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In the quiet evenings after long games, basking in the afterglow of skin-to-skin paradise with exhausted lungs that fill slowly with air, Ilya is momentarily happy. Ecstatic, even.
In the dark nights, when he returns to his empty hotel room, clarity arrives to waterboard Ilya awake.
Undoubtedly, there is a world where Hollander is a girl. Ilya believes this like he believes his mother is in heaven, like he believes this lifetime was not meant for him, like he believes he has no loving family left. This belief is intrinsic in his being, another fact of his life: in another world, Ilya has it all. In another universe, Ilya’s mother would cradle his daughter–her granddaughter–and Ilya would love a woman; Alexei wouldn’t hate him, and his father would be proud that Ilya carries the Rozanov name. In another lifetime, Ilya’s love is pure, good, and reciprocated.
In reality, Ilya exists in a world where he and Hollander are both men, and there’s nothing he can do about it but hurt.
They're probably connected by some evil deity, so Ilya and Hollander will meet no matter the circumstance; at the very least, Ilya is tied to Hollander. He cannot escape this man. Hollander torments him on the ice, stalks him in his dreams, and besets his every thought. No matter where Ilya goes, Hollander is there, an ever-present ticking time bomb nailed into Ilya’s soul.
It is a terrible sickness. The plight makes Ilya desperate and useless, a slave to his emotions. Still, this love, this terrible, horrible, painful love, fills him with such light that Ilya feels like he is burning alive.
-
Ilya is not gay, he thinks to himself after a cigarette. Ilya loves men and women alike, and nothing stops him from entering an amicable, heteronormative marriage. Svetlana is an easy option; Ilya is certain that, if asked, Svetlana would not hesitate to marry him. They could have children. Ilya could return to Russia during the off-season. Ilya could visit his mother on her birthday. Ilya wouldn’t have to give up his family, or his home, or his comfort. Easily, Ilya could have it all.
He doesn’t want Svetlana, though. Ilya loves men and women alike, but he doesn’t want any man or any woman. Ilya wants Hollander; he chooses Hollander. He chose this life. He chose Shane, and that makes it inherently worse. Ilya chose the one option that forces him to give up everything that raised him. He doesn’t even have the excuse of being gay.
Loving women doesn’t help, though, because Ilya doesn’t really love them. Sure, his dick does, and his mind does, but it’s not bone deep. Ilya loves Svetlana like he loves his mother, like he loves his niece. Ilya hates his brother, but there’s something just barely beneath the skin that clings to the wretched man. Regardless, there is a shallow blanket of love that just barely shelters Ilya, though it is torn and threadbare.
The love that Ilya feels for Hollander is not threadbare. It's woven into his bones, melted into his marrow, tattooed into his DNA. It's all-encompassing, deeper than the seven seas, and hidden far, far beneath the skin. This evil, cruel love is no shield to the elements, but it is a foundation of his being. Ilya is guided by this love, pulled by this love, and chained to this love.
It hurts like stuffing a gunshot wound.
Just as Eve bit the apple and was banished from heaven, Ilya loves Hollander and is therefore exempt from any goodwill. It’s not natural, what he is, what they are. Or maybe it is? It doesn’t really matter because the end result is the same.
Ilya was never meant for a gentle, peaceful love. His mother taught him that, and before her, his father. He'll just have to cut his losses and take what he can get.
Still, Ilya cannot resist this stupid, boring Canadian, with those constellation freckles and unrelenting bluntness. It's better to indulge and get high than to live in misery, probably, so Ilya will spend the seconds he has with Hollander while he can. The rest of his life, Ilya can spend mourning what he can never have.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. No one in the world is for Ilya except Shane, and Ilya would never let the evil that drives his family’s blood infect someone so wonderful. Just a taste of happiness here and there will be enough for Ilya. That's all he can have.
-
In between “nights with Shane” and “everything else,” Ilya is haunted by good dreams.
The dreams are so wonderful, bleeding lies of peace and domesticity. They make promises of slow mornings broken by a rising sun, late nights complemented by tuna melts. There's skin-to-skin, but only in the luminous aftermath. Ilya is marked by gentle touches, tormented by soft smiles, and poisoned by warm hot chocolates on winter walks.
