Chapter Text
Cliff Marleau has known about Ilya Rozanov’s relationship since Ilya was twenty.
It’s not like it was complicated to put the pieces together, is the thing. When it all comes out in public, the Raiders have various different meltdowns – Twitter explodes in a way that is sort of unprecedented, and breaks out of the hockey specific Twitter spaces the same way that the Scott Hunter thing did. There’s shitty headlines and queer space headlines, and it’s a whole thing. And Cliff is pretty sure he’s the person least surprised about it.
But here’s the thing. Cliff Marleau has known Ilya Rozanov since the kid was eighteen.
Year One
There was a brief discussion amongst the team management, and they asked Cliff to billet, because he lived nearby and he’d been on the team for two years, and the kid was Russian with nowhere else to go. And for all the shit they were saying in the papers, Cliff wasn’t actually that big of a partier. The team trusted him. So yeah, Cliff had said yes.
Ilya Rozanov shows up at Cliff’s door with a beaten up duffle bag, a worse for wear suitcase, and a guarded expression. He looks all of twelve minutes old, and Cliff almost feels bad for him.
“Fuck. They’re gonna eat you alive,” he says, stepping aside to let the kid pass.
Ilya regards him with a sharp expression that suggests he doesn’t fully understand the idiom, and shakes his head. “No one will eat me.”
Cliff laughs, booming, and claps him on the shoulder. “Sure, kid. C’mon, I’ll show you where you’re sleeping.”
He leads Ilya through the house, which Cliff had bought outright with his first ever paycheque, to the guest room he’d decided was probably big enough. It was only a little smaller than the master bedroom, and pretty spartan in its attire. King bed, navy sheets, and a closet. “Let me know if you want me to get you any shit for in here. Rugs or whatever. My sister said I’m shit at interior design, so, y’know. Boring as fuck.”
When he glances back at Ilya, the kid’s expression is unreadable. Not unusual, Cliff figures – a lot of the Eastern European players are hard to read. An old teammate had told him it was some shit about Slavic eyebrows, whatever that means. Cliff gives it a second, and then says, “‘Kay, well, I’ll leave you alone. Bathroom’s down the hall to the right. We have practice tomorrow at nine, so we can drive in together. I have food in the fridge, take whatever you want.”
There’s still not much of a response, so Cliff puts his hands up and leaves it there.
He doesn’t see Rozanov again until the evening, when Cliff’s sprawled on his couch, NHL 09 booted up on the Playstation. He doesn’t even notice the kid at first, catches sight of him out of the corner of his eye and jumps about a foot in the air, swearing.
“Sorry.” Rozanov doesn’t look particularly sorry.
“Make a fucking noise next time, would you?” Cliff pushes himself up a little bit to look at the kid, and then tilts his head. “You hungry?”
Rozanov hesitates, then nods like he’s not sure he’s allowed to. Cliff rolls off the couch and curls a hand, doesn’t check to see if Ilya is following him to the kitchen. He pulls open the fridge and glances over his shoulder to where Rozanov hovers behind his shoulder. “Your options are chicken and rice, chicken and rice, or…chicken and rice,” he says, stepping aside to show the neatly labelled boxes.
For a long moment, Rozanov just stands there, looking. Then, dryly, he says, “Wow, so much choice.”
He’s almost hesitant about it, and cuts Cliff a look like he’s expecting to be told off for saying it. Instead, Cliff laughs and says, “Fuck off, you asshole. You can eat that or you can starve, choice is yours.”
Rozanov cracks the barest of smiles, and tips around Cliff to grab one of the boxes, then tilts his head towards the microwave. Cliff shows him how it works without much preamble - he doesn’t know what kind of microwaves they have in Russia. Are there microwaves in Russia? He’s not about to ask.
With Rozanov’s food heated up, Cliff leads him back to the living room and flops down on the couch, picking up his controller. After a moment of hesitation, Rozanov joins him. Cliff boots the game back up and doesn’t look at Rozanov.
