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Cliff Marleau was pretty sure he knew more about Ilya Rozanov than anyone else, at least anyone else on the Raiders. He knew Ilya’s habits, his workout routine, the number of times he jerked off in a given week (too fucking many, Rozy, save some stamina for the rest of us). He knew that, as much as Ilya liked to pretend that he didn’t enjoy some good ol’ Dunkin’ coffee, he would not say no to a medium iced hazelnut, two creams, three sugars. He knew his longtime teammate and friend, he thought, as much as the man would let anyone know him. He had his secrets, sure. But Cliff liked to think he was one of the few who got to see below the surface of Ilya Rozanov.
And then he had gone all turncoat and signed with Ottawa instead of Boston. Even to someone who supposedly knew him so well, it didn’t make any goddamn sense.
So tonight, before Ilya could dodge him again, Cliff was going to find out why.
He had his theories. Contrary to what people may have liked to assume, Cliff wasn’t just some meathead hockey player. Sure, he’d taken a few rough hits over the years, but who among them hadn’t gotten their bell rung at least once? He still had more than enough functional brain cells left to be able to piece together the little crumbs of information that he’d been able to gather over his time being Ilya’s friend: Ilya claimed not to do relationships, but he always seemed to be texting one specific person; he would insist on private hotel rooms sometimes, but be okay sharing others; he would disappear during events for suspiciously long periods of time; he was always in a better mood for a few days after they played Montreal, whether or not they won the game. And then there were all the times that they’d gone out for nights on the town together and Ilya got a drink or two in him and didn’t seem to mind one bit who flirted with him, man or woman, he’d flirt back. That had changed recently, though.
Cliff could have been content to let him keep his secrets secret for as long as it took for Ilya to tell him himself, if it hadn’t been for the baffling goddamn bitch of a move to a team that hadn’t broken the top ten in over fifteen years.
Everything pointed to one obvious conclusion: Ilya was hiding a boyfriend, possibly someone in the league.
Okay, so maybe Cliff was a little pissed about it. Roz had always struck him as the type to want to end his career in a blaze of glory, to play until he was forty and go out winning one last cup for the team that had drafted him, get his jersey raised to the rafters as a living legend. Instead he was committing career suicide to go wallow with a team that had never managed to get its shit together and fizzle out in obscurity.
And if Cliff was correct, he was doing it for some fucking guy.
Cliff knew Ilya was back in Boston. He could sense it in the air and tell by the non-answers he was getting in response to his texts. And, okay, maybe he’d been refreshing Ilya’s mentions on Twitter (full of vitriol directed at him and Ottawa as a whole) until he saw one from a semi official looking source that read “Ilya Rozanov spotted in Boston for first time since signing with Centaurs” and had a picture attached of Ilya leaving Logan Airport with Svetlana, the woman Cliff would have assumed was his girlfriend if he hadn’t insisted they were not together and if Cliff hadn’t amassed a pile of evidence that said otherwise. If Ilya was going to keep evading him by text, Cliff was going to have to go ask him a few questions in person.
He drove down Ilya’s long driveway, the glass panels of the house glinting ahead of him in the late afternoon summer sun. Cliff rehearsed in his head what he might say to Ilya, changing his mind at each turn. He couldn’t come in, guns blazing, throwing around wild accusations about the biggest gay hockey scandal the world had ever seen. Well, since the Scott Hunter thing at least. Although maybe this was bigger than Hunter and his secret barista boyfriend, if Ilya really was hooking up with another player. Cliff had to approach this correctly, or Ilya was liable to sock him in the jaw and clam up entirely. Subtlety was his friend here.
And all of that flew immediately out of his head the moment that Ilya opened his front door, looking sweaty and shirtless and mildly pissed off, which was pretty much his standard look.
“Are you moving to Canada for some fuckboy?” was how the question came out of his mouth instead.
Ilya’s eyes widened fractionally and he glanced around as if checking if Cliff had brought anyone else with him, and then his face slid back into pissed off indifference. “The fuck are you talking about Marleau?”
“You’re switching teams,” Cliff said, “You have no reason to do that, and don’t give me that media bullshit explanation about wanting to start fresh and see what you can do with a new crew. You don’t ‘start fresh’ at 28, not without a reason. Half the world thinks you got caught doping and are trying to cover it up, and I know that’s not true either.” This was way more aggressive than Cliff had planned on being. Ilya hadn’t slammed the door in his face yet, though, so that was a good sign. “So tell me the truth. Is it to be with your man up in Canada?”
