Work Text:
My father is police. My brother is police.
A pause.
Also, my father would kill me.
…
The first time that Shane meets Grigori Rozanov is in Sochi.
There’s so much distance between him and Ilya. Literal feet, carefully calculated by Shane, because despite what Rozanov might think, Shane isn’t an idiot. He has no interest in sharing details of whatever they are in Russia during the Olympics. So, literal physical space, more than is probably required for a casual conversation.
But there’s a gulf of emotional distance that Shane still has no goddamn clue how to navigate. He gets that Ilya Rozanov is an asshole. He does. He gets that Rozanov might hype that image to up his game or whatever. But Rozanov is also rarely cruel for the sake of being cruel. And when they’ve been together, he still might be snarky, but he’s also careful. Not gentle, no. But he’d made sure that Shane had enjoyed and been comfortable during every single one of their sexual encounters, particularly the last one.
So, he’s always faintly baffled when the switch flips, and Rozanov just … ices him out. Shane’s trying to be fucking nice, because he can only imagine how much it would suck if their situations were reversed. He knows the pressure of the Olympics. Knows it must be eons worse when your home country is the host. Knows full well how terrible it feels when it seems like the whole world is enjoying talking about a low moment of your career. That you’ve let everyone down.
But Rozanov will barely look at him, let alone talk to him.
Shane huffs, fully ready to retreat.
“Ilya.”
In front of him, Rozanov straightens immediately, with an almost military precision that Shane has never seen before. Somehow, his face goes harder.
Shane blinks, startled, as an older man walks up behind Rozanov. He says something to him in hard, flat Russian, and Rozanov answers in the same tone. He’s purposefully not looking at Shane.
Shane figures that he’d be better off slipping away. It’s not like he was having a pleasant conversation with Rozanov anyway. Before he can manage his retreat, the older man’s gaze swings to him. He looks Shane over, slowly, from head to toe. Although the man’s expression doesn’t change, Shane feels like he’s failing a test he didn’t know he was taking.
The man says something to Rozanov.
Reluctantly, Rozanov steps forward.
“Ah,” he says. “Father, this is Shane Hollander. Hollander, this is my father, Grigori Rozanov.” He very pointedly does not look at Shane as he delivers this stilted introduction.
Oh. He can see some of the resemblance now that he’s looking, although he’s pretty sure that Grigori Rozanov is a good bit older than either of his parents. He can also understand Rozanov’s discomfort with having Shane so near to his father, but if anything, Shane is good at being polite. (“Giving good parent,” Hayden would say.)
“It’s nice to meet you, sir,” Shane says and holds out his hand, feeling an obstinate need to prove to Rozanov that he can interact just fine with other people around them.
Grigori takes his hand.
“You have been playing excellent hockey,” Grigori says, his accent even thicker than his son’s. “Even here, we hear of Shane Hollander’s dedication and hard work. No distractions. Your parents must be very proud.”
“They are,” Shane says. “Thank you.” He glances back at Rozanov. There’s a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Just like you must be proud of what Roz has accomplished so far.”
“He lost.”
The answer comes so fast and flat that it leaves Shane momentarily off-kilter. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, because he hadn’t expected Grigori to be so dismissive of his son’s career. Sure, Yuna would have been disappointed, if the situation were reversed. She’s always pushed him to be the best, but she also has never been anything less than proud of him. She’d be the first to remind him that losses are a part of the game, a vital part of learning how to improve. And she would never, never do anything other than support him 100% in front of other people.
Rozanov turns away from both of them, looks back down toward the ice. Shane flounders.
But it scarcely matters, because Grigori Rozanov is also turning away.
“Come, Ilya,” he says. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Hollander.” He walks toward the exit, without checking that Rozanov is behind him, but he is. Rozanov trails after his father without so much as looking back at Shane.
…
A lot of the hockey world knows about Yuna Hollander. Most of the time, she is viewed as a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes, other guys, on the ice, will give Shane shit for the amount that she is involved in his career and his brand deals. It’s easy noise to tune out.
Less of the hockey world knows about Grigori Rozanov. Probably, it helps that he’s literally half a world away. Probably, it helps that people are less willing to believe that Ilya Rozanov, the notorious menace of the MHL, is controlled by his father. Fewer still are willing to talk about it and risk Ilya’s wraith.
