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Ilya knows Shane is barely holding it together, knows his parent’s scrutiny is too much and too close, scraping against his skin the way the media and the cameras and the fans wind him up like a clockwork doll that when set down will immediately lurch into a corner with a panic attack. He’s kissed it out of him before, pushed him against a shower wall and watched him go limp with relief, rearranged him boneless and sated on a bed one of them will leave as soon as they’ve caught their breath. Part of him, a small detached part that still belongs to his father and Alexei whispers weak and he buries it. Another part, lying in wait just as treacherously, whispers but they still love him anyways, don’t they.
He doesn’t bury that one yet.
Here are three truths about Ilya Rozanov.
One. Ilya Rozanov is an asshole. Everyone knows this, of course, this was a story they started telling so early he doesn’t even remember when it began. Early enough he remembers his mother’s face on the sidelines for the opening pages and her thumb on his split cheek as she wiped off the blood.
Just because it was a story others started doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
But you can’t be an asshole unless you know what digs under the skin, unless you know what makes people tick. Unless you know just how to bite without drawing too much blood, how to be like a papercut - you slice the sting that gives you an extra second in the face off, you’re asshole, people put you in a little box in their head and add some caution tape, like a wild animal might claw its way out if they aren’t careful.
They aren’t wrong. Ilya can ruin anything if he tries hard enough.
“You read New Yorker, yes?” Ilya says, a little awkwardly, alone in the room with David Hollander. He tries to finish his drink, but it’s either hard to want to or very necessary right now after that double exit, the look on Shane’s face mirroring the one on his mother’s, and he shouldn’t feel quite so surprised at how easily he can recognize Yuna Hollander’s tightness because of course he can, it’s just Shane’s in a different shape and Ilya Rozanov has spent a lifetime shaping himself around other people’s feelings, when to comfort and when to get out of the way or just take the backhand, when to laugh and when to smirk and when to spit, when to skate away and when to take the gloves off.
David gives him a glance, eyebrows going not quite as high as before but still high.
“I - yeah,” he says, and nods. It feels like permission and Ilya lets out a breath he hadn’t quite realized he was holding. “Shane told you, yeah?”
“I tried to read New Yorker before. He said so then.” He chews the words in his mouth, trying to keep them careful. Not papercut, this time. Still like a guard, like bringing his shoulder to bear against an oncoming player. “I said, so boring is genetic.” And that’s an actual laugh, which is a relief, because he hadn’t been sure that would land and he wasn’t entirely sure what he was even aiming for. It had been easier with Shane beside him, focusing on what Shane needed right now, cataloguing what interference Shane needed run and which hits had to be taken to score the goal.
“Ten years seems like a long time to put up with boring,” David says, and there’s something in his face that makes it so easy to want to be truthful and that must be where Shane learned that.
“He wears glasses so he can read boring hockey books after practice, he is boring,” Ilya says, and then a moment later without even realizing he’s about to say it adds, “but he has good smile, like sun.” He pauses, reevaluates, but David is still watching him with that quiet understanding. “Like sunrise when you didn’t think you’d wake up,” he adds, because it won’t be understood but can still sit there between them.
Two. Ilya Rozanov doesn’t know how to sit in a room with this much kindness from anyone who isn’t Shane and really not even then, much less someone who only cares about him because Shane cares (cares, truly, wakes up in the middle of the night to sift through plans and think so many years ahead as if that’s something he thinks they can actually have).
He should make a joke. He should make a dumb, stupid joke, one that Shane will blush at for the next decade again after he hears about it because Shane thinks they can have another decade, and then another, and Ilya wants it more than he believes it.
Then again, he wants it so much it would be hard for the belief to outrank the want.
He doesn’t make the joke.
“You and Yuna have been together – how long?”
He doesn’t know why he asked that.
“Thirty fifth anniversary’s coming up,” David says, and his gaze is appraising. “They’re going to talk for a bit. It’s going to be okay. But.” He hesitates for a bit, takes a long sip of the vodka. “But it isn’t going to be okay for you, right?”
Ilya thinks it would be easier for at least one of them if he froze or stiffened and denied it. Instead he just looks across the table.
“No,” he says, because Shane and his father don’t share a face but they share the same kindness, the same quietness in the eyes and shoulders, the way their faces are still and even but not cruelly. “Not soon. Visas. Politics. Complicated.”
“Yeah,” David says. “Yuna’s going to come at this like a freight train, of course. She always does.”
“Maybe, less freight train right now.”
