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Wyatt flops onto Shane’s hotel bed, his arms spread out wide. “We’re going out.”
Shane squirms in an attempt to free his legs, which are now being pinned uncomfortably to the bed. “Okay. Have fun.”
“You’re coming,” Bood clarifies from where he’s leaning against the wall.
Shane looks sideways, narrowing his eyes at Ilya, who is sprawled across the other bed. “Did you put them up to this?”
Ilya smiles back at him lazily, and Shane tries to ignore the way his heart feels like it’s doing a backflip in his chest, because he still can’t believe that they really get to have this; playing together, traveling together, being together in a hotel room in New York surrounded by their teammates who have never treated their relationship like it’s anything out of the ordinary. “Captain’s orders.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.” Ilya rolls off of his bed and crosses the room to flop down next to Wyatt, directly on top of Shane’s thighs.
“Hey!” Shane complains, desperately fighting to keep the smile off his face. “Get off my bed, you dick.”
“You guys don’t have to pretend that you’re using both beds, Hollander,” Troy says with a grin. “Everybody knows that–”
“We sleep in separate beds on road trip,” Ilya interrupts, his face serious. “Very professional coworkers.”
“Yeah, right,” says Evan Dykstra, and the entire room erupts into laughter.
Half the team is currently sequestered in Shane and Ilya’s shared hotel room, making it seem a lot smaller than it actually is. They’ve just returned from opening their first road trip of the season against the Admirals – a rare afternoon game that leaves them with a free evening in New York before they continue to Philly the next morning.
“Come on, Hollander.” Ilya turns so that he’s now pinning Shane completely to the bed, his chin resting on Shane’s chest as he looks up at him, eyes sparkling deviously. “Is Saturday night in New York. You will like this, I promise.”
"Fine," Shane sighs, defeated.
The Kingfisher is a short walk from the hotel where the Centaurs are staying. It’s almost indistinguishable from any other pub on the street, with a humble, unassuming look to it that would never lead passersby to believe that it has become – over the years – the de facto New York City watering hole for some of the league’s biggest superstars.
“Jesus Christ,” mutters the bartender as they all tumble through the door, setting down the glass he’s drying and turning to yell over his shoulder. “Hunter! Your freaks are here.”
“We’ve been over this!” comes a voice from the back room. “Just because it’s my circus doesn’t mean I have any control over the…monkeys,” Scott Hunter finishes, taking in the sight in front of him with an irritated expression on his face. “You guys really can’t give me a moment’s peace, can you?”
“Is not our fault you lost tonight.” Ilya has that shit-eating grin plastered across his face, the one that makes Shane begin to fear for the safety of everyone in the vicinity.
“I actually think it might be,” Luca Haas says quietly.
“Don’t make me regret not going through with my threat to ban you, Rozanov.”
“You would not ban me, Hunter.” Ilya gestures towards the rest of his teammates. “Not when I bring you so much business.”
“The rest of them can stay,” Scott counters, but there’s no malice to it. Ever since he’d shown up unexpectedly at Ilya’s house in the midst of a playoff series, both Shane and Ilya have considered Scott Hunter a friend. A friend whose ass they both still take indescribable pleasure in kicking on the ice, but a friend nonetheless. Shane knows that Ilya, in particular, carries a profound respect for Scott that he will never allow himself to admit, save behind closed doors.
But Ilya also, incidentally, carries a profound desire to be a shit disturber. “You let me stay and I will not say another word about how we kicked your ass tonight.”
Scott actually smiles at this. “That wouldn’t be the worst deal I’ve made.”
“You know,” Bood says as he deposits a pitcher of beer on the table in the corner that the Centaurs have claimed, “he doesn’t actually look half bad for…however old he is.”
“Fifty,” Ilya supplies.
“There’s no way,” Troy counters.
“There is no way,” Shane confirms, grinning across the table at his husband. “Ilya’s full of shit.”
“Does anyone actually know how old he is?” Wyatt asks the group at large. “I mean, he’s been around forever.”
“You’ve been around forever, Hazy,” Tanner Dillon teases.
“That’s because I’m like a good whisky,” Wyatt replies cheerfully. “Better with age, baby!”
“But that’s exactly it,” says Dykstra, pointing at Wyatt. “If even you don’t remember when he started playing–”
“Okay let’s not take this too far, I’m still in my thirties.”
“Late thirties,” Troy interjects.
“Mid thirties! And I’ll have you know, plenty of goalies–”
“Not the point,” Bood interrupts, but he – along with the rest of the table – is laughing now. “Someone has to know how old he is.”
Luca Haas, who is sitting between Ilya and Troy, looks like he wants to tell everyone exactly how old Scott Hunter is but is enjoying the banter too much to put an end to it. Instead he shoots Shane a small smile from across the table as he takes a sip of his beer.
Wyatt slams a hand down on the table. “Alright. Everyone gets one guess. Loser buys the next pitcher.”
“Haas isn’t even old enough to buy beer!” Ilya protests.
“Haas isn’t going to lose,” Shane tells him with a grin, because despite all of his protests to being dragged out of the hotel, he has to admit that he is having fun.
“Hollander?” Wyatt prompts.
“Hey!” Ilya protests. “Why does he get first guess?”
“How many goals did you score tonight?” Shane asks, his smile widening when he feels Ilya’s foot collide with his shin under the table. “Right, okay.” He does some quick mental math based on everything he knows about Scott Hunter’s career. “If I had to guess, maybe forty?”
“Forty,” Wyatt nods. Luca produces a pen, handing it down the table to Wyatt, who writes down Shane’s guess on one of the napkins in front of him. His gaze shifts to Shane’s left. “Bood?”
“I was also gonna say forty.”
“No repeat guesses,” Wyatt says firmly, and Bood sighs dramatically.
