Chapter Text
December 31, 2009
World Junior Hockey Championships, Ottawa
“I do not care, do fucking card again.”
The woman behind the counter looks at Ilya, unimpressed. Her name tag says Jane. “Look, I cannot give you the room again, why don’t you just crash with one of your friends tonight? Speak to the manager tomorrow.”
Ilya blinks at her, trying to parse the words, made harder by her thick Quebecois accent. He understands can’t give you the room and friends. He doesn’t have any friends. All of his teammates are assholes.
Or maybe Ilya is the asshole? He’s the one yelling at a service worker on New Year’s Eve.
In his pocket, his phone buzzes, a third missed calls from The Colonel. He scowls at it. The shitty Blackberry drops from 7% battery to 6%. Sure, why not? What’s one more thing going wrong?
He takes a deep breath, tries one of the breathing techniques the stupid Canadian medic tried to teach him. Resentfully, it works a little bit. “Sorry,” he says to Jane. “Again. Please? One more?”
She slides his useless credit card into the terminal. It beats loudly, an angry condemnation.
Another call. Alexei this time. The woman at the counter doesn’t speak a lick of Russian but still, Ilya steps away before answering.
On the fuzzy TV behind Jane’s head, the ball drops.
“What the fuck is going on? Why is Dad calling me?”
“Happy New Year to you too, Baby Brother.”
Ilya scrubs a hand across his face, then bites down on the fleshy part at the base of his thumb, trying not to scream. When Alexei asks him for more money, he tastes blood.
He dissociates through the follow-up phone call with his father.
Back at the counter, Jane gives him a sympathetic look, which is much worse than the irritation, and pointedly hands over his stupid Visa. What’s in his wallet? Nothing useful, apparently.
“You can hang out here until your friends get back.” Ilya still can’t fully understand her, especially now that he’s got the conversation with his father rattling around in his brain. Still, she gestures at the couches in the lobby, and that at least is universal.
He hefts his duffel bag and drags his feet over to a chair. The bar is open, but he can’t remember if they’ll serve an eighteen year old. Stupid Canadian provinces, all different.
On the fuzzy TV, people cheer while Ilya scowls down at the beige carpeting. He doesn’t know what happened to the rest of Team Russia. Off having fun somewhere, drinking themselves into a stupor to forget the game. Ilya had originally been on his way out with them when he’d been stopped by the concierge service. He’d promised to catch up with them in a few minutes, but he’s definitely not in the mood anymore.
Stupid Czechs. Stupid teammates. Too many hotheads, wouldn’t shut up and listen to instructions. And Ilya, who was this year’s first draft pick and the team captain, couldn’t play a whole game himself, regardless of how hard he tried.
Stupid hotel security, giving him five minutes to pack his bag before they kicked him out of his room because his credit card had declined. The coach had told them all to bring checkbooks just in case, but Ilya had vehemently refused on the basis of not being a grandma. He buries his face in his hands, groaning.
Checkbooks can’t decline. Just bounce, a week later, when Ilya is long gone.
He hears the front door opening, feels biting cold December winds sweep through the lobby, nipping his ankles. He doesn’t look up.
On top of everything else, it’s winter in Middle of Nowhere, Canada. Why couldn’t the Junior Championships be somewhere warm, where Ilya could at the very least ogle some women in bikinis? If the Czechs are going to humiliate him, he thinks he deserves to see some skin.
“Good game.”
Ilya’s head jerks up. The Golden Boy of Canada is standing in front of him, hands shoved in the pockets of his puffer coat.
“No,” Ilya says slowly, “It was not.” Is Shane Hollander stupid? Or did he finally learn how to chirp? “Very much no.”
“No.” Hollander’s cheeks are pink from the cold. “You played well, though.”
Chirping, then. Ilya sinks back in his seat, crossing his arms and scowling up. “Okay.” For the first time in his life, he isn’t in the mood for it. “Thanks.”
Hollander looks around, sniffles. He’s wearing the same green beanie he had on during their last championship, a year earlier and a few provinces over. It’s fraying at the edges now. Ilya wants to ask if his Voyageurs advance was too small for a new hat, but there’s that American saying about glass houses and stones. Instead, he says nothing.