“No promises,” David says, “but I’ll try to put a brake on it.”
Ilya’s brow furrows, unsure for a moment, and David laughs.
“Oh, just, I’ll try to keep it from going too fast.” Ilya had understood the phrase, but isn’t sure of the rest.
“What, what too fast?”
“Time. Plans.” David gets up and pours a little more vodka into Ilya’s cup. “Don’t tell her I said to slow it down. She’s got a lot to process, but she’s already going to be trying to figure out how to fix this all.”
Ilya freezes for a moment, and David rests a hand on his shoulder from behind for just as long.
“Not you,” he says, “just everything that comes with the two of you. Not your fault.”
“Just everything,” Ilya echoes, and David pauses and then he goes back to his seat and faces Ilya again.
“Hey. Look. None of this is going to be easy. But I, uh. I remember watching the game the night Shane went down.”
Blood in his mouth from biting his cheek, the blossom of his spit like a flower against the ice, like the poppies the Canadian teams wear if he plays them on Remembrance Day. Ilya can’t meet David’s eyes anymore.
“Obviously, I was pretty focused on Shane, but I remember you refusing to leave the ice. Ref nearly gave you a penalty.”
“Good captain does this,” Ilya says, like even now he still thinks he might be able to tie together the open chest wound that is the love he cannot have, even in one of the only places he doesn’t have to, even when he offered to come with Shane and meant it, really meant it because he would go anywhere Shane needed him.
“Oh, boy,” David says, and there’s something almost amused in his voice mixed with the sadness. “Sorry. Must have been one hell of a night for you.”
Shane walks back in with his mom just behind him and Ilya blinks and pushes things into the places they belong, lets the leg further from Shane vibrate with everything else and focuses.
Three. Ilya Rozanov wants to have this, the talk and interactions, even the intensity, the way David refills his cup easily and tilts back in his chair, the way Yuna stares at him in judgment as he gives up Boston for Shane because of course he will, there is nothing in this world that matters more.
It’s… nice. It feels good. There is something about it so simple despite how terribly not simple it actually is. It feels awkward when Shane spirals for a little, pulling him back in front of his parents, but David just nods and there’s an expression on Yuna’s face that isn’t entirely freight train.
“Boyfriend?” Shane says, like he’s been underwater for a thousand years, and Ilya nods, careful and gentle, reaches for him, kisses him and Shane breathes under it like Ilya gave him a gift he isn’t sure quite yet how to accept. But he is anyways, and that’s. Well, step 1000 on this stupid journey, but another step.
“Your dad made good pasta,” he murmurs. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Shane says, and his eyes are wide and he absolutely needs to eat and stare at a ceiling for a bit before they drive back to the cottage or they will get run off the road into the ditch because Shane can be distracted, can be in his head, can be -
Can be hurt.
“Pasta,” he insists, “I’m still hungry,” and looks up and sees David and Yuna smiling at each other with something somewhere between love and sorrow.
That’s a very easy face to recognize. He has spent a lot of time avoiding it in mirrors.
Here is the last truth, the supposed to be secret one, the one Ilya had tried so hard to claw out of his chest and leave on the ice, had tried to scrape out of his heart and leave it so empty nobody could find it again, had let spill into air so cold he could have used it as cover for his trembling if he needed, wanting to keep the truth still and locked away and unspoken but unable to, helpless against the weight of something so utterly final and real that once he said it there was no coming back for him ever again even if it wasn’t understood.
Ilya Rozanov has never loved anything in the whole wide world as much as he loves Shane Hollander. Not even his mother, and that feels like a betrayal but some sticking part in his throat says no, sweetheart, no.
He touches his necklace for a moment, lets himself hear her, and even barely out of a panic attack Shane glances at him and one hand touches Ilya’s knee for a moment with a question, one shoe knocks against his again.
“Is mushrooms, yes?” he says to David, smiles sideways at Shane like a secret. “See, already they poison me. Never again will I win Cup if they keep feeding me.”
“Not a mushroom person?” David asks, and he is so clearly filing it away the way Shane does that Ilya is already laughing.
“He loves mushrooms, he’s just an asshole,” Shane mumbles, almost an apology, but it isn’t allowed to land here, in this room with two people who barely know him and already don’t believe it.
“I should have guessed he can’t keep the chirping on the ice,” Yuna says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and okay, maybe there is one last truth, gently tending coals in a place that was once scoured clean and frozen in the dark earth.
Ilya Rozanov is happy.