Chapter Text
The locker room still smelled like ice and sweat and cheap champagne.
Music blasted from someone’s speaker—too loud, distorted, triumphant—and the Bears were everywhere at once: shouting over one another, knocking shoulders, towels snapped like warning shots. Someone had dragged a cooler into the center of the room. Someone else was standing on a bench, chanting the score like it might disappear if they didn’t say it enough times.
They’d won. That was the important thing.
Ilya was standing in front of his stall, wet from champagne and beer. His skates were partially unlaced, and his pulse still hummed in his ears. He had grabbed his phone to text Shane his usual victory picture when his phone buzzed—short, sharp. Not a group chat. Not the team.
Jane: Are you alive, or did you finally break your ribs?
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Whoa, whoa—who’s texting Captain Happy?” Cliff said immediately, leaning over his shoulder like he had a right to be there.
“Yeah, Roz, you smiling like that is unsettling,” Carmichael added.
Ilya locked his phone and placed it into his cubby. “Mind your business.”
That, predictably, made it worse.
Varkov narrowed his eyes. “You don’t say that when it’s nothing.”
Kane, already half undressed and unbothered by the chaos, glanced over. “Who is it?”
“No one,” Ilya said.
“Bullshit,” Cliff said. “You don’t smile at no one.”
The phone buzzed again. Louder this time—traitorous. Cliff lunged and caught a glimpse before Ilya could thrust it into his pocket.
“Jane?” Cliff read. He blinked. “Who the hell is Jane?”
Silence rippled, then collapsed into noise.
“Jane who?”
“Jane from where?”
“You got a secret girlfriend named Jane?”
“I do not have girlfriend,” Ilya said, standing and yanking his jersey over his head. “And Jane is just...” he paused. “Jane.”
“That’s not an answer,” Carmichael said.
Ilya ignored him and peeled off his shoulder pads and tossed them into his stall. He turned away from his team, trying to avoid the conversation. As he reached back to pull his compression shirt over his head, the room collectively noticed.
“Holy shit,” Varkov said.
Cliff whistled.
Across Ilya’s shoulders and down his back, faint but unmistakable, were scratch marks—angry pink lines, half-healed, deliberate.
“Oh my god,” Carmichael said. “Someone tried to kill you.”
Ilya turned to the mirror to look at his back. He’d forgotten about those marks. “It was a bear, I fought and won,” Ilya said sarcastically with a smirk on his face.
The team ignored his comment.
“That was Jane, wasn’t it,” Cliff said. Not a question.
Ilya shrugged. “She has…how do you say it, strong excitement.”
“Enthusiasm,” someone in the back chimed in
“Jesus,” Varkov laughed. “What did you do, insult her favorite team?”
Ilya smirked despite himself. “Sex is good,” he said, like that settled everything.
It did not.
“So she’s real,” Carmichael said. “You’ve been holding out on us.”
“I have not,” Ilya replied. “I simply do not share.”
“You are literally shirtless with claw marks,” Cliff said. “That ship sailed.”
Kane tilted his head, assessing. “She’s not just a hookup.”
Ilya reached for his towel. “You make many assumptions.”
“She has your number,” Cliff said. “And she texted you straight after our game.”
They circled him like sharks with beer bottles.
“You gotta bring her to a game,” Carmichael said suddenly. “Next home game. Mystery Jane makes an appearance.”
“No,” Ilya said immediately.
“That was fast.”
“She is busy.”
“With what?”
“Life.”
“Convenient,” Cliff said. “Does she even like hockey?”
Ilya hesitated—just a fraction too long.
“Ah,” Varkov said. “There it is.”
“She likes being private,” Ilya said, defensive now. “And not being stared at by idiots.”
“So… yes,” Carmichael grinned.
Cliff clapped Ilya on the shoulder. “Bring her. We wanna see the woman who turned our captain into a scratched-up mess.”
Ilya grabbed his phone as it buzzed again and typed quickly, thumb moving like muscle memory.
Jane: You played well. Don’t let it go to your head.
He smiled, small and private, then locked the screen.
“We’ll see,” he said vaguely.
“That’s not a no,” Varkov said triumphantly.
Ilya slung his towel over his shoulder and headed for the showers. “Keep dreaming,” he called back. “Some things are not for team.”
Behind him, the locker room erupted again—laughter, jeers, chants of Jane, Jane, Jane—and Ilya let it wash over him, already composing an excuse he’d probably never need to use.