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The moment Shane Hollander sees him, he curses.
“What the fuck?”
“Hollander.”
“Why are you here?” Shane demands, cheeks rosy and beautiful. Ilya wants to lick him. “This is trivia.”
“I know,” Ilya says, pointing to the tiny sheet of terror in front of him. “I came to win.”
“But…” Shane looks around at the bar. “It’s trivia.”
Ilya doesn’t know who came up with the idea of an All Star’s trivia game, but it’s most likely a psychopath. Forcing dozens of hockey players into one place to answer questions that require more than three brain cells was an exercise in torture. It had turned the bar into a convention of testosterone, heaving with 200 pound protein powder junkies who are all shouting over each other and waving tiny little sheets of riddles.
“I like trivia,” Ilya says. “And I’m on your team.”
Shane scowls and it’s a miracle Ilya doesn’t bark then and there. He’s trying to be cool. Casual. Whatever the fuck that means. Ilya hadn’t been casual since he’d left Russia and met a Canadian with freckles who wanted to lecture him on the dangers of smoking.
Shane didn’t need to know that. He didn’t need to know that he’d left a mangled mess inside Ilya’s chest. It was embarrassing. Pathetic. He hadn’t been this much of a loser since Sochi, when his father had screamed until he was blue in the face and Ilya had tried to drown himself in a bath of vodka.
It didn’t compare to the coma he’d drunk himself into after one tuna melt, a messy handjob and a fugitive fuck buddy. He’d drunk ordered a new car and went on a spending spree on Gofundme. Some little girl named Lara now had a collection of new skates for her first competition and some dude called Chad had enough cash to save his cat Turnip.
What a stupid fucking name. Ilya loved it.
“Shouldn’t you be at a club?” Shane asks, reluctantly sitting on the stool beside him. “That’s more your scene.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m a changed man, Hollander.” Ilya tracks the pretty blush that’s spreading from his cheeks to his neck. “I play hockey. I go home.” He leans forward, lowering his voice. “I wait for Jane to text. No clubs for me.”
Shane sputters. “That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
“I’ve seen you at a club,” Shane rushes out, in a voice that says I’ve been keeping track. “I’ve seen pictures, too.”
“Ah, so you are stalker, then?”
Ilya had spent the past two months imagining his face (and watching an unhealthy amount of highlight clips), but nothing really compared to seeing Shane spiral in real time.
“No,” Shane rejects, eyes focused on the table. “I just—I see things. Online.”
“Online?” Ilya asks. “Like a fan?”
“No.”
“You can admit it,” Ilya croons. “My biggest fan.”
“I’d rather swallow a razor.”
“Kinky.”
“Lay off, Rozanov.” Four pints of beer are placed on the table by a should-be retiree. Scott Hunter looks at Ilya like he’s a fly in his face. “You can be nice for a change, can’t you? Didn’t they teach you manners in that frozen hellscape you call a homeland?”
“Manners?” Ilya laughs. “In Russia, they teach you how to win.”
“And how to breach human rights,” mutters Shane.
“Okay, who are you? United Nations?” Ilya asks.
“I’m a person who reads, asshole.”
“Oh, I know you read,” Ilya says. “You read about many things. Hockey, hockey and clubs too, da?”
“Fuck. Off.”
“Fuck yeah, Hollander, that’s the attitude.” Cliff Marleau announces his entry into their sick little gang with another four shots of Tequila and some nuts that have seen better days. He claps Ilya on the back and offers a salute to Hunter. “We’re going to fucking destroy them.”
“Who invited you, Marleau?” Shane asks, his tone flat. “Hunter and I were meant to be on a team with Vaughan and Mitty.”
Marly glances to Ilya in confusion and Ilya tries, with as much subtlety as a hand grenade, to tell him to shut the fuck up. Shane couldn’t find out that Ilya had bribed Mitty with a rare trading card or that he’d convinced Vaughan with the promise of Super Bowl tickets.
“Rozy wanted to switch things up.” Ilya was going to kill him. He was going to break into his ugly apartment, wrap him in duct tape and throw him off the nearest cliff. When he hit the ground, he was going to shoot him and then set him on fire. “We’re winners, baby. I’ve already chosen our team name.”
“God help us,” Hunter mutters.
Marly slaps down a piece of paper that proudly proclaims their team as ‘Puck Around and Find Out’.
“Seriously?” Shane asks, deadpan. “That’s horrendous.”
“It’s hilarious.”
“It’s offensive.”
“It’s inventive.” Marly glances at Roz in disbelief. “Damn, I didn’t realise we were playing with Al Qaeda."