“Fine. Forty-one.”
“Fifty,” Ilya says confidently when it’s his turn, and the table erupts into laughter yet again.
“You don’t actually think he’s fifty, do you?” Troy asks.
“You think old men cannot be hot?”
“Thirty-eight,” Luca says quietly when Wyatt points at him, and Wyatt records this answer on his napkin alongside the others.
“Who’s going to take one for the team and actually go ask him?” Troy inquires when it’s his turn to guess.
“Hazy,” Ilya answers. “Obviously.”
“What do you mean, ‘obviously’?”
“Was your idea!”
In the end, they’re saved the trouble of needing to go find him when Scott Hunter himself appears at the Centaurs’ table, a pitcher of beer in each hand. “On the house,” he explains, placing the pitchers down in the middle of the table. “This is–” he cuts himself off abruptly, narrowing his eyes as he registers the glass clutched tightly in Luca’s hand. “Are you even old enough to drink?”
“I can drink in Canada,” Luca replies in his usual mild-mannered tone, and Shane almost chokes on his beer.
“As I was saying,” Scott continues loudly, choosing to ignore this, “this is a new brew that Kyle’s been working on recently.”
“You are trying to poison us so you can finally beat us at hockey.” Ilya picks up one of the pitchers, eyeing it uncertainly.
“Fuck off, Rozanov. We’ve all been calling it ‘Beast of the East’. We still need to design a logo for it, but–”
“Haas can do it!” Bood interrupts excitedly.
“What?”
Troy nods eagerly. “Luca’s an incredible artist! He designed the can art for Harris’s family’s new cider.” He elbows Luca in the side, his eyes sparkling. “Show Hunter your sketchbook, Haas.”
Blushing furiously, Luca pulls his backpack out from beneath the table, rifling through his art supplies until he finds his sketchbook, which he passes over to Scott. “A lot of these aren’t finished,” he says humbly, “and some of them are just experimental. But the concept sketches for the art I designed for Harris are in there, near the back.”
“These are good, Haas,” Scott says as he flips slowly through the pages. “These are really good.”
“Hang on, is that Gritty?” Wyatt – who is on his feet looking over Scott’s shoulder – grabs the sketchbook and flips it around to show the table. Sure enough, a very realistic full colour sketch of the Philadelphia mascot fills the page. Luca blushes even harder, refilling his glass from one of the pitchers Scott has just brought.
“Why does Philly even have that thing as their mascot?” Tanner Dillon asks, reaching over to take the pitcher from Luca.
“Bold words from someone who plays for the Ottawa Centaurs,” Scott responds, grabbing the sketchbook out of Wyatt’s hands and passing it back across the table to Luca. “What’s that?” Shane looks back down at the table, following Scott’s gaze, and realizes that Scott is pointing directly at Wyatt’s napkin, which is now almost completely covered in scribbled numbers.
“We’re just playing a game,” Wyatt says evasively.
Scott reaches for the napkin, squinting at it as he examines it closer. “What kind of game?”
The table is the quietest it’s been all night as the Centaurs players all carefully avoid eye contact with each other, most of them visibly holding back laughter as they do so. It’s not until the silence has stretched on long enough for it to become uncomfortable that Luca finally speaks up. “They’re trying to guess how old you are.”
Scott looks down at the napkin with a renewed interest, and then glares across the table at Ilya. “Fifty?”
Ilya stares back at him wide-eyed, the very picture of innocence. “How do you know it was my guess?”
“I should ban you.”
“Or you could settle the debate for us,” Bood counters.
“Bood!” Ilya exclaims dramatically, his hand over his heart. “You cannot ask the age of a man who fought in Vietnam war.”
“I’m surprised they even taught you about the Vietnam war, Rozanov.” Scott is shaking his head, but he’s desperately trying to fight back a smile even as he does it.
“Well, I had to learn afterwards,” Ilya says, that shit-eating grin spreading slowly across his face again. “I was not there.”
Scott shoots a pleading look at Shane, who is making no effort to hold back his laughter. “Can’t you control him?”
Shane shakes his head. “Not a chance.”
“Right. Well, enjoy the beer. I’ve got to go take care of some stuff, but I’ll see you fuckers in Ottawa next month.”
Ilya nods sagely. “If you do not die of old age before then.”
Scott doesn’t reply to this, but he does clap Luca on the shoulder, shooting him a small, private wink before he turns away, Wyatt’s napkin still held in his hand.
Bood shakes his head, staring mournfully after Scott’s retreating form. “Are we really never going to figure out–?”
“Leave it, buddy.” Wyatt pats his arm in consolation. “Some things are meant to remain a mystery.”
“You know he’s not actually fifty, right?” Shane asks later. They’re tangled together in one of the hotel beds while the other sits empty on the other side of the room, Ilya’s head pillowed on Shane’s chest, just over his heart.
“I know.” Ilya rolls his head slightly to look up at Shane. “He is thirty-eight. Like Haas said.”
“You knew that?”
Ilya shrugs one shoulder. “Is on the internet, Hollander. Not that hard to find out.”
Shane lets out a soft huff of laughter as he runs his fingers gently through Ilya’s hair. “You’re such an asshole.”
“You like it.”
Shane is silent for a moment, thinking. “You know,” he says finally, “that’s going to be us someday soon. Old. Getting picked on by the young guys.”
“Well, you will always be older than me.” The playful teasing in Ilya’s voice is undercut by the soft smile on his face, and Shane is struck once more with the enormity of the way that every single moment they share together is still a revelation – even ones like this, where they do nothing but simply exist.
“I can’t wait to get old with you,” Shane murmurs sleepily, his eyes drifting shut, and if it sounds a little too much like I love you, well.
It’s nothing they haven’t said a thousand times before.