Ilya doesn’t have wet dreams as often as he did when he was young, when the flings were more serendipitous than tethered. Now, he dreams of little children, proud parents, quiet nights alight by the moon. He dreams of peace, and safety, and everything he cannot have.
The worst part is waking up. Ilya hates these dreams, and he curses whatever god deigns to torture him. He’d take a thousand wet dreams over a gatekept serenity.
What Ilya wants doesn’t matter, though. The previous night’s dream is a testament to that: Hollander and Rozanov, married and on the same team. They hyphenate their last names, but the jerseys can’t fit such greatness. They own a home together, care for a medium-sized dog, and have plans to foster two girls, recently orphaned. They share a bed. They share a refrigerator, with separate containers and labels for each food group and an ice dispenser used exclusively when they make smoothies. In the backyard, fenced off from the world, is a campfire that promises a warm serenity, everlasting.
Ilya woke to damning hail in a cold, dark apartment.
-
Ilya first knew he was fucked when he showed up to Hollander’s hotel room. In their first meeting, when Ilya's English was bad and he could pick up every third word at best, Ilya caught a glimpse of the addicting, radiating light that is Shane Hollander. Like a moth, Ilya became an instant addict.
The first hit of any drug is a dead giveaway to how enticing the drug is. Hollander passes with flying colors, and Ilya is a weak, weak boy.
Hollander is a boring Canadian that introduces himself to his opponents. He condemns Ilya for smoking, but he lacks a resolute tone. Weak, Ilya’s father would say. Still, thrill hides beneath Hollander’s surface: his kindness is intriguing, and so entirely detached from everything Ilya is that he can’t help but pursue the man.
To his surprise, Hollander is no easy prey. He's entertaining, fun. He puts up a fight but leaves behind the frustration. It feels almost immature when they sneak looks across the ice and skate past each other with numbers whispered between strides. It’s exhilarating in the way skipping class is: fun, inconsequential, meaningless.
Ilya knows undoubtedly he is fucked when, at a club, he rejects a woman trying to buy him a drink. She was blond, or maybe she had brown hair, and a large rack and a tiny dress. Objectively, she would’ve been a fun lay.
She didn’t look like Hollander, though. Her eyes were too confident, lightyears away from Hollander’s uncertain gaze, and she wasn’t sweet enough. Too playful, then not enough. Too pushy, then not enough. Exciting, but not Hollander.
That night, Ilya went home and rubbed one out to a memory from three months before. Montreal plays Boston in a few weeks, so Ilya won’t have to cruise through blurry memories for much longer.
Lucidity finds Ilya as he showers, and he hates himself. This consistent, tied, distant and hidden and endearing and undying connection is not Ilya's scene. He'd rather a one night stand, or a fun fling, or anything without the strings.
There's a responsibility to love. Ilya doesn’t have the strength for it.
The temptation is too great, however. He can’t help himself. Who could, when Shane Hollander keeps texting him back, is so easily riled up, and is so, so uncompromisingly consistent? He is constant, and their time is sparse, and he is beautiful, and Ilya is so, so done for.
It was supposed to be fun. This isn’t fun anymore. Not in the long run.
Hollander, and everything he is, besieges Ilya's most secret wishes, Ilya discovers on a flight away from Montreal. The pair had banged it out after an intense game, and Ilya had run away with his tail between his legs shortly afterwards. It's terrifying. Nothing they do is gentle; it’s an entire world away from soft. And yet, Ilya's heart wilts as he leaves, slowly, one petal for every twenty steps away.
Ilya is still young, and he still wants to have fun. He wants to get drunk and get laid and black out and party until his lungs give out. Secret hookups with an unfortunately good Canadian hockey player should change none of this.
They do, though, because no night out is as fun as feeling Hollander’s skin against his own.
-
When his father dies, the first person Ilya thinks of is his mother; silently, guiltily, he prays they never reunite.
The second person Ilya thinks of is Shane. His father would probably kill Ilya if he ever knew what his son and his son’s rival did behind closed doors. His father would probably kill Ilya for any random excuse he could find.
His father never had the chance to, though, because he died. Was he scared? Forgetting everything around him, surrounded by unfamiliar walls, forgone by his own flesh and blood?
Ilya's father will never know that Ilya has found love, be it evil and wrong and impossible. Ilya’s father will never know Ilya and all the parts of himself that make up his most important aspects; Ilya's father will never know Ilya in the context of Shane.