Over the years, rumors surface, though. Grigori Rozanov manages his son’s money, someone says; Ilya gets only a cut, which is why his Boston apartment is so underwhelming, all things considered. Why he only owns a single ostentatious sports car, despite his obvious love of them, another person says. Grigori Rozanov enjoys showing up at public events without letting Ilya know beforehand, purposefully to knock Ilya off kilter. Grigori Rozanov criticizes his son’s hockey skills and character in front of Ilya, to anyone who will listen. Seemingly unaware that his son is one of the most talented hockey players currently alive.
“Shit,” other players will say. “No wonder Rozy is such an asshole. If that was my old man, I’d be a raging asshole too.” Perhaps with a temporary air of embarrassment edging into pity. The pity doesn’t last long, though. Forgotten by the next time that Ilya is chirping them or slamming them into the boards or simply outplaying them at hockey.
…
“Yuna,” David warns.
But he knows his wife and how she gets when she’s focused on one thing. And right now, for better or worse, that thing is Grigori Rozanov. They’ve almost certainly been in the same room as him before, but, frankly, they’ve never cared about him. Now, they have ample reason to take note of him.
It’s been nearly a year since David walked in on Shane and Ilya and upended all their lives. The gay thing had been a minor shock compared to the Rozanov thing, but in the time that they’ve gotten to know Ilya better and see Shane-and-Ilya as a couple, David can admit that he likes Ilya and, moreover, he likes Ilya as a partner for Shane. They had wanted to be supportive, of course, but it had been difficult when all they knew was that Ilya liked to party and be seen with a rotating door of women. They had worried that Shane wouldn’t know how to take care of himself in a relationship, especially with something who was renowned for having such a loud, powerful personality.
But David can readily admit that he was wrong. Being around Ilya and Shane for more than a couple of hours quickly proves just how head-over-heels Ilya is for Shane. That the teasing and the chirping is a kind of love language for the two of them. And moreover, that Ilya’s presence brings Shane out of his shell like nothing else. It’s suddenly painfully clear that Shane has been performing for them too—maybe without entirely meaning to or being aware of it. Ilya is the only one who gets Shane without a filter, the fussiness and particularities, the selfishness, the occasional frustration and short temper that he polishes off for the cameras so that no personality flaw can distract from his hockey performance. He curses at Ilya and pushes him, and none of it is indicative of a lack in their relationship; rather, it’s Shane’s honest reaction, and Ilya earns that honesty because Shane loves him.
In turn, David has realized Ilya has an equivalent performance. At any point in the past, he would have scoffed at anyone suggesting that Ilya Rozanov contains depths. But he so clearly does, even if Ilya himself is unaware of it. If only because nearly everyone around him has tried to stamp those depths out of him, to tell him that it’s not okay that he’s as sweet and caring as he actually is.
Prime among those destroyers is the man in the room with them.
David is fairly certain that Grigori Rozanov has been at the core of nearly every fight that Shane and Ilya have had since deciding to date. He’d later found out that Ilya had almost not gone to the cottage that summer at all, because his father expected him home in Moscow every year. He had lied and said that he was participating in a training camp. But the fact that it had been David, Shane’s father, to walk in on them, had been particularly unsettling.
But since then, they’ve had front-row seats to the fear and chaos that Ilya’s father can instill, even when he has no idea about Shane and Ilya. Ilya wants to join the Centaurs to be closer to Shane, yes, but he’s equally afraid of his father’s reaction, because the Centaurs are a blatantly inferior team compared to the Raiders, and what if his father tracks the move back to Shane?
(“He’s a grown man,” Yuna had said. “He should be able to make decisions about his career without his father interfering.” And David had tactfully not pointed out that Yuna would have had a million opinions if Shane had willingly been traded to any team that was a step down from the Metros.)
The charity had been another sore topic. Ilya had initially rejected anything related to mental health and then relented, but remained adamant that they not name anything after his mother.
(“I know it’s wrong,” Shane had said, once, to David. “But I really hate his dad. He’s terrible to Ilya, and all we ever do is fight about him. Because Ilya knows he’s terrible, but I don’t think he really knows.”)
David doesn’t know how to explain that family is complicated like that. That, yes, some people do just cut bad family out like a cancer, but that it’s often not that simple. That sometimes, with family, you put up with more, because you still want that love even if you’re aware it’s never coming. He can’t force Shane to understand. Either he and Ilya will come to an understanding or they won’t.
Regardless, here they are now, in the same room with their son’s boyfriend’s father, and while they obviously have no intention of outing Shane and Ilya, Yuna still wants to go over and somehow meet Grigori Rozanov.
Logistically, it’s not that difficult. They’re in a room full of hockey players and their families. Their sons have been playing together so long that probably no one would bat an eyelash at them chatting.
But it just seems unnecessary, in David’s opinion. Ilya is clearly uncomfortable with the fact that his dad and Shane, David, and Yuna are all in the same room. He’s been uncharacteristically quiet the whole night, shoulders tight near his ears, leading David to believe that his father’s visit was a surprise to him. David thinks Ilya will panic if they get anywhere closer to his dad.
Moreover, David doesn’t really need to shake Grigori Rozanov’s hand to get a sense that he’s not a great guy. He knows every parent is flawed; he equally believes that a good parent doesn’t leave the type of scars that Ilya has.
But for some reason, meeting Grigori is important to Yuna, even if he has no idea that their sons love each other, have done so for years, and plan to do so for as long as they humanly can. Has no idea that David and Yuna have both also fallen in love with Ilya, can no longer imagine their lives—or Shane’s—without him, and are very much looking forward to having him in Ottawa. Yuna has started to deftly manage Ilya’s career as well, working around the heavy grasp that Grigori still has around his son’s life.
Because Yuna is Yuna, she doesn’t listen to David. She talks someone, another hockey parent, into introducing them without directly asking for them to do so. Witchcraft.
They’re ushered across to the room to where Grigori is chatting with a small group of people.
“Mr. Rozanov,” fellow hockey parent says, smiling and seemingly unaware of the utter indifference Grigori looks at her with. “I thought you should meet David and Yuna Hollander—”
“Shane Hollander’s parents, yes,” Grigori finishes for her, his gaze swinging to the two of them. “Of course.”
If David had been asked to pick out Ilya’s father in this room without knowing who he was already, David isn’t confident that he would have picked out Grigori. Both men command a room, of course. But David thinks their approach couldn’t be more different. Even when playing the character of Ilya Rozanov, Ilya almost always relies on drawing people in. Grigori is like a sheet of ice, cold and impassive, as if everyone in this room full of notable people is beneath his note.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Yuna says, leaning in and shaking his hand, because if anything, Yuna is a master at the art of small talk, something David will only tolerate and which baffles Shane entirely.
Grigori shakes Yuna’s hand and then immediately offers a handshake to David as well.
“Your son is a credit to you,” Grigori says. “Such a talented hockey player. A man who knows how to take his responsibilities seriously on and off the ice, I have heard.”
David wonders what he would have thought about this compliment a year ago. Probably he would have written it off as something frivolous. Yuna would have made a snarky comment about not caring about the opinion of the man who raised Ilya Rozanov, who was too flashy, too aggressive, who distracted from Shane’s skill. Now, something about the compliment sets him on edge, because he knows there’s a layer to what Grigori is saying.
Yuna manages to keep smiling.
“Of course, we’re so proud of him,” Yuna answers. “We know that Ilya keeps him on his toes, though. We can’t imagine what Shane’s career would look like without him at this point!” A carefully balanced statement of course, because her tune would have been seriously different not that long ago, but she can’t publicly come out and say that they’ve forgiven Rozanov for the years he spent tormenting their son on the ice, because apparently their son enjoys having someone who can keep up with him so much that they’ve built an entire, secret life around it.
Grigori smiles thinly.
“If Ilya had half the dedication and focus of your son, he would be a far more talented hockey player,” Grigori says. His tone is flat enough that this time it’s clear that he’s not so much praising Shane as he is taking a dig at Ilya.
David flexes his hand at his side. He won’t ever say anything that would embarrass or endanger either of the boys, but it’s just hard to listen to someone take such an obvious shot at Ilya. Particularly when it’s his father, who Ilya is uniquely attuned to. Sure, David still prefers Shane’s style of play, but what on earth could Grigori ask of Ilya in addition to what he’s already done? He’s a professional, highly awarded hockey player of the highest caliber, an international name, the first draft pick of his year, captain of his team, a Stanley Cup winner. The rivalry may have helped Ilya and Shane’s names in the history hockey books, but there’s also no denying that they are generational talents who make other professional hockey players look like they’re playