelly started the discussion about autism, Ilya had fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole. Autism was something he had heard as a term somewhere in the past, but he had never known what it meant. Now, he watched videos at 2am, and the more he learned, the more he recognized in Hollander's personality.
He had always found those quirks more endearing than annoying. He knew that other players thought that Hollander was stiff, awkward, just a hockey robot, only fully functioning on the ice. They thought that he had no personality and was no fun to be with. Ilya never thought that, but after he read about sensory overstimulation, trouble reading social cues, or the tendency to take everything at face value and miss flirts, subtext, and things like that, it made so much sense.
Even without the terminology, he could always see that Hollander wasn't impolite, but seriously struggled with many people and loud environments. He hated going out and being in uncontrolled environments, especially without his closest people, like his parents or Hayden.
Irrationally, Ilya wished that he could be such a safe person for Hollander and, somehow, the interview comment sounded as if he could be.
And one night in a random hotel room, he understood something:
He had said Shane. Not Hollander. Just his name during his orgasm, when they were the most vulnerable and honest. A new thing. A big thing. And Hollander, who couldn't take a change in routine without a plan, had panicked.
It hadn't been rejection. Maybe it had never been rejection. Maybe it had just been too much, too fast, with no warning and had detonated their carefully built walls.
Ilya put his face in his hands and breathed.
When the subject changed back to his own sluttiness, Ilya was torn. He didn't regret it, and he knew that he was a considerate lover and never gave promises that he didn't intend to keep. But it had died down in the last months, and if he was honest, he never cared too much about the women. They were nice and hot, and the sex was fun, but they were meaningless, and his mind had wandered many times to a specific hockey player instead.
Hollander had never asked him to stop (which would have been ridiculous for a situationship anyway), but if he asked him now, Ilya would comply in a heartbeat. Hell, when did he become a monogamous sap? But despite the compliments, Ilya was still not sure if there was still something between them.
They truly were two sides of the same coin. The best of the best in their field, but so very different. Hollander's serious discipline and earnestness. Answering insults and chirps only with more goals and an even better game. The world's combined hockey knowledge accessible in his head. Ilya himself was a force of nature, always ready to fight with words and fists. People loved or hated him, but they had very strong opinions about him, whereas Hollander was only respected and nobody knew how to feel about him. Ilya surfed the crowds, while Hollander barely survived them and simply powered through, doing everything the world expected from him.
It was only one more week until the next game in Montreal, and Ilya got nervous. They needed to talk about this. But the closer the date came, the less it felt like there was still something to talk about. Were they really over? Was there hope left? Ilya had no idea, and while he was glad that Rose was not the threat he had expected (no one besides him should have cute freckled babies with Shane - wait, where did that come from?), he really didn't dare to believe that there was a home or something substantial between Hollander and him.