Hunter glares at him. “Marleau.”
“Are you even good at trivia?” Shane asks, a bite in his tone.
“Fuck yeah I am,” Marleau proclaims, slapping the table. “My sister, Jannie, she’s got a team back in Brookline that plays every week. Itty bitty quiz-y committee—”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ilya gasps out. “That is the name?”
“Look, it wasn’t my idea,” Marly explains. “Jannie likes puns.”
Hunter looks like he’s swallowed a turd. “So she chose ‘Itty bitty quiz-y committee’?”
Marly ignores him. “Listen, ever since I joined, we’ve been on a winning streak. 17 weeks at the top. We get free ribs every time we win and I’m a fucking quiz master. I know my shit.”
“See?” Ilya asks, looking at Shane. “I came to win.”
The quiz begins with a smoke machine and a bleach blonde dictator with a microphone. She wears a sequined bikini and the players start shouting the moment she takes the stage, like they’re monkeys at the zoo waiting to be fed. Shane takes his shot and downs it the moment he hears Rochy from Minnesota scream I’m gonna quiz my pants!
“Okay, you neanderthals, I didn’t realise I was attending a make a wish convention when I said yes to leading this quiz tonight, but here I am. You better be ready to put those pens to paper and actually win something, because I am not giving these prizes out for free. I’m not the NHL.”
A roar goes through the crowd and Ilya spends the entire time with his eyes glued to Shane, who looks like he’d rather die than spend one second looking at the barely dressed trivia tyrant.
“My name is Ginger and I’ll be your hostess for this evening. In the crowd is my very, very sexy assistant, Cinnamon.” Ilya glances to where she’s pointing and sees a man in his 50s, with a beer belly and a dodgy hairline, waving to the hockey teams. “It’s time to pick your poison, gentlemen. We’ve got six teams playing tonight and each team will get to choose a category from the slideshow behind me. When Cinnamon approaches you with a microphone, do not call the police. I promise, he’s not on the sex offenders register—he just has that look.”
Cinnamon points the microphone to a team led by Dallas Kent and Ilya thinks the joke writes itself. “Team name, please.”
“Ice Holes.”
“Fitting,” Shane mutters and Ilya flashes him a smile.
“And topic of choice?”
Kent looks at his teammates—a collection of bigots and losers—and decides to request, “Pop Culture.”
“Fuck me!” Shane snaps, drawing the eyes of a few tables around them. “We’re fucked.”
“Fucked?” Ilya asks. “Is pop culture, not physics.”
“It’ll be fine, rook.” Hunter is eyeing the slideshow with his game face (imagine constipation). “I’m good with the classic songs.”
“What, Beethoven?"
“Fuck off, Rozanov.”
“It’s a disaster,” Shane grumbles. “I’m shit at this stuff. I thought this would be hockey themed.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Marly cracks his knuckles. “Let’s fucking go.”
The questions start simple, but Shane is nervous. He looks ten seconds away from bolting out of the bar and back to Montreal, tail between his legs as he plots five different ways to go into hiding. Ilya has only ever seen him like this once before and it sets his teeth on edge.
“Easy question to start us off. Which female singer matched Michael Jackson’s record to secure five number one hits off one album?” The silence was loud. “Here’s a hint: she recently was photographed on a paddle board with her very well endowed boyfriend.”
Hunter slaps the table. “Katy Perry.”
Marly’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the fuck, dude?”
“What?” Hunter doesn’t meet their eyes. “I’m a big fan.”
“Who is that again?” Shane asks, voice low.
Ilya turns in shock. “You don’t know Katy Perry?”
Shane shrugs.
“Teenage dream? Firework?” Ilya gets more desperate with every song Shane doesn’t recognise. “Did you ever feel like a plastic bag?”
“Did I ever what?”
“Christ, Hollander, do you live in a cave?” Marly asks. “Everyone knows Katy Perry.”
“Even Hunter and he’s from the ice age.”
“Rozanov.”
The rest of the questions are relatively easy. Marleau wiggles with excitement every time he recognises an answer, while Shane sits staring into space like he’s three seconds away from committing homicide.
“Okay boys, final question: Released in 2005, this film features two cowboys who develop a very saucy relationship while working in the mountains. Name the movie.”
Hunter pales.
Shane balks.
Marleau whistles.
And Ilya wants to cackle.
“I know this one,” Ilya tells Marleau. “It’s very gay.”
“Rozanov,” Hunter warns.