“Why would it be a man?” Ilya asked, eyes shuttered.
“I’ve known you sleep with men for a long time, Roz, and I’ve never given a shit about that,” Cliff said, shaking his head. “And if it was a woman you wouldn’t have hesitated to give me all the dirty deets by now.” Cliff tried to think through all the points he’d come up with on the drive over. “I know you have someone, you always disappear whenever we play Montreal, you never go home with anyone from bars anymore or go back to Russia in the off season, and now you’re moving to fucking Ottawa.”
Ilya got a look on his face like he was thoroughly sick of people asking him about Ottawa.
“I am tired of talking to everyone about Ottawa,” he said, but didn’t refute anything else. He stepped away from the door into the house, but left it open in a clear invitation for Cliff to follow him.
Ilya turned the corner into his kitchen. Cliff kept pace behind him, but put himself on the opposite side of the kitchen island. It didn’t hurt to have a counter between them in case Ilya changed his mind and started swinging. Ilya was poking through his cabinets like he was looking for something but didn’t seem to find it, his movements restrained. He turned back to Cliff and fiddled with the chain around his neck, straightening it so that the clasp was around the back. He had seemed a little out of breath before, but was regaining it now.
“He’s not here, is he?” Cliff asked, “I didn’t interrupt anything?”
“No.” Ilya shook his head. “I was working out. You interrupted that.”
“Oh,” Cliff said. He’d really blown this by coming in full tilt earlier, and now he wasn’t sure what to say. “Look man,” he began, haltingly. “I just want to make sure you aren’t doing something you regret.”
“I do not regret,” Ilya said. “I think of this for full year before doing.”
A year? Fuck. He was in deep. “You’ve been planning this for that long?”
“Yes,” Ilya said, face saying that it should be obvious.
“But why?” Cliff had pieced the what of it all just fine, it was the why he couldn’t wrap his head around.
Ilya looked like he did when he was planning out his words carefully in English before speaking. Cliff wondered what it was that he wanted to say. Because I love him? Because I need to be closer to him even if it tanks my career? “It makes the most sense for us,” is what he said instead.
Cliff leaned heavily against the counter. “So there is a man, then?”
Ilya looked at him for a long time with that flat-eyed Slavic stare. “Yes,” he confirmed eventually.
“Who you’re moving to Canada for,” Cliff clarified.
“Yes.” Ilya said like he was annoyed that this was taking so long. “What, you want me to write it down? Hold up big sign that says I have boyfriend?”
“So you do have a boyfriend,” Cliff confirmed.
“Yes, Marly! Jesus fucking Christ.” Ilya threw his hands up into the air and looked up to the ceiling like there was something up there that could save him from this conversation.
“I’m just trying to figure out the situation!” Cliff defended.
“I thought you figure everything out!” Ilya said, “Mister Detective coming in, asking questions.” He started grumbling to himself in Russian, a low stream of sound that probably contained a few choice words for Cliff. Then he left the kitchen and headed towards the living room, (probably) insulting the entire Marleau lineage the whole way.
In the living room, there were three large piles of clothing taking up the entire couch. Ilya picked up one dress shirt from the largest pile, considered it briefly, and then threw it into one of the other piles.
“I just don’t get it,” Cliff continued the conversation, “Why move teams for him? You’ll be busy during the season either way, and if he’s another player then so will he. Why uproot your whole life for that?” He considered Ilya for a moment, watched the way he silently mouthed the word uproot to himself. “He is another player, isn’t he?”
Ilya’s motions stilled. Still half turned away, he said, “Another player, yes.”
“On the Metros?” Ilya nodded, sharply, once. “So you won’t even be on the same team then. What’s the point?”
“Is… safer,” Ilya said, looking like he wanted to say something else.
Cliff tried to think through what that could mean. “You’re planning on going public?”
Ilya shook his head and very slowly returned to picking up articles of clothing and tossing them to either side. “No, but if we decide to, or if something happens…” If we get caught, Cliff could hear the implication there.
“You don’t think Boston would have your back?”
Ilya turned to him fully with a pinched expression that seemed to say can we please be fucking serious for a moment, Clifford. Cliff thought about the way Boston hockey was and about Boston culture as a whole. For the longest time, they were one of the only states to allow gay marriage, and that was treated as the punchline to more than a few jokes. They might be a blue state, but Cliff had heard the way the guys talked in the locker room, noted the deafening, damning silence from management in the wake of Scott Hunter coming out.
