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Ilya flicks his indicator, the click-click click-click loud in the dark car. Normally, he probably wouldn’t – Boston traffic is awful, yes, but it’s 12:26 in the morning and there’s nobody around on the Cambridge side of the river – but he knows, instinctively, that Shane Hollander would have a problem with that. Would bitch at him for it, pull a face. And normally Ilya would enjoy that; he loves Hollander’s bitchy little pout, his scrunched eyebrows and his exasperated eye-rolls. But this feels too different, too… delicate to unbalance with something so inconsequential as a missed indicator on a quiet Boston left-turn.
Ilya sneaks a glance to his right.
Hollander’s face is washed with waves of street lights and the occasional passing car, the night making his eyes dark and deep, like the black between stars. The shadows in the car climb into his hair, wrap themselves around his dark jacket, cling to him like they want him to stay. Or maybe that’s just –
Well, anyway.
The lights change and Ilya turns left.
This wasn’t the plan, driving Hollander back to his hotel. They’d played against each other earlier tonight. Boston vs Montreal at TD Garden. Puck-drop 7.30. Montreal had won, because Bradley was at the tail end of a cold and Ilya’s D-men had been half asleep, apparently. Still, 3-2 is an acceptable loss, he supposes. A goal and an assist.
Hollander got two goals and an assist. Perfect Hollander.
The loss hadn’t changed their plans though: Hollander coming to his condo near the practice rink to ride Ilya through the mattress. If Ilya had won, it might have gone down slightly different – maybe he’d have rolled them over, taken his time until Hollander was reduced to panted breaths and bitten off moans. But it makes no difference to Ilya really. Nothing they do feels like losing to him, not when they’re in bed together.
But then after – after there had been the usual slow disengage, the same decoupling that was, mortifyingly, becoming more difficult for Ilya to complete without him feeling like he was losing something essential. And Hollander had gone to book a ride back, his face washed by the light of his phone, only to find that the wait would be forty-five minutes minimum, some concert at Fenway Park sucking up all taxis in the area. Ilya didn’t mind. Ilya would have been perfectly fine with having Hollander in his downtown condo for another forty-five minutes, sitting on Ilya’s couch and drinking his water and taking up space. But it was nearly one a.m. and some Metros admin idiot had booked their flight to Buffalo at 7:15 in the morning, and it was clear that the delay in getting back was making Hollander anxious. So Ilya had got dressed without showering (bitchy pout, scrunched eyebrows, exasperated eye-roll) and grabbed his keys.
“Come on, I will drive you.”
Another frown. Ilya had tried not to want to smooth it away and failed. “I can’t ask you – ”
“You are not asking. I offer.” Ilya had shaken the keys in Hollander’s face and got another delightfully bitchy pout in return. “Usual place, yes?”
The Metros almost always stayed at that Logan Hilton for Boston games, because you might as well with the airport so close. Ilya probably shouldn’t know this, but he does and has for years. It definitely said something about him, but he tried hard to ignore what.
“Uh,” Hollander had said, apparently wrong-footed, and with a swoop Ilya had wondered if he’d given too much away. “No. TD Garden Marriott.”
It had been Ilya’s turn to frown then. “But why? Your flight is so early.”
“It’s only a ten minute ride, Rozanov,” he’d replied, his tone so patient it bordered on condescending. It made Ilya laugh.
“Well, never mind. Coming?” Ilya had crowded him, then, herding him towards the door with the most obnoxious eyebrow wiggle he could manage. “You have a stupidly early flight to catch.”
He wasn’t sure, even now, if he’d actually expected it to work – wasn’t sure what he’d have done if it hadn’t – but a short elevator ride later they’d reached the parking garage, Hollander looking at a bright orange Lamborghini Huracán in a sort of fascinated horror.
“I am not getting in that,” Hollander had said. “It looks like – ” his head had tilted to one side and Ilya had been painfully endeared, despite all efforts to the contrary “ – a fucking deathtrap, Jesus.”
“So boring, Hollander,” Ilya had shot back, not bothering to tell him that it actually belonged to his downstairs neighbour. “No sense of fun.” He’d slunk off between the cars, winding between a black and yellow Bugatti W16 Mistral and a red Audi R8 until he’d come to stop by a blue BMW Z4 Roadster – thankfully one of his less conspicuous cars, seeing as he now had to persuade Shane Hollander to get into it. “C’mon,” the car had unlocked with a beep and a flash of the headlights, “some of us actually want to sleep sometime soon.”
“Now who’s no fun,” Hollander had muttered but he’d climbed in with very little actual protest.
So now here he is, tide-washed in street lights and looking relaxed and sleepy and so soft, and Ilya can’t even look at him. Because he’s driving, yes, and also because if he did he might just loose his entire damn mind.
They didn’t do this, was the problem. For six years they’d met up and fucked in hotels rooms across North America, in Hollander’s Montreal apartment and Ilya’s Boston condo and once, nearly, in a Las Vegas bathroom at the 2014 MLH Awards, which had been so stupid and so thrilling and Ilya had barely had enough self-control to stop them from doing something regrettable.
But they didn’t do this; exist quietly in each other’s space. There was never time. There was always another practice to get to, or the next flight, or the next game. There was never enough time to just... be.