“What? It is! They fuck in the mountains without lube. It’s vintage gay.” Ilya catches Shane’s eyes and finds him panicked. “Brokeback Mountain. Have you heard of it, Hollander?”
“No,” he chokes out.
“Ah.” Ilya nods. “So you are homophobic?”
Shane flips him off.
“Rozanov, cut it out and write down the fucking answer,” Hunter commands, tapping the paper like it’s the declaration of independence and he’s one of those assholes in the white wigs.
Marly snatches it up the moment Ilya’s finished and waves it in the air like a white flag. Cinnamon comes to collect and Marly flashes him a smile. “So, who are you putting your money on, Cinnabun?”
“It’s Cinnamon.”
“Because I’d have ten grand on ‘Puck Around and Find out’,” Marly says, spreading his arms out. “If you want to start a syndicate, I’d be keen.”
Cinnamon blinks and deposits another team's sheet on their table. “Okay. Mark this. The answers will be on the powerpoint and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Marly grabs the sheet and scoffs as he reads the team name. “Look at what these losers have called themselves. ‘Lord of the Rinks’.”
“At least it’s not ‘Ice Holes’.” Hunter turns to Marly. “Marleau, did you just try to begin a betting ring at fucking trivia?”
The two of them begin bickering and Ilya nudges Shane with his foot. “You are not good at trivia.”
“What gave it away?” Shane mumbles.
“You know nothing,” Ilya says, voice low. “You didn’t even know Katy Perry.”
“How the fuck was I meant to know that?” Shane hisses. “You just kept saying random words to me. What does plastic bag even mean? How am I meant to get that?”
“Because it was the only song they played on the radio for an entire year,” Ilya snipes right back, shoving him with his shoulder. “Why did you even come to trivia if you don’t listen to music?”
“I listen to music.”
“Oh, really? Like white noise and rain sounds?”
“Fuck off.”
“No,” Ilya murmurs, hand brushing Shane’s thigh. “I don’t want to.”
Shane’s eyes snap up to his and his lips open like a temptation. Ilya doesn’t know how to make him understand. He doesn’t know how to explain that he wanted him again. He wanted him more than any actress could. He wanted to kiss him and fuck him and have him stay the night. He wanted and wanted and wanted.
It was impossible.
“‘Lord of the Rinks’ are fucking morons,” Marly concludes, tapping the paper with his pen. He’d given them a score of four out of ten and Hunter was currently fact checking like the narc he was.
“What do you expect?” Shane says, voice rough, his hand snatching Ilya’s and shoving it away from his thigh. “Lindholm is on their team, which basically means they’re doing charity work.”
Bitch.
“Ikea is here?” Ilya asks, head whipping to where Matias Lindholm sits with Sorren Miitka. “I thought he got his teeth knocked out last week.”
“He did,” Hunter says, eyes not moving from where he was fact checking Marly’s scoring. “Also, you can’t call him Ikea.”
“Why? He’s Swedish.”
“He’s Norwegian and it’s rude.”
Ilya presses his hand to Shane’s thigh again. “Hunter, what was it like being on the Titanic? Was the water cold?”
Hunter sighs.
“Did you see Jack and Rose—”
“Fuck me, I should have stayed in my hotel room,” Hunter snaps, shoving away from the table and heading to where Cinnamon is collecting the sheets.
Ilya glances at Shane and knows they won’t have more time.
“Marly, go get us more drinks.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Shane’s lip twitches as he watches Cliff Marleau trudge towards the bar, pulling out his wallet from his back pocket. “You have him on a tight leash, huh?”
“Marly?” Ilya shakes his head. “He's a friend. Good friend. Loyal.”
“Like a dog.”
“Like a friend.”
Ilya presses his hand to Shane’s thigh again, desperate to touch him. He needs him to know that he’s missed this. That he’s thought about him for months. Every time his phone buzzed, Ilya’s heart lurched. Late at night, when the world was lost and the sky was dark, he’d stare at the text thread with Jane and feel hollow.
Shane looks up, eyes wide with surprise. He’s so fucking beautiful it hurts. It was like he was made just to torture Ilya. His freckles, his lips, the slope of his neck. Ilya had kissed every inch of him, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
“What are you doing?” Shane asks, voice tight and low.
Ilya squeezes. “Nothing.”
“Your hand—”
“Yes?”
Shane licks his lips. “You should probably move it.”
“Why?” Ilya asks. “Would the actress care?”
Shane’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Rose?”
“Da, unless you’re fucking another one by now. Is that what you’re doing? Going through the whole X squad?”
“What? No.” Shane shakes his head, before he looks up again. “It didn’t work out. With Rose.”