Ilya doesn’t know how to feel about that, and he doesn’t want to learn.
Still, like a plague, a sickness that just can’t abide, Shane finds him. Ilya is mourning, and he feels like dying, and he has no one left, and he’ll never get to cherish his niece in all the ways he’s dreamed of, and Shane finds him. Shane finds him, picks up his shattered, bleeding edges, and glues him back together effortlessly.
It’s not fair. Ilya loves Shane. It's a rule of nature, at this point. Ilya would cry for Shane, he would die for Shane, and the one thing he cannot do, cannot allow himself to do, is let the other man know. Ilya's love is no gift.
Ilya remembers, when Shane briefly dated Rose Landry, he tried to hook up with random women from random clubs. There was no shortage of people that wanted him: he’s one of the greatest hockey players of their time, and he’s hot. Ilya has no trouble finding a partner.
The one night stand attempts don’t last long, though. Ilya never expected them to, though he begged to god they would soothe his soul somehow. The women always had the wrong shape. The men always had the wrong smell. None of them were Shane, or Shane shaped or remotely anything like Shane, and Ilya's body has been remolded to exclusively fit with Shane's.
Nothing is the same anymore. Ilya could divide his life in two, with Shane as the turning point. He can’t tell if it’s better or worse.
-
Shane is concussed and unconscious only a week after Ilya's dad died.
Before, Ilya only had to face the creeping, subtle regret that had come from lacking the love of a man that gave him life. Now, Ilya must face the growing, horrifying possibility that the man that gives him life, gives him purpose and happiness and meaning, will never know of the exhaustive love that exists solely for him. Ilya must face the one truth of life: all time is limited.
For one bone-chilling, petrifying moment, Ilya wants to profess his love. He wants Shane to know that he’s proud, overwhelming so, to be the one that gets to love Shane. For a single second, Ilya weighs his everything—his hockey, his home, his lifeblood—in exchange for another second with Shane, and he finds that, without hesitation, Shane wins.
It’s too late, though. Shane is already in the stretcher.
-
The cottage is everything Ilya has ever dreamed of and more. He and Shane share late nights under the stars, wake up slowly in the late morning, and exist in a spacious bubble outside of the world, and Ilya can imagine no happier ending for himself. If he died tomorrow, his soul would still be happy.
Ilya spends his evenings trying to keep Shane awake. The man is exhausted, and, more than anything, deserves a break, but Ilya can’t fight his instincts. They exist in a bubble: soon, these tender mornings will run out, the shared meals will be lost to time, and this ataraxy will die in a memory. Every second counts, Ilya knows. He intends to stretch them as long as possible.
Then, Shane's father walks in. Ilya’s heart beats war in his chest. His muscles stretch taut, prepared to protect Shane no matter what it takes. Then, somehow, Ilya’s dream gets better.
Ilya has no parents to disappoint. Shane's mom is intense, loving, and so strikingly similar yet bizarrely different from his own mother that Ilya has whiplash.
Shane's parents cherish their son. Hate has been exiled from this home long ago; there is a quiet, healing love blanketing the Hollanders. Maybe that’s what attracted Ilya to Shane all those years ago.
Ilya has no parents left to disappoint. The Hollanders have no disappointment to weaponize. Ilya's love, his heart, his soulmate, is loved on all ends.
For the first time in his life, Ilya is fulfilled. His heart aches with the affection that permeates the air, but it’s the kind of ache that brings forth tears that cry relief.
Maybe, Ilya's love was never so disastrous.
-
Life continues on, and Shane and Ilya stay strong throughout it.
It's hard, some days. Some nights, Ilya can’t help but question his love, his nature, and when his ticking time bomb will finally explode. Some nights, Shane can’t wrap his head around the terrors that run rampant in Ilya's head, that demonize his thoughts and his being, and Shane can’t understand that Ilya is trying his best, and they can't figure out what to do.
Those nights are hard, but they’re few and far in between. They're working on it, together.
Ilya knows there’s a world where it’s easier for the two of them. There's a world where society is more accepting, or their circumstances are kinder, or their entire genetics are different. Ilya knows that, in all of those worlds, Shane will always be the one for him.
Ilya knows, forevermore, that he gladly accepts the pain his world bestows upon him. His world is the only world that has his Shane, and that’s enough for Ilya.