“But you’re… you.” Cliff knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this was him moving into the bargaining stage. “You’re Ilya Fucking Rozanov. No one would be able to touch you.”
Ilya shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe,” he said, “I cannot take that chance. This way, I can keep him and still play hockey. If I lose visa and have to go back to Russia, I will lose both.” He then squared his shoulders and said, “If I have to choose between him and hockey, I will choose him.”
Cliff sunk down into a nearby chair. “Jesus fuck “ he sighed and ran a hand down his face. He needed a break. He needed a change of subject. “How long are you in town?”
“I came to pack, get a few important things,” Ilya said, turning back to the mountain of clothing. “I’m driving one of my cars up there tomorrow.”
So soon. Cliff was glad he’d come by tonight, even if none of it was going the way he’d planned. “So what’s with the piles?”
“Getting rid of things,” Ilya said, tossing another shirt away. “He gave me a book about organization.” Ilya stumbled a little through the word, but he had a shockingly fond look on his face now. “Was very boring.”
“Your guy is giving you book recs?” Ilya shrugged again. Cliff wrinkled his nose. “He just doesn’t seem like the type to read a lot.”
“Too busy with hockey, yes,” Ilya chuckled a little. “He mostly reads hockey books.” He paused, and then asked, “So you have guessed who he is?”
“Pretty sure,” Cliff said. There were only so many players it could be, once he eliminated the obvious. Seeing them interact recently had solidified things. “And I’ve got to be honest, I don’t really get it. Mostly seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Ilya hummed, looking mildly offended. “What do you even know about him?”
“Not much,” Cliff admitted. “Just what the public knows I guess. Haven’t really talked to him much. Not as much as you do, at games and events.” He wasn’t sure what he could do to make Ilya see what a bad idea this was. “I think you’ve been hooking up with him for years, I just didn’t know it was so serious. I know you want everyone to think that you hate him and I know you don’t actually hate him.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed, “It is problem.”
“It’s messy. It might get you hurt.” Cliff stood up out of the chair again, suddenly irritated at the way Ilya continued to pick through his clothes and carry on as if nothing were wrong. He was trying to go for emotional vulnerability here, and there Ilya was contemplating a pair of pants like they were a great work of art. “If it came down to you or hockey, would he do the same? Would he choose you?”
Ilya wouldn’t look at him, then, just kept up the fascination with the pants. “I don’t know. I hope he never has to.”
Cliff sighed. “Look man, I don’t care that you’re gay—”
“Bisexual,” Ilya cut in, arms crossed.
“Fine, bisexual. But you need to find someone who can give you back everything you give to them? Isn’t that the whole fucking point of being in love?”
Ilya did look at him, then, soft and smiling and so unlike the asshole persona the world saw. “He does,” he said simply. “Took us long time to get there, but we’ve talked about it. We are on same page.”
Oh fuck, Ilya wasn’t just sleeping with this guy, he was straight up delusional about him. Time for some tough love.
“I know this seems like a good idea now, but you gotta think long term,” Cliff said. “People don’t always keep their promises.”
“He will,” Ilya said firmly, “I know this.”
“Things just don’t always work out for the person that’s in your position,” Cliff said.
“Position? What position?” Ilya asked. “You say you don’t know him, so why are you being such a dick?” Ilya was getting actually angry now, his voice raised and hands flung out in front of him for emphasis. “Why you think he is bad guy?”
Cliff couldn’t take him playing dumb anymore. “Because he’s a married man!” he yelled.
Ilya stared at him like he was waiting for a punchline, brow furrowed. Then he said, “No he isn’t?” and made it sound like a question.
“He’s famously a wife guy!” Cliff said, “For god’s sake, he’s got kids, Roz.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ilya asked.
It was impossible for Ilya not to know this already. “You can’t do this, it isn’t right,” Cliff said.
Ilya’s mouth clicked shut and he continued to stare at Cliff with a growing look of alarm. Then, very slowly, he asked, “No, really, what the fuck do you think you are talking about Marly?”
Fine, time to cut to the chase, then.
“How long have you been having an affair with Hayden Pike?”
Silence, and then:
“Hayden P—?” Ilya choked as if the name was causing him physical pain. “I am not fucking Hayden Pike. I would not fuck Hayden Pike if someone paid me.” He put a hand on his hip, face becoming distinctly bitchy. “I would catch something,” he complained. “Shitty Player Disease. Or he would find some way to make me pregnant, he has about nineteen children already.”