Ilya’s head snaps up and blood rushes to his face. There’s a ringing in his ears that feels oddly like a concussion, leaving him dazed and just a touch high. “What?”
“It didn’t work out,” Shane repeats, biting out the words.
It’s a miracle.
Ilya had never really paid attention when his Mama had dragged him to Church. The priest would drone on and on about miracles while Ilya was harassed by his brother and his sharp fingers. The truth was that Ilya had never really understood the concept of a miracle until he’d met Shane Hollander.
Now he could count Rose Landry as a miracle, too.
“Why?” Ilya asks, trying to hide his grin. “Did she make you a tuna melt?”
Shane’s lips open in shock before Hunter is back with their sheet, sliding into the seat opposite Ilya. He knows he should move his hand but he can’t seem to find the will. Not when Shane is staring at him with a spark of something. Anger. Frustration. Hatred, maybe?
It is better than being ignored, at least.
“Round one is over and the scores are in!” The trivia tyrant (Nutmeg?) declares. “In the lead, we have a tie. Please give a round of applause for ‘I ain’t No Hellebuyck Girl’ and ‘Puck Around and Find Out’. Both came in with a total of nine out of ten.”
“Fuck yeah we did!” Marly shouts, whooping loudly as wraps an arm around Ilya. “How does it feel, Roz? Better than the Stanley Cup?”
Shane looks horrified.
“Is good,” Ilya says simply, thumb swiping Shane’s thigh. “Is very good.”
The next three rounds are all relatively boring. History, general knowledge and politics. Ilya isn’t that helpful in general knowledge, but he manages to scribble down a few right answers for history. Shane contributes with the deranged edge of a man desperate for a win and nearly breaks a chair when he can’t recognise Princess Diana.
“Next round, by popular demand, is geography.”
Shane perks up. “Okay, this could be my redemption.”
It isn’t.
Each question sends Shane down a path of crisis. Which country has the most islands? Ireland, maybe. What is the largest ocean on Earth? Why would I know that? I’m not a fish. Which U.S. state is closest to Africa? Who the fuck cares?
“Hollander, you suck,” Marly observes, disbelief on his face. They’re all in different states of shock. Hollander was the Prince of Hockey. A damn generational talent. He had the Hockey IQ of Gretzky, but apparently, he didn’t know that Antarctica is the largest desert on Earth.
Shane’s face burns redder than a fire hydrant. “No I don’t.”
“You suck, rook,” Hunter cuts him off, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re okay at hockey, though, so it’s fine.”
“I don’t suck,” Shane mumbles and Ilya can see him panicking. He’d become used to spotting the signs. The glossy look to his eyes. The way his teeth would tear at his bottom lip. The uneven pattern of his breath.
“Questions suck,” Ilya says simply, standing up. Shane watches him the entire time, eyes guarded as if he’s waiting for the insult to hit. It never does. “I’ll be back.”
Ilya isn’t here to play trivia. He’s not here to get questions right or fight Dallas Kent for the title of the most knowledgeable asshole in the league. He’s here to talk to Shane and he can’t do that when he’s in the middle of a panic attack.
So Ilya does the only thing he can do to make it better.
He bribes the trivia tyrant.
“When is the hockey round?” He demands, cornering the woman (Paprika? Pepper?).
“Excuse me, handsome,” she says, eyes raking from head to toe. “Where did you come from?”
“Russia,” Ilya offers, throwing a smile. If she wanted to flirt, he would flirt. He just needed this evil trivia to have a round that Shane could actually win. “So when is hockey round?”
“At the end,” she says. “I’m saving the best for last.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I want best now.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Well, you’re not in charge here.”
“No?” Ilya opens his wallet. “How much?”
The trivia tyrant eyes him for a moment and he wonders if she’ll push back. Maybe she’ll talk about the integrity of the quiz or some bullshit. Ilya doesn’t care. He’d pay her mortgage off if it meant she did the hockey round next.
“You couldn’t afford it.”
Ilya grins. “Name your price.”
Shane is marking the next table’s sheet when Ilya returns, placing a cold glass of Ginger Ale in front of him. Shane doesn’t bother looking up. “Where were you?”
“Bribing match officials.”
Shane’s lip twitches. “Right.”
Hunter and Marly are over by the bar, arguing about the last question in the round. They could be coming up with a cure for cancer and Ilya wouldn’t give two fucks. He only cared about one person in the room and he was currently, annoyingly, focused on grading another team's answer sheet.
“Did they do good?”
“Scraped by,” Shane says. “‘Hatrick Swazyes’ are pretty dumb.”