But here, now, Shane Hollander sits beside him and Ilya can’t revel in it; in the silence and the proximity and the... warmth of Hollander being here beside Ilya, of him staying – if only because of some concert at Fenway Park, because of no taxis and an early flight – because he’s fucking driving Hollander back to his hotel so he can leave. For Buffalo, of all fucking places.
Indicator, right turn this time, accelerate. No more than five miles over the speed limit, because Hollander is boring. Ilya’s never been in a car with him before but he knows, just knows, that speeding wouldn’t amuse him. A joy rider on the ice only. And on –
No. Nearly there.
“You can drop me on the corner,” Hollander says, his voice quiet but breaking the silence regardless. “There’s a…” He waves his hand, though Ilya doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to indicate.
“Okay.”
He was going to do that anyway – the hotel probably has external cameras and it would be too risky to have security video exist of Shane Hollander getting out of Ilya Rozanov’s car at one in the morning. Still, driving up to the hotel’s entrance would have been thirty more seconds of having Hollander in his car. He regrets the loss despite himself.
Ilya pulls up under a street light, the hotel a hundred or so meters down the road on the left. He pictures the scene looking like a painting; the car under a cone of light, darkness all around it. Handbrake, engine off. Hollander wouldn’t like idling engines any more than he’d approve of speeding, he imagines. The silence is abrupt and final somehow. Ilya looks over at Hollander and finds him already looking back.
Ilya finds Hollander so easy to read, usually. There’s not artifice to him. He’s bad at lying and most of the time it appears he doesn’t even try. There’s a comfort to that, Ilya has found; he almost always knows when he’s mistepped. But right now he can’t tell what Hollander is thinking. Maybe it’s those clinging shadows, hiding the meaning away. Ilya can see the glint of reflected light in his eyes, but the street light falls too low through the windscreen to illuminate his face properly. Instead it cuts a line across his legs.
Ilya can see as Hollander’s hands clench to fists in his lap. Ilya’s hands are still on the steering wheel, but if they weren’t, he’s sure he’d be doing something similar in an effort not to reach out.
Hollander’s mouth looks – so soft, one corner lifted into the smallest of smiles.
“Thanks,” he says, “for the ride.”
Ilya can’t help but grin at that and Hollander’s smile widens in response, apparently against his will. “God, shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
Hollander rolls his eyes. Ilya aches. “You didn’t need to.”
Then Hollander reaches for the door handle and Ilya has the wild impulse to stop him, to engage the child locks this car absolutely does not have just to keep him from leaving. In the dark of the car everything feels less impossible, less utterly ridiculous.
Possibilities unspool under Ilya’s tongue but he swallows them down, because there’s always another game, another flight, another city timezones away. There’s never enough time.
“Seriously though,” Hollander says, eyes somehow liquid in the dark. “Thanks.”
This time Ilya rolls his eyes. It’s either that or blurt out a too-honest anything, anytime.
“Get out of here, Hollander,” he says instead, when he has control over his tongue again. “You will need to be well rested to lose properly to Buffalo.”
“Asshole,” Hollander says with a quiet laugh and playful shove to Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya’s skin lights up at the touch.
“No, no, you must do me this favour,” Ilya continues, finally uncurling his hands from the steering wheel and using the joke as an excuse to wrap his hand around Hollander’s shoulder and shake him, just slightly. “So I can overtake you in the points race. Is polite, Hollander. Sportsmanlike. You know sportsmanlike?”
“Fuck off,” Hollander says, but he’s smiling.
“Ah! No, not that. Not sportsmanlike at all. No Lady Byng for you.”
The clunk of the door latch disengaging makes Ilya’s heart clench, his hand falling from Hollander’s shoulder.
“You’re such an asshole,” Hollander says with a laugh. His freckles scrunch up. His eyes are – “Good night, Rozanov.”
In one smooth motion, Hollander opens the door and steps out, cold air rushing in to replace him. The late night breeze ruffles his hair as he looks back and gives an awkward wave, the move so endearing Ilya’s heart does something alarming he tries to ignore, and then all Ilya can see is the broad line of his back as he walks down the sidewalk and towards the hotel.
Curfew was hours ago, but as captain Hollander can request a single room if he wants. Ilya knows that most of the time he doesn’t, happy to share with Pike of all people, but sometimes the privacy is worth it.
Ilya watches until he disappears into the hotel, the doors sliding shut behind Hollander’s retreating back.
“Night, Shane,” Ilya says to the closed doors.
A siren wails in reply, from somewhere in the direction of the airport, and Ilya groans and tips his head back against the headrest.
This is so pointless and impossible and ridiculous. But –
Maybe, next time, if the schedules work out and there’s enough time (there’s never enough time), Ilya will suggest Hollander come to his home, the one on Beacon Street where all his actual stuff is; his mini Stanley Cup and all his commemorative pucks and the one photograph he has of his mother. He’d love to see Hollander in daylight, in amongst the cushions and art and light fittings his interior designer picked out for him. Hollander would still have to leave before the game but – it would be… nice.
Fuck. Ilya squeezes his eyes shut and, when that isn’t enough to stop his mind from wandering down paths best left untrodden, he tips forward to press his forehead against the backs of his hands where they’re curled tight around the steering wheel. He’s so stupid. Always reaching for things he can’t have. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He shifts his grip, bangs his head once against the steering wheel as hard as he dares. Then he starts the ignition, releases the handbrake, and turns a very illegal U-turn in the middle of the street.
Ilya drives all the way back to his condo ten miles over the speed limit. He doesn’t indicate once.