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1.
You’re in Nashville for the All Star Game which this year is Team America vs Team Europe as a thinly veiled excuse to pit the league’s two most hyped rookies against each other.
And, yes, the rookies are very good. And, yes, they will both make captain very quickly in their respective teams. But they’re less than one season into their careers and already you would like the press to ask you about literally anything else than the Epic Rivalry of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.
Particularly since they clearly do not hate each other at all.
And sure, the press exaggerates. Everyone knows that. And what the ‘rivalry’ really does is put Rozanov and Hollander in the same place a lot. Doing the same press, being asked the same questions. You were friends with a lot of the other rooks in your draft year. For a few months, before you each got entrenched with your teams and drifted apart.
So it’s not a big deal that Rozanov and Hollander are joking with each other on the bench. It’s a bigger deal that Rozanov gives Hollander his room number - and yes, you know it’s his room number because yours is right next door and you find yourself wanting to let Hollander know that just in case…
Which is dumb. There is no ‘just in case’. They’re allowed to be friends, they’re allowed to want to catch up somewhere private, they’re allowed to be unaware that Hollander is staring after Rozanov like he’s hung the moon and the only time Rozanov has smiled all day is in response to Hollander’s mild-ass chirping.
Not that you’re noticing that.
Anyway it’s one thing to be single and lonely and terrified of what people would think if they knew the truth but it’s another thing to project those issues onto the next generation so you don’t say anything more than that and the hotel rooms are soundproof - you know because JJ has the room on the other side and you can’t hear his chainsaw snoring all night - so you never have to find out if Hollander takes the invitation or what the two rookies do in private in a hotel room in a building full of MLH champions.
You’re not thinking about them at all.
But at the end of the season at the MLH awards bar you ask Hollander, “Where’s your boy Rozanov?”
Not because of that. Just – they’re both rookies. They know each other.
And Hollander flinches.
A full body flinch, the kind of flight instinct that he doesn’t have a speck of on the ice.
“No, I mean… not your boy.” How would you have reacted if someone had asked you about Parinski at your rookie gala. Probably exactly like Hollander’s wide-eyed panic. “It’s always Hollander and Rozanov, right?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Hollander says, too quickly. Too scared. “We’re not, like, friends. Or anything.”
And you want to say ‘it’s okay if you are. You’re allowed to be friends.’ Or, what you really want to say is ‘you’re allowed to be more than friends,’ but god if you can’t even give yourself that permission how on Earth are you supposed to give it to someone else.
Rozanov doesn’t appear all night. Hollander disappears after the shots and doesn’t return.
You don’t think about it.
2.
You don’t think about it. You play games, some of them not entirely badly. Seasons go by, the news cycle doesn’t drop The Rivalry but at least they stop dragging other teams into it. You don’t see the rookies together. At All Stars they keep being on opposite teams thanks to the league’s increasingly ridiculous team structuring to enable it. America vs. Europe. Alphabetical order. Brunettes vs. blonds.
Rozanov and Hollander compete in the skills-off, they sit with their teams off the ice, and if they’re meeting in hotel rooms you don’t have to know.
You meet Kip. Beautiful, lovely Kip who you absolutely cannot date because he’s out and proud and wears his heart on his sleeve but who you can’t stop going back to visit anyway.
And it’s for your game, it’s helping your game, so it doesn’t matter that you really don’t like bananas you will love anything this man gives you and when you see him in the morning you carry that lightness all through the day right onto the rink where the puck goes where you want it to go, and you dance easily around the ice.
It’s different, on days when you don’t see him. The sky is greyer, your heart is heavier, you’re stepping onto the ice thinking I wonder where he is now, I wonder if he missed me when Rozanov snatches the puck from under your nose. You’re thinking about the way Kip smiled like a bit of banana was a special secret between the two of you and Hollander scores a fifth fucking goal through the legs of your goalie which really honestly is just overkill for fuck’s sake.
“Next time we play, I hope you decide to show up,” Hollander chirps after the final whistle when he’s taken your playoffs-level team to a humiliating 5-1 loss and you’re still smarting from ‘Too bad you can’t play at home every night,’ and you want to make a point.
It’s visible. It’s obvious. Rein it the fuck in.
Or maybe you’re jealous, that you’re dreaming of a man who smiled at you over a smoothie when Hollander has hockey and this all wrapped up in a bow.
And then Shane fucking Hollander is coming at you like a fucking pitbull even though the game - that he won - is over and you want to be like ‘Jesus kid I don’t know anything,’ except the more he tries to hit you the clearer it becomes that you really fucking do.