Ilya looks at him, truly looks at him, and feels his chest break open like fine china. Looking at Shane makes him feel like he’s been shoved into the boards, a stick lodged in his ribs, forcing the air from his lungs. He doesn’t know how to stop it. He doesn’t know how to breathe again.
“So you are not with the actress anymore?”
Shane finally looks up, brown eyes wide and open. There’s an honesty that exists in his eyes that Ilya hasn’t found anywhere else. He’d tried, fuck he’d really tried, but everytime he found someone else, he’d come up short. No one made him feel anything like Shane Hollander. No one even came close.
“No.” Shane doesn’t realise his words cut the noose around Ilya’s neck. “We weren’t… compatible.”
“Compatible,” Ilya whispers, wanting to tattoo the word on his forehead. “Why?”
Shane’s shoulders hunch. “You know why.”
But he doesn’t. Not really. Shane had ignored his texts. He hadn’t answered his calls. Whenever Ilya came face-to-face with him on the ice, he found a stranger staring back with a blank face.
Ilya doesn’t know shit.
But he wants to.
He wants to know everything. He wants to know every unspoken thought, every lie, every fantasy. He’d spent hours imagining Shane’s life, the apartment he hid from him, the parents he’d never introduced. He’d spent hours imagining what it would be like to walk into his childhood home. He imagined laughing at the photos on the wall and the trophies held in pride of place.
He liked to pretend that maybe Hollander’s parents would like him.
Accept him.
Want him.
These were the wants he kept locked away, hidden in the earth of his mind. The law in Russia told him these were unnatural thoughts. Illegal thoughts. His father would disown him. His brother would kill him.
Ilya doesn’t have a choice, but if he did, he liked to think he would choose Shane Hollander.
“What’s the verdict, boys? Are we in the lead?”
“The verdict is this league is filled with men with brain damage,” Shane says, offering Marly the sheet. “And that the next round actually needs to be something we’re good at.”
Well, Ilya had just transferred five thousand dollars to make sure it was, but Shane didn’t need to know that.
“Wow, boys,” the trivia tyrant begins. “You are really fucking bad at this. I haven’t seen scores this low since I quizzed the NFL guys in Tampa. Those fuckers have nothing between their heads but CTE and a few undiagnosed mental illnesses. The team leading the ranks at the moment is ‘Puck Around and Find Out’ but surprisingly, ‘The Crease Junkies’ are catching up. So the next round is all about redemption. Fellas, it’s time to play some hockey.”
The room explodes with cheers.
“The first team to complete all answers gets an extra five points. Good luck!”
Shane practically snatches the sheet from Cinnamon when he comes around, pen in hand and eyes stuck on the powerpoint. An intensity sparks in his eyes that he usually reserves for the ice.
“Read me the questions and I’ll write the answers,” Shane commands.
Hunter nods. “Okay, who holds the NHL record for the most goals scored in a single season?”
“Gretzky,” Ilya and Shane say at the same time.
Marly groans. “Oh my god, they’re nerds.”
“Which goaltender has the most career wins in NHL history?”
“Martin Brodeur,” they both say.
Ilya grins, nudging Shane. “I said it first.”
Shane scowls. “No you didn’t. You jumped on my answer, you little sneak.”
“Little? Hollander, you know I’m not little.”
“Fuck, don’t you ever shut up?”
Hunter snaps his fingers in between their heads, which had slowly drawn together. They were close enough that Ilya could feel Shane’s breath fanning over his face, warm and steady. “Can you two stop flirting and answer the fucking questions?”
Shane’s face pales. “Flirting? What—”
“Hollander, focus!” Hunter demands. “What is the exact diameter of the face-off dots on an NHL rink?”
Marly makes a face. “Who is meant to know that—”
“It’s 26 inches,” Ilya says.
Shane lets out a startled laugh, slapping his hand on the table. “No it’s not! It’s 24 inches.”
“No, it's 26. I know it. I know this fact.”
Shane scoffs. “You’ve fucking lost it, Rozanov. It’s 24.”
“This is hell,” Hunter mutters. “This is literally hell.”
“It’s 24 inches and I’m writing it down,” Shane snaps, tongue poking out of his mouth as he scribbles the answer. Ilya has never seen anything more perfect in his life. “Hit me with the next one. We don’t have a lot of time left.”
“Who won MVP in 2014?”
Shane grimaces. “Fucking hell.”
“I love this game,” Ilya declares, loud enough that it draws the attention of other tables. “It is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Marly grimaces. “Dude, you won the Stanley Cup.”