Cliff was pretty sure that wasn’t right, but now he was also starting to think that he hadn’t been either.
“Man needs a second vasectomy,” Ilya continued his tirade, almost to himself by that point. “I know he had first, I had to hear all about it. But I don’t trust it worked. The world does not need any more Pikes.”
“See?” Cliff cut in. He felt like he was losing it. “That’s what I mean. How the fuck would you know that about him, man?”
Ilya was looking at him like he was the stupid one, now. “I told you, I am dating Metro.”
“But not Hayden Pike,” Cliff confirmed.
Ilya’s lip curled in disgust. “No, not Pike.”
Cliff was at a loss. He’d been so sure. “Then who the hell are you dating? Don’t tell me it’s—”
Instead of answering, Ilya took his phone out from his pocket. It was buzzing, the screen lit up to say Jane was calling, no contact photo. Ilya accepted the call and put his phone up to his ear.
“You have very good timing,” he said, voice warmer than Cliff had ever heard it. “Marleau is here. He wants to know who my boyfriend is that I am moving teams for. Can I tell him?”
The person on the other end of the line—Ilya’s boyfriend, who apparently was not Hayden Pike, which left very few other options— said a few words that Cliff couldn’t hear.
“Yes,” Ilya said, “I trust him. Okay.” He took the phone away from his ear and pressed a button. “You are on speaker now.”
“What do you want me to say?”
No. Holy shit. No fucking way.
Cliff felt a little woozy. He sat heavily back into the chair. “Please tell me that isn’t Shane Hollander.”
Ilya tilted his head. “You want me to lie, or…?”
“Uh, yeah, hi,” Shane Hollander said from the phone speaker, “It’s me.”
“Oh my god,” Cliff leaned forward and put his head into his hands. What kind of backwards universe had he fallen into?
“You want to hear something funny?” Ilya asked, and didn’t wait for Shane to say yes before he continued. “Marly figured whole thing out. Except.” He paused there for dramatic effect. Cliff could tell without looking that he was sporting a shit-eating grin. “He thought you were Pike.”
“He thought you were seeing Hayden?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ilya said. And then both he and Shane Hollander were laughing at him.
“I swear to god, Roz,” Cliff dropped his hands away from his face and looked up pleadingly. “It made sense at the time.”
“Holy shit,” Hollander said, “I can’t wait to tell Hayden.”
Ilya stopped laughing, immediately alarmed. “No. Shane. Do not tell Pike this.”
“He’ll be pretty grossed out,” Hollander continued.
“I am serious,” Ilya said, pointing at the phone as if Hollander could see it. “Very serious. I will not fuck you anymore.”
“Yes you will,” Hollander said with utter confidence.
Ilya’s voice grew desperate. “Hollander! Do not tell him!”
“Ilya,” Hollander soothed, still laughing a little,“I’m not actually going to.”
“Ah, I see,” Ilya said, petulant. “So you are messing with me. I move to Canada for you and this is thanks I get? I will remember this.”
And then Hollander said, “I’ll make it up to you,” in the sort of voice that Cliff wouldn’t have thought the notoriously uptight captain capable of and Cliff felt very much like he should be somewhere else right now. And then he asked, “Am I still on speakerphone?”
“Yes,” Ilya replied.
“Oh,” Hollander said, “Sorry, Marleau. I know it sounds crazy. Maybe the three of us can get together and talk about it in person sometime.” His voice was back to the way he’d sounded in every press interview he’d ever done. “If you both want that.”
“I do,” Ilya said. “You missed the look on his face. Was incredible.”
“Sounds like you’ll have some explaining to do,” Hollander said. “I was calling to ask what time I should expect you at the cottage tomorrow, but I can call back and we can talk about that later.”
“Yes,” Ilya agreed, “And you can make me feel better after being so mean to me.”
“Deal,” Hollander said.
“Love you,” Ilya said softly. He was, in fact, the softest and gentlest that Cliff had ever seen him. Huh.
“Love you, too,” Hollander returned in kind, and then the call was ended.
“Holy shit,” was all Cliff could say, “I cant believe I almost crushed your boyfriend that one time.”
“I have mostly forgiven you,” Ilya said lightly as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. “He is tougher than people think.”
Cliff had about a million questions. He had been right, this was bigger than Scott Hunter. His head swam with trying to process the whens and wheres and hows of it all. He wasn’t sure where to even begin. Instead, what he said was:
“So. Need any help packing?”