“What are you doing here?” Hollander finally asks.
Ilya shrugs. “Card declined.” What, is he supposed to lie to Hollander? Overcompensate? Ilya Rozanov has no need for overcompensation.
“Damn. Why?”
Seriously? Fine. If Hollander really wants to know, Ilya tell him. Then he’ll regret prying. “Because,” he begins, words unsteady but determined. “First draft pick Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov is broke as shit.”
“Oh.” A beat, Shane processing. “That sucks.” He doesn’t sound even a little bit embarrassed for asking, what the fuck? Ilya would be impressed by the balls on him, if he wasn’t so annoyed. A moment later, Hollander scowls. “Oh. You’re… yanking my chain?” His face turns tomato red before the sentence is out. He sounds even more confused by his words than Ilya. “Right?”
Yanking his chain?
Ilya’s gaze drops on instinct. He forces his eyes back up.
“I mean,” Hollander stammers, “you’re joking. You’re making fun of me.” He’s redder, still, more flushed than after they’d gotten off the stationary bikes in the Los Angeles hotel gym.
And he looks so agitated that Ilya actually feels bad.
“Joking, yes,” he says before he can think twice about it. “Make fun? No.” Well, maybe a little bit. But he hadn’t expected Hollander to get so… worked up. He wasn’t even trying to chirp. “Is because stupid American credit card with stupid Canadian hotel with pretty Russian face is bad. Bad, uh…” He rolls his wrist, his hand moving in a rapid circular gesture. He’s both trying to coax out the English word and also describe the international mess.
“Combination?”
“Da. Is bad combonition.”
“Combination.”
“I say this.”
Hollander laughs, looking away from him. He yanks his beanie off, and the soft black hair that spills out sticks straight up in retaliation. He takes a deep breath, gathering courage. “I could…buy you a room?”
Ilya’s jaw drops. He should have expected the audacity at this point, but it still catches him by surprise, enough so that he isn’t even outraged. “I do not need your charity, Shane Hollander.”
Something zings. It’s the only way he can describe it, the first time he says the name out loud, the first time Shane hears him say it. And Ilya knows that feeling arcs through the air between them, because Hollander stills, just for a moment, and the rumble of Ilya’s words sits thick between them.
Then Hollander swallows, his throat moving aggressively. “Okay. Pay me back then. Write me a check?”
“A check?” Ilya almost laughs in his face, mostly self-deprecating, and whatever moment they had is gone for good. Ilya probably imagined it, anyway.
“Fine.” Hollander’s blush is almost gone, now he’s mostly annoyed. “You can pay me back in the fall.”
“And I owe you money for ten months? You want I should lose tomorrow’s game for you, too?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Shane grumbles. “It’s like, a hundred bucks.” He sighs, shoulders sagging. He worries his beanie between his fingers, and Ilya understands now how it got so frayed. “And you don’t have any friends you can stay with?”
Ilya tries to give him an incredulous look but he isn’t sure if Hollander catches it, so he says, “Is New Year’s Eve, all Russians are drunk or passed out.”
Hollander is thinking about something. He’s chewing his lip, studying the hat in his hands, kneading it aggressively. “Okay. Um. Fine. If you’re going to be stubborn about it. I.” He speaks haltingly, then rushes out, “I have a suite.”
Huh? “A sweet?” Once again, Ilya is too confused to be annoyed. “Sweet what? Sweet face? Yes, very sweet, like baby. Sweet hands, too. Soft, not good for hockey.” Because even confused, chirping will always be an instinct for Ilya.
“Oh fuck you.” Shane glowers properly and oh no. Ilya thinks this might be the most agonizing thing that has ever happened to him, because Hollander transforms into an angry kitten. An angry kitten with cheeks full of the most glorious freckles Ilya has ever seen. He wants to chirp again, really drive the point home, but he has forgotten every single word in the English language. And many words in the Russian language, too.
Fortunately, Hollander’s face relaxes out of the expression before he speaks again, so Ilya is able to refocus on translating the words. “It’s like an extra big hotel room. My parents were here the first few nights, but the bed was hurting my dad’s back, so they’re back home now. But we already paid for it all. It’s a whole separate room, basically, so I could just ask them to change the sheets. And the bed’s not actually uncomfortable, his back is just messed up, so don’t worry about that part. My dad’s back, I mean. Just don’t murder me in my sleep?”
It’s the most Ilya has ever heard Hollander say and his brain works in overtime to translate the stammered spill of words. When he gets to the end, hears the question nervously tucked in there, he grins. “Oh Hollander,” he says, “You are scared of big bad Russian?”
And he gets that angry cat scowl, which feels like Christmas. Better than Christmas, because Ilya had spent Christmas on an airplane pretending he couldn’t hear the flight attendants caroling. “You’re not even that much bigger than me.”
Ilya lets his gaze fall again, and he waggles his eyebrows. “Wanna bet?”
The response is like Christmas and his birthday. Hollander is so red they could put his face on a white backdrop and people would think it was the Canadian flag. Ilya fears that blaze of freckles will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Hollander opens his mouth. Closes it again. Open. Close. And if Ilya’s mind wanders at that sight, it’s only because he’s eighteen years old and there are no bikinis within a hundred miles. Absolutely no other reason.
His mind, having turned in its resignation papers to go traveling full-time, is back in that Los Angeles gym. Basking in the memory of Hollander’s lips opening around his water bottle, squirting it into his mouth without ever properly touching the tip. His obedience when Ilya told him to drink more.
“Fuck you,” Hollander finally stammers out.
And Ilya. Ilya Rozanov is so gone on those freckles at this moment that he says “Please,” and then feels the world end. Or feels it not ending, which is actually worse. Because this would be a great time for an earthquake. Or a declaration of nuclear war. Or full-scale Armaggedon, Ilya really isn’t picky.
Hollander just stares at him. Then he frowns. “I don’t speak Russian.”
Ilya almost gets on his knees right then and there to thank God and Jesus and his mama that he hadn’t actually said it in English. Pozhaluysta. The ghost of the word stills sits behind his teeth. Possibly the most beautiful Russian word he’s ever spoken.
Ilya forces his brain to come back to work. Rejects the resignation, tells it to turn the plane around and come home. Unpack. He needs it to stay here, with him. Only when it is settled in again, can he speak again. “I said that I agree,” he lies. “I will come in your sweet place.” Nope. “In hotel room.” Nope. “Will be for my water.”
He wants to die.
“In hotel gym.”
There. Saved. Ilya Rozanov is infinitely suave.
Hollander’s mouth opens again. His eyes look a little vacant, face coursing with regret. Ilya understands. “Oh,” he finally says. “That water. In Los Angeles.” Ilya nods eagerly. “Okay.” His words have taken on a particular strong monotone, and Ilya is glad that he mostly has his brain back, and can enjoy watching Hollander try to chase down his own. “Okay. I’m going to go ask the desk for extra sheets. For the bed. The other bed. Because there are two. Mine. And. The other bed. Okay.” He spins on his heel, fleeing, and Ilya can finally catch his breath.
It’s a purely practical decision, Ilya tells himself. Yes, Shane Hollander being nice to him is a terrible, terrible thing for both of them. But it’s still better than his teammates coming in and finding him asleep in the lobby. They barely respect his captaincy as it is.
Ilya scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes then stands up, grabbing his duffel. He can hear Hollander at the front desk, talking to Jane in perfect French. Obviously.
Hollander walks back over, a bundle of sheets in his hands.
“We will still beat you in next game,” Ilya says, because he needs to regain his footing, remind his brain, Hollander, and the other parts of himself who’s really in control here.
Hollander rolls his eyes. “Given how you played against the Czech Republic, that’s a pretty big promise.” As he walks past to the elevator, he smacks his shoulder hard against Ilya’s.
When they get upstairs, Ilya is going to plug in his phone and take a long shower. A cold one.