“Close second.”
Shane ignores him and quickly scribbles Ilya Rozanov on the sheet and demands the next question.
“Which NHL team holds the record for the longest winning streak?”
“Pittsburgh,” Shane mutters, before waving the sheet in the air. “We’re done.”
Shane is high on the adrenaline of a win. His eyes are bright, his grin too large for his face. It’s the kind of smile that feels contagious. One look at it and Ilya is smiling too. Shane’s face was made for happiness and Ilya knows he’ll spend most of his life chasing the sight of it.
“Quick off the mark, Hollander,” Ilya mutters, heart racing and thoughts goey like good fudge. He knows he should rein it in. He knows he should be better at controlling himself. “Like always.”
Shane inhales sharply. A muscle jumps in his neck. His fingers clench around the paper and Ilya knows. He knows that Shane wants him. He knows how to tell Shane’s signs. The small hitches to his breath. The way his thighs twitch when he’s hard. The way his steady heart races beneath Ilya’s palm. He’s committed every sign to memory, just like he remembers his stats.
When Hunter is busy passing their sheet to another table and Marly has disappeared to the bathroom, Ilya moves his hand back to his thigh.
“Stop,” Shane hisses, no heat in it.
“Is that what you want?” Ilya is leaning close, his voice barely a whisper. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”
Sometimes, Ilya thinks it might be for the best. Who would accept them? Not Russia. Not the NHL. When Ilya thinks of his future, he knows what’s expected. A wife. Children. More Stanley Cups.
But when Ilya is alone, he imagines a future only for himself. A future with a man by his side. A future with Shane. It’s a fantasy so delicate that he cradles it in stolen moments, when the world isn’t watching and he’s able to breathe without the expectations of a lie pressing down on his shoulders.
Shane exhales, the breath shattering like glass. “No.”
Miracle.
“No?” Ilya whispers, tempering his delight. “Did you miss me, Hollander?”
Shane’s nod is barely noticeable, but it may as well have been a public declaration for the joy that wraps around Ilya’s neck.
“Do you want to leave?” Ilya rushes out, desperate to be alone with him. He doesn’t want to spend another second in this shit bar, pretending to care about stupid facts that no one needed to know. “We should leave.”
“What?” His eyebrows draw together. “No! We’re winning.”
“Is trivia! It doesn’t matter.”
“It fucking does,” Shane snaps. “I just dominated that round.”
When Hunter comes back, he takes one look at Shane and Ilya, eyes haunted by the ghosts of all those he watched die on the Titanic. “Are you two fighting? Again?”
“Our babysitter abandoned us,” Ilya says, glancing at where Marly is standing at the bar, fingers in the face of Cinnamon. “He’s trying to start a bet again.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hunter asks. “Why would you let him go over there and harass that guy—”
“He has a gambling addiction. Big sob story. It began when his mother was sucked up by a zamboni. Was freak accident.”
Shane blinks. “His mother is alive. My Mom follows her on Instagram.”
“That’s a ghost account. Very sad.”
“Go to hell, Rozanov.”
“Am already there. I bumped into Stalin. Remember him? He said you were roommates back in the day.” Ilya wiggles his eyebrows. “He was hot, so I get it.”
“Oh, my god,” Shane mutters.
Scott Hunter is not easily fazed, but Ilya is a cockroach through and through. He’d spent years crafting the perfect insults to get beneath the skin of the nicest man in hockey. What fucking bullshit. There was a perfectly good asshole hiding inside Scott Hunter and Ilya was intent to provoke it every time they were in the same room.
“You know, Roz, you make me want a fucking lobotomy,” Hunter says, taking a swig of his beer. “And I’m not that old—”
“You were born in the ice age.”
“I’m six years older than you.”
“It’s geriatric, I know.”
“Oh, you absolute Russian cun—”
“Woah, fellas, that was a quick round,” Ginger crows. “Some would say it was premature… evaluation.” The room erupts with drunken laughter, unhinged and a bit unsteady. “But seeing as you’ve all been such good boys and waited patiently, I think it’s time we unveil the leader of the round, don’t you?”
Marly chooses this moment to rush back to the table, cheeks red and a manic look in his eyes. “You won’t believe what I’ve done.”
“Shh,” Shane snaps, eyes trapped on the woman on stage. “She’s announcing the results.”
“Hollander, it’s not the draft—” Marly begins to say, when Shane cuts him off with a hard punch to his chest. “Fuck, ow!”
“Shut. Up.”
“In the lead it’s ‘Puck Around and Find Out’.”
“Fuck yes!”
Shane pumps his fist in the air as if he’s just completed a hat trick to win the Stanley. He’s smiling in a way that belongs only to hockey. It’s the smile that’s carried him through every goal, every win. Shane doesn’t smile the same when he’s forced in front of the cameras to answer stupid questions. He doesn’t smile the same in the commercials, or in the modelling shots.
It's a smile that belongs to the ice… and to Ilya.
The first time Ilya had seen Shane smile that way outside of a hockey rink had been inside a hotel room when they were eighteen-years-old. They had touched each other with clumsy hands and eager lips and it had set Ilya on fire. They’d been strangers then but they shared a secret. Shane had looked at him with a smile that he only gave his best goals.
He’s smiling at Ilya again and Ilya decides that trivia has been worth every second he’s had to suffer through Scott Hunter.
“That’s right, honey, you’re a full fledged hockey robot!” Ginger croons into the mic, offering a sarcastic clap to Shane. “Not one wrong answer.”
“Hear that?” Shane asks, a smirk toying at his lips. “It must have been 24 inches.”
“Clever boy,” Ilya murmurs, delighting in the haze of pink that spreads across Shane’s cheeks. Their eyes meet and Ilya knows he’s grinning like an idiot, so far gone it’s embarrassing.
Marly looks between them and mouths what the fuck.
Hunter is too busy scrolling on his phone to notice, but Cliff Marleau has always been able to pick up a vibe (even if he can’t tell the difference between Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock).
“Um…” Marly begins, breaking the silence. “So I’ve chosen the next round. That’s what I was going to tell you.”
“Good for you,” Hunter says, glancing up. “Did you choose something you’d find easy, like the alphabet? Or CTE?”
Marly narrows his eyes. “That’s fucked up, dude.”
Hunter shrugs. “Maybe you shouldn’t bribe match officials—”
“Oh my god, it was one time.” Marly turns back to Ilya and wiggles his eyebrows. “There’s a special round. Cinnamon says it’s extra points so I chose it.”
“Brilliant.” Shane endorses it with a firm nod. “We’re going to win this.”
Ginger taps the mic to get everyone's attention. “We’re nearly done, gentlemen. Just one more round and you’ll have the freedom to go make the worst mistakes of your life. I’m talking bad hookups with questionable diseases and a fuck ton of drugs.” There’s cheering from a table full of Swedes and Ilya rolls his eyes. “You better get your singing voices on because it’s karaoke time!”
Shane sighs. “We’re going to lose.”
Hunter stands up. “Well, this has been as fun as a tumour but I’m not singing.”
“Sit the fuck down, Troy Botlon,” Marly commands, pulling him back to his seat by his shirt. “I got to nominate our choice and it’s not you.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Shane begins, hands going to his hair.
“First up on the microphone,” Ginger begins, pointing to their table. “It’s Ilya Rozanov of ‘Puck Around and Find out’.”
“Shit.”
Marly cackles, grabbing his phone and pressing record. “This is the best day of my fucking life.”
Ilya begins the walk to his execution with his head held high. The bar has dissolved into chaos. Players are banging tables with their fists and screaming in an unhinged display of mania. A hundred phones are pointed his way, filming every step he takes up to the stage. The trivia tyrant wiggles her fingers in greeting as he steps up.
“Hello, handsome.”
“Hello, Satan.”
“It’s Ginger.” She puts her hands on his shoulders and forces him to face the crowd. They’re baying for his blood, hungry to watch him crash and burn. Ginger offers him another mic. “You’re a big boy, Mr Rozanov.”
“Yes.”
“Your friend over there picked out a song for you,” Ginger says into the mic. Ilya glances over to the table, where Marly is smiling like a maniac on bath salts. “You like Madonna, right?”
The room erupts with cheers and choked laughter. They can’t believe their eyes. Ilya Rozanov, Captain of the Boston Raiders and Stanley Cup champion, was about to sing Madonna.
Ilya raises the mic to his lips. “Who doesn’t?”
“That’s the spirit!” Ginger claps, motioning to Cinnamon to turn down the lights. She lowers her voice and says, “The lyrics will be on that screen in front of you. Make sure you give them a show if you want to win.”
Ginger abandons him on stage as the music begins and Ilya glances down at the monitor.
He’s going to murder Cliff Marleau.
A slow and painful death.
“I made it through the wilderness,” Ilya begins. The crowd convulses with screams. “Somehow I made it through.”
His eyes find their table.
Hunter looks like he’s having a seizure as he tries to get his phone out of his pocket to record. Marleau looks high. And Shane’s lost control of his jaw, which is hanging open in horror.
Ilya catches his eyes and croons, “Didn’t know how lost I was until I found you.”
He begins to move his hips.
“I was beat, incomplete. I’ve been had, I was sad and blue,” He belts as he runs a hand through his hair. “But you made me feel. Yeah, you made me feel… shiny and new.”
Shane’s eyes burn with want and Ilya decides to commit. It doesn’t matter that a hundred phones are capturing every second of his humiliation. It doesn’t matter that the video would be uploaded to the internet, where it would be viewed millions of times and spark dozens of articles.
None of it matters.
Not when Shane is looking at him like that.
“Like a virgin,” Ilya sings, hand sliding down his neck to his pecs and abs. “Touched for the very first time.”
The crowd gasps and groans.
“Like a virgin. When your heart beats next to mine.”
Ilya drops his hand to his stomach, raising his shirt.
“Gonna give you all my love, boy. My fear is fading fast.”
Shane’s eyes track every move of his hand.
“Been saving it all for you, ‘cause only love can last.”
By the time the song’s done, Ilya is sweating and shirtless. He doesn’t know when he started removing clothes, but it was probably after Ikea threw a wad of cash on the stage and demanded he take it off.
“That was pornographic," Hunter says as Ilya gets back to his seat, pulling his shirt back over his head.
Marly grins. “It was obscene.”
“You’re welcome,” Ilya chirps, glancing at Shane. He’s staring at the table, fingers tracing the grain of the wood. Ilya brushes his shoulder with his own. “Were you watching, Hollander?”
Shane finally looks up, eyes dark and so goddamn honest. “Of course I was.”
“What did you think?” Ilya asks, heart racing, hope breaking. “Will we win?”
Shane swallows. “You always win, Rozanov.”
Beneath the table, Shane’s hand brushes Ilya’s thigh.
And he does.
He wins.
Of course they fucking win.
Ilya had to gyrate on stage, but the competition was over the second he got to the chorus. No one else could compare. Not Dallas Kent and his god awful rendition of Blurred Lines could beat Ilya’s performance. It was gold standard.
“Well done boys,” Ginger says, as she hand delivers a drink voucher of two-hundred dollars and a strip of golden condoms “‘Puck Around and Find out’ are our NHL All Star Champions.”
Shane forces them to take a photo with the certificate (and Ginger) and Ilya wonders if he’s ever smiled this much.
“You owe me, man,” Marly tells him, as they put their voucher to good use. “I don’t know what you’ve got going with Hollander—”
“Mind your business.”
“But Madonna is my wildcard,” Marly finishes. “It works every time.”
“It does?”
“Sure,” Marly says. “Who can resist the big M?”
Hunter has already disappeared by the time Ilya returns to the table and Shane offers a shrug in explanation. “It’s past his bed time, I guess.”
Ilya laughs in surprise. “Funny, Hollander.”
“I can be funny,” Shane insists and Ilya nods, feeling his chest ache.
“I know, Shane. I know.”
Silence falls between them. The buzz of the bar is loud enough. Men laughing, women shouting to their friends. It’s an electric hum that promises bad decisions and more than enough regrets. But Ilya is done with regrets.
“I looked up the word,” Ilya says, tapping his phone. “Compatible.”
“What?”
“I thought I knew what it meant. But I wanted to check.” Ilya’s heart is raw, laid open and bare to the man beside him. “I’ve only felt it once before.”
“Yeah?” Shane asks, swallowing. “What room are you in?”
“1217.”
They walk back to the hotel together, shoulders brushing. Ilya tries to keep his distance, but every few minutes, he feels the warmth of Shane’s fingers grazing his own. It isn’t an accident. It’s a promise.
The heat between them bubbles like boiling water, overflowing when they reach the elevator.
“You sang Madonna.”
The doors close.
“I did.”
Shane presses his back against the back wall.
“You won.”
“I did,” Ilya breathes, leaning beside him.
Shane hooks their pinky fingers together.
“What do you want?” Shane asks, voice tickling his ear. “As your prize?”
In a few years, they’ll remember this day as the moment everything changed for them. It’s the moment the uncertainty ends. The doubt, the fear. It all dies in this elevator. When the world finds out their secret, they’ll be asked when it began. They can’t tell the truth. They can’t reveal that two rookies were never rivals. So they say it began in an elevator in Tampa Bay.
“Ilya,” Shane asks again, desperate for the truth. ‘What do you want?”
“You,” Ilya breathes. “I’ve only ever wanted you.”
The kiss tastes sweeter than any prize.