“You excited for tomorrow?”
“Mm.”
Right. So interesting. “Nervous?”
“Russians do not get nervous.”
Cliff glances over, grinning, to see if Rozanov is joking. The expression on his face makes it completely unclear. “Sure,” Cliff says after a minute. “Well, the guys are solid. Excited to meet you, I’m pretty sure. Hard to tell with some of those guys. You’re gonna get chirped to death, but if you’re as good as you look from the footage, you’ll shut them the fuck up pretty quick. Coaches are solid too, they’ll put you through your fuckin’ paces but like I said you seem solid as fuck, so -”
“Slow down.”
It catches Cliff off-guard, and when he looks over, Rozanov’s expression is as unreadable as it was before. Except for this little furrow between his eyebrows. A moment passes, and then -
“Please.”
Oh. Shit. Yeah, okay. There’s a difference between knowing English and keeping up with Cliff’s fast as fuck Boston accent. Fair. “Sorry.”
Rozanov waves his hand, cheeks a little pink about it. “Is fine. Just…tired.”
Cliff’s pretty sure that’s not what it is, but hey, who the fuck is he to call someone out? “Sure.” And then, “You’ll be fine, is all I mean. And if anyone gives you shit, you tell me, okay?”
That part Cliff is pretty sure Rozanov understands. He says, “I can handle myself,” but he’s nodding anyway.
From there, it’s easy.
Rozanov steps into his first practice with all the ego of a first draft pick and all the fear of someone away from home for the first time. Cliff directs him to his cubby, introduces him around, and lets the guys chirp him.
They stop pretty fucking quick when they see the kid out on the ice. Cliff had known he was good, but fuck, he is really, really good. He’s faster than almost all of them, and his stick handling is unbelievable. It sets something alight in the rest of the team, like they all want to prove they’re good enough to go toe-to-toe with him. Cliff feels it, too.
The routine for the three weeks of training camp is pretty easy, from there. Cliff drives them to and from practice – Rozanov - Rozy at practice - decides what music they’re listening to. It’s almost always a combination of pop music, Russian rap, and the occasional piece of classical music, which really throws Cliff off. Rozy takes over cooking for the most part, because he declares that Cliff is pretty fucking bad at it, and Cliff has no complaints.
Rozy is borderline militant in his cleanliness, which Cliff - like he does with most things Rozy does - chalks up to him just being Russian. It makes living together pretty easy, actually.
In their first exhibition game, Rozy is a fucking demon on the ice. He scores a goal in the second period and lights up like a Christmas tree, the happiest Cliff thinks he’s ever been. He gets lost in the pile of congratulatory bodies, but Cliff manages to get a hand on his shoulder, grinning. Rozy grins right back, delighted by it.
They win most of their exhibition games, and Cliff gets some good assists in, but fuck if it isn’t mostly Rozy. For a rookie he’s unprecedented. It means people start to take notice - and not in a good way, either.
And the thing about Cliff is that he’s big enough to be an enforcer. He isn’t, because he’s a great fucking forward, but he knows how he looks and he knows how he comes across. So he starts to keep an eye – not on the rest of them, they have actual enforcers for that. But Cliff keeps an eye on Rozy.
Their sixth game of the season is against Florida and it’s fucking brutal from the start. It’s unusual, but Cliff figures out pretty early that they’re all gunning for Rozy. Makes sense – he’s good at what he does, chirps like he’s being paid to do it, and pisses them all the fuck off. Fine, no biggie, because he can handle himself - Cliff’s seen it.
The first time it starts to seem more than just game play is when Rozy gets slammed into the boards, nowhere near the puck. It’s not called, but Cliff catches sight of the look on his face. He seems - surprised. And no one else would, Cliff thinks, know that. But no one else is living with the kid and spending almost twenty-four solid hours a day with him, so Cliff doesn’t think they would.
The second time, it’s more brutal. Rozy makes a good goal, but his stick catches one of their defenders. That’s all it takes for him to be shoved, hard and high enough that he goes flying backwards into the boards. Cliff’s gloves hit the ground a second later, and he’s closing the gap to put his fist in the fucker’s face. It takes two refs to pull Cliff back, and he skates towards the penalty box with what he knows will be a black eye, grins at Rozy with blood on his teeth.
Rozy grins back, shaking his head.
On the bus back to the hotel, Cliff drops into the aisle seat next to Rozy and says, “You good?”
Rozy looks at him with a raised eyebrow, slightly incredulous, and says, “What the fuck? Are you?” which seems fair. Cliff’s face is a fucking nightmare, right now, and his head hurts like a motherfucker. “What the fuck did you do that for?”
“You’re my fucking rookie,” Cliff says, simply, and grins at the way Ilya splutters at the possessive of it. “No one fucks with my rookie.”
“Marly, you are two years older than me.”
“Yeah, you’re a fucking baby.”
“I will fuck you up.”
“You can’t reach high enough.”
“Fuck you!”
“Nah, fuck yourself.”
So it’s that easy. Cliff Marleau becomes Ilya Rozanov’s enforcer. And he is really, really fucking good at it. But the thing about being Rozy’s enforcer is that you have to keep an eye open. Two, most of the time. And that means you start to notice things – even when the person you’re noticing doesn’t fucking want you to.
The first time he really notices anything is after the All Stars game. It’s this whole fucking thing, Hollander versus Rozanov, the fabled rivalry of it all. Cliff gets it - they’re as good as each other, a whisker of difference between first and second. Not that he’ll ever say that to Rozy, fuck, he’s not suicidal. But Cliff is kind of secretly looking forward to playing with Hollander – he wants to see what all the fuss is about.
He takes Rozy out for a drink after the first press conference Rozy has to deal with. Some shit about getting the two rivals shoulder-to-shoulder or whatever. Cliff doesn’t bother watching it.
“You good? Press stuff is shit.”
Rozy looks a little more subdued than normal, and shrugs. “I’m fucking hockey player, Marly. I do press stuff all the time.”
“Alright, asshole, sorry for asking.”
Rozy lets out a huff, beer bottle halfway to his lips, and takes a deep pull. “Fuck you. Is fucking boring. They ask too many questions anyway. I answer, they ask more.”
Yeah, that’s kind of what Cliff figured. “How was it, with Hollander? Feels like they set this whole fucking thing up so you guys would play each other.”
Something weird happens, then. Rozy – fucking blushes. It’s not super obvious, just this little pink tint to his cheeks. Cliff hides his surprise behind his beer bottle while Rozy clears his throat and says, “He is okay guy. Very boring.”
Which – sure, yeah. Hollander’s reputation is squeaky clean, and he plays like it, but wow. Cliff tilts his head a little, knows he’s pushing his limits when he says, “Yeah. You guys played each other in the world juniors, right? Summer before your rookie season. How was that?”
“You are in love with Hollander?”
Cliff chokes on his next mouthful of beer, puts the bottle down so he can cough around it. When he finally gets his shit together he says, “What the fuck, Rozy?”
“No, is fine, you are just asking many questions about him. Thought maybe you were hot for him.” The corner of Rozy’s mouth is quirked up, and Cliff punches him in the shoulder.
“Fuck you. You’re so fucking annoying. Can’t wait to beat your ass on the ice.”
“I am sure my ass is not the only one you want to -”
Rozy is summarily silenced with a headlock.
Still, Cliff’s not stupid. Rozy comes back from the All Stars weekend…lighter. Happier, somehow. And obsessed with his phone. Cliff catches sight of it once. Jane, popping up over and over again, text after text. It’s…something. But Cliff isn’t an asshole. He’s just also not stupid.