“You pussy,” Hollander shouts, dropping locker-room insults like a script he’s diligently learned by heart. “You fucking pussy. You’re ancient, you’re forty-five years old.”
And you don’t say ‘at least when I wanted to fuck other players I was subtle about it,’ but it’s a closer thing than you would like.
In the locker room after – when you’re holding an ice pack to what, humiliatingly, is going to be a decent black eye – Carter claps you on the shoulder and says, “What the fuck did you even say to him?”
You weren’t supposed to know. Were, in fact, taking great pains to not know. It was a momentary decision, remembering Hollander’s flinch at the MLH awards and wanting to get a reaction. Some satisfaction for the lizard hindbrain that didn’t like being beaten.
But apparently some time in the last few years Hollander has dropped flight as a response, and now your face is paying the price for it.
“I don’t even know, man,” you say. “Guess he was just in the mood for a fight.”
3.
It’s fall 2016 and Shane Hollander is dating Rose Landry which is the kind of thing you’re casually aware of from locker room talk and resolutely aren’t giving much thought to. Hollander can date who he wants. You haven’t been with anyone since Kip moved out. It’s fine, it’s whatever. Good for him.
But then you have to sit on Carter’s sofa for three agonizing periods of Montreal and Boston both playing their worst fucking hockey in years and you wish to god you could go back to a time when your brain did not automatically connect those two things.
It doesn’t even make sense. Why Rozanov – the most promiscuous womanizer in the eastern conference – would even care that Hollander has decided to also fuck a woman is just…
“Jesus,” Carter says as Hollander flubs a pass and Rozanov misses an easy intercept. “They haven’t played this bad since they were rookies. What’s in the water in Montreal?”
The camera cuts in on Rozanov cursing himself as Hollander deliberately skates away and you’re hit by the freight train realisation that it’s been six fucking years since All Stars in Nashville.
Rozanov isn’t just fucking Hollander.
Rozanov is fucking in love with him.
Jesus Christ.
You make it to the end of the game – Rozanov ends up in the penalty box eight times and Hollander misses two shots on wide open goals, Montreal wins but at what cost – then make your excuses to Carter because you need to run home while your mind tries to process whatever the fuck that was.
In two weeks you have to play with both of them in the first Hollander+Rozanov All Stars team-up since they joined the MLH. You were already dreading having to pretend you didn’t see the two of them making constant heart-eyes at each other, only now instead you’re going to have to pretend you don’t notice them going through an intense and unspoken break-up.
And you get it. It’s hard to be gay in the MLH. It’s really fucking hard. Hard enough that you couldn’t make it work even with Kip, the most loving open-minded, kind person in the universe. If you could move on with a fucking X-squad superstar actress with Cosmo’s Best Boobs and know that the press and the fans and everyone loved it, you would.
(Except even having the thought makes your heart clench. Kip would see those articles. Kip, who deserves to be loved openly and unashamedly. Kip, who would be feeling exactly how Ilya Rozanov is feeling now.
No, stop. You have to backtrack before you get too sympathetic to the biggest asshole in the league, because Kip has not spent the last six years fucking every supermodel on the East Coast and being a dick to every human he comes across. So, actually, nevermind. You don’t care that Hollander is breaking Rozanov’s heart, you just wish you weren’t going to be trapped on a bench with it.)
You see Kip before you fly to Florida. You know you shouldn’t but you know this every time and you feel bad for even temporarily in your head leaving him for a female movie star so you need to hold him to reassure yourself that it’s not true.
That you broke up for different, probably worse, reasons.
“Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on the same team,” Kip says, because not-dating you for three years has given him too much knowledge on the inner gossip of hockey. “Are you basically going to be the kindergarten teacher putting them each in timeout for pulling each others’ pigtails?”
You force a smile and a bad excuse for a laugh, then kiss him before he can call you out on it. It’s an effective distraction, but it does mean your agreement to just be friends and not have sex since you can’t be together is shattered. Again.
(The game goes fine, in the end. They chat with each other in the bar. They joke around in the pool. Neither of them attend the afterparty. You’re not reading anything into that, either.)
(But god you want to.)
4.
You’re at Pec’s house. It’s a day off and there’s a BBQ outside but half the team has migrated into the cinema room to watch the Montreal Boston game. You’re going to face both teams in the lead-up to the playoffs, but that’s just the excuse. A Rozanov vs Hollander match is always worth watching just for the beauty of it. Sometimes it bothers you: how much attention they get, how many cups they seem to be gathering, how much of a dick Rozanov is. But then you watch them play, and you have to admit the hype isn’t manufactured or overblown. They are, in fact, that good.
They seem lighter. Not just better than when they were both falling apart, better than they’ve ever been. It reminds you of All Stars, how they seemed to just know where the other would be, how they could trust that every pass would be picked up, every shot would go exactly where it was meant to be.
There’s no way a team could ever afford both of their salaries, of course, but if one did, Jesus. No one else in the league would even stand a chance.
“More beer?” Pec asks, and you turn to accept another bottle.
A gasp of indrawn breath from the room. You spin back around as Salzy swears loudly, and the cameras cut to Hollander on the ground. “What happened?”
Everyone’s leaning forward in their seats now, watching to see if Hollander gets up. The cameras are cutting to fights breaking out across the ice, you don’t care about that. There’s a replay of Marlowe going into Hollander from the side. “Looks like a legal hit,” someone is saying, in the distance. Somewhere outside the ringing in your ears and the mantra over and over in your head: get up, Hollander. Just get up.
And the camera cuts again as the medics come skidding in, the teams are funnelling back to their benches, all except for Ilya Rozanov.
Rozanov, who’s still standing as close as he can get to where Hollander fell. Who’s staring down at him like he doesn’t realise the whole world is watching.
The commentators say something stupid, “Rozanov’s making sure Hollander’s not coming back from that,” like they can’t see his goddamn face. Like they have no idea what’s happening.
But of course they don’t. You might be the only person in the whole fucking world who knows. No one is going to let Rozanov follow Hollander off the ice, no one’s going to let him into the hospital, no one’s going to tell him if Hollander’s okay beyond whatever bullshit the Metros feed to ESPN.
If something happened to Kip and you couldn’t… but of course you couldn’t. You and Kip aren’t friends, aren’t even dating. Meeting up occasionally, in secret, when you can’t bear another night of being alone and Kip’s still too nice to say no.
There’d be no TV announcement, if Kip was hurt. You’d be lucky if Elena even tried to call you - she doesn’t have your number. No one has your number, except Kip.
You’re in his phone as ‘Scott’. Just Scott.
The referee is shouting something, pointing a finger at Ilya who starts drifting backwards towards his bench without taking his eyes off Hollander’s body on the ice.
Like something else is pulling him away.
Someone claps you on the shoulder and you almost jump out of your skin, but it’s just Carter. “That was some hit. You think Hollzy’s out for the playoffs?”
You join in on the round of scolding that comes from that – sure no one wants to play against Hollander but that doesn’t mean anyone wants him hurt – which is at least distraction from watching Rozanov sitting on the bench, leaning forwards as though straining for a view past the medics and the cameras.
There are still two full periods to go. Two periods that Rozanov will have to play as though nothing significant happened. And then he won’t be able to go to the hospital, no one will tell him how Hollander is doing. If he shows any more interest than he already has, people will start to ask questions.
People just love asking questions.
You can’t breathe. Everyone around you is still talking casually, about the Metros chances, about Boston being the one to beat for the cup, and you can’t stop thinking about if Kip was on the ice. If Kip was hurt. Kip. Kip.
“Beer run,” you say, hoping no one will notice the full bottle in your hand as you escape off the sofa and into the kitchen, where Mrs Vaughn is plating up corn dogs. She’s already asked three times if you want to be introduced to her friend from yoga and she smiles like the campaign is about to continue so you keep going into the bathroom where you can shut the door and lean your head against it and tell yourself you’re not going to text Kip even as you’re pulling out your phone and scrolling to his name.
It’s fine, he has an exam later today so he’ll be working, and the fact that you know that is definitely not a sign that keeping your distance to protect both of your hearts isn’t working.
So much for Kip not looking at his phone.
Kip sends a photo of scattered open books with pictures that you now recognise as renaissance era art. In the centre is a carved statue of a well endowed man with no clothes on, and normally you’d be able to make a joke about that but normally your heart isn’t racing and your hands aren’t shaking.
You swallow down the lump in your throat, he makes it so easy (and you know you could have this. You could have casual, and occasional, but you don’t want that. You want someone to come home too and Kip can’t do that if he’s a secret so instead you’re both patient and not seeing anyone else and repeatedly tearing yourselves up inside.
It is what it is.)
And you can’t explain about Hollander and Rozanov (god knows if they could even explain it but whatever, they deserve their privacy) so how can you explain this fear that’s suddenly wrapped itself around your chest.
There’s a longer pause. Dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.
You try to imagine what Kip could be typing. Not: of course you’re right I love you, but maybe, you’d have to be seen in the same place as me and we both know you aren’t going to do that, in sync with the snide voice in the back of your head.
But if he was hurt, you’d have to find a way. Sneaking in the back door of the hospital in dark glasses and a baseball cap, knowing Kip would hate it.
The game’s probably started again. Rozanov will be expected to go back on the ice, to score goals and beat Hollander’s team into the playoffs.
He’ll probably manage it, with Hollander out. Finally it’ll be someone else’s turn with the cup.
Could you play hockey, knowing Kip was in the hospital? You don’t think you could even stand up, but with a room full of fans and cameras what else could you do?
Is Kip’s slow reply. A casual knock of the puck back onto your stick.
On all of your paperwork, your emergency contact is Carter. How could you explain Kip to Carter? This is my friend from the smoothie shop. This is some guy I met. This is someone I have never told you or anyone about and if anything happens to me I need you to move heaven and earth for him.
You send, which is not what you want to say and not what you want to do but it’s all you’ve got to offer and you know, like you know every time you go crawling back to Kip’s door, that it’s not enough.
More dots. Over and over. You’re going to be sick, you’re going to melt into a pool of vomit and guilt and you’re going to deserve it. And then the dots vanish and don’t come back.
You text Carter that you’re ill and go home, turn on your computer to watch over and over Hollander collapsed on the ice, Rozanov hovering, the refs sending him back to his bench until the tears make it too hard to see the details and you can’t breathe and you might be dying here, alone, in your apartment, and there’s nobody to call.
(You’re still thinking about it three months later with the cup in your hands, looking at Kip in the crowd. And on the heels of all the other cascading thoughts - if not now, when. I love him so much. Why shouldn’t I have the same as everybody else - is the final nail in the coffin: at least I’m not the only one.
And you beckon him down.)
5.
You win player of the year. Your speech, the whole ceremony, is something of a blur. You think you rehearsed it enough that it came out right anyway but honestly you won’t know for sure until you watch the replay. But Kip texted: you’re ridiculous, I love you so you must have done something right.
You must have done everything right, the stars must have aligned, the gods smiled upon you. You’re player of the year and the most perfect man in the world loves you and first thing tomorrow morning you’re going to get on a plane to your house and he will be there when you open the door.
“Yes,” Carter says, from somewhere under your shoulder. “And we’re all very happy for you, now drink this water.”
It is possible Carter is holding you up. It’s also possible you said all that out loud. “Did you meet Kip? You need to meet Kip.”
“I have met Kip. He’s very nice and I’m sure he’d love you even more if you sat down in this chair and drank this glass of water.”
That… is probably true. A lot of people have been buying you drinks tonight. (A lot of people have not been buying you drinks, have been walking away from conversations and tables when they see you approach. Roger Crowell congratulated you on your speech with a completely flat expression then said he hoped there wouldn’t be any further distractions.)
But you’re not thinking about that tonight. Tomorrow you’ll call your agent and hold your boyfriend and deal with the world.
Tonight you drink your glass of water and sit until the room stops spinning so much. By then Carter’s vanished and the room feels too tight so you slip out a side door to a balcony where you can take deep breaths of cool air and wish Kip was with you, even though all the good reasons for him not being here are still good and valid.
Miss you, you text anyway.
Love you, comes back almost immediately and you can’t help the ridiculous smile. This man, your man, is waiting for you. And suddenly you don’t need to be here anymore, you can go upstairs to your hotel room and call him to wish him goodnight and in the morning catch a plane straight back into his arms.
You turn to head back inside and Ilya Rozanov is standing on the balcony.
He’s looking at you, too intently to pretend he came out here for any other reason, and you’re not in the mood. You want to videocall your boyfriend and go to bed, not get into another fucking sparring match. “Not tonight, Rozanov. I’m old, I’m gay, whatever. Can you just save it for next season.”
Rozanov looks at you for a moment, then out at the lights of the city. “I liked your speech,” he says. And then stops, as though there’s not a chirp coming.
You leave it a beat too long, in case, before: “...Thanks.”
He nods, like this is what he wanted. You’re not sure how to take it. “What you did. It means something. To people.”
And oh, oh. You have to blame the alcohol for this one because oh yeah of-fucking-course it matters to Rozanov. Rozanov who fucks around with girls in every city but is in love with Shane Hollander, whether they know it or not.
He looks so nervous, like he’s waiting for you to call him out, and you could. You could drop Hollander’s name, you could remind him about that fucking All Star hotel room in Nashville.
But you know something about secrets. How they tear you up inside.
So you pretend to be surprised, raise an eyebrow. “People?”
He swallows, doesn’t look at you. “When I won the cup the first time,” Ilya says. “My family were in Russia. My friend could not come, had family thing she could not get out of.” He stops again, looking out at the city and not at you. The words are coming out slowly, like he can only think in one sentence at a time.
You wait, because you owe it to him. Because you did it for you, and for Kip, but also for this.
“All the wives and the girlfriends and the kids and the parents came out and I had no one. When I saw you, I recognized the feeling. Having everything you wanted, and no one to share it with. I thought that is just how it is, is how it has to be.”
Now he turns, and the light catches on his eyes, glistening. “But it isn’t, is it?”
There’s no doubt your eyes are glistening too. It’s hard to swallow, when Ilya Rozanov is looking at you like you’re the cure to ten years of heartbreak, but you push it down. You find words. “No.” And firmer, “It’s not.”
You catch a moment of surprise in his expression, like he was expecting you to be shocked and you remember you’re not supposed to know. So fine, you say, “Is there someone you wanted there?”
Ilya cracks a half smile, a shoulder shrug, that tries to say no big deal while the tears don’t quite fall, and turns back to the city, away from you.
“It’s okay,” you say, only six years too late. “If there is.”
Ilys reaches up and rubs a hand across his eyes. “I do not want to kiss a man on centre ice,” he says. “But it matters, that you did. It changes things.” And then he turns back, with something like the usual smirk although it doesn’t quite reach the shimmer in his eyes. “Even if you are so old you are basically retired already.”
Oh come on, you think, but you’re kind of laughing with it too. You’re a stanley cup champion and you have a boyfriend at home and Ilya Rozanov is the same asshole he always was but maybe you’re both going to be happy. You shake your head anyway, “Really?”
He turns it on so easily, like he’s learned from a young age how to hide his heart. You recognise the feeling. “Congrats on your cups Hunter. Next year will not be so easy.”
And oh how you want to say, because your boyfriend will be back on the Metros? but you don’t.
You don’t.
On the phone with Kip later that night he says, “how are you doing?”
And you want to do more. You want to fix things, but all you say is, “I’m tired of secrets.”
+1.
“Okay I need your insight on something,” Kip says, twisting around on the couch to watch you come in from training.
Your heart still leaps to see him here. You think maybe it always will. “How can I be of assistance?”
Kip smiles and you love him. (You love him.) “Elena was telling me Ilya Rozanov is moving to Ottawa and I need you to confirm or deny because everything I have seen says that Ottawa is a terrible team with zero playoff chances so why on earth would the third best player in the league go there voluntarily.”
You hadn’t heard, but you’re only surprised for a moment before it clicks. “Ottawa’s closer to Montreal.”
Ottawa isn’t enemies with Montreal. Ottawa is in Canada so there’s no border crossing, no flight. You could drive all the way from Ottawa to Montreal without being seen by another soul.
You have to hand it to them – no, to Shane Hollander, there is no way this isn’t a Hollander play – it’s not a terrible idea. Except for the part where Rozanov is throwing away his cup hopes for at least a year, probably three or more.
But as Kip frowns his beautiful face back down at his phone in the apartment that you now share, you can understand the urge to choose love, even if it means risking losing everything else. “What’s in Montreal?”
And you know what? You have kept this secret for nearly a decade, but Kip is your Significant Other / Live in Partner / Soulmate / Whatever you want to call it, and they have never actually sworn you to secrecy.
“Shane Hollander.”
It feels good to say it out loud. To admit to the man you love that it was never just you. That your lonely cloud of gay MLH champions has a population greater than one.
“What, like keep your friends close and your rivals -” Kip is halfway through before he looks up and sees your face. You’re not sure what it’s doing, but it must be good judging by the way his jaw drops. “No way.”
“Way.”
“Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.”
“Uh huh.”
“Since when?”
And you think back to Rozanov giving Shane his room number, too practiced to be a first time. “Their rookie season. Maybe before.” And you’re sure he knows but just to clarify. “You can’t tell anyone, they don’t even know that I know.”
Kip tugs you down onto the sofa and he’s still smiling when he kisses you. “I’m good at secrets,” he says.
And you hold him back in your apartment that you both own, knowing you can walk outside holding his hand and that that is worth everything that’s come with it.
And in spite of everything, you hope that one day Rozanov and Hollander will get to have that too.
That everyone will.
“I love you,” you say. “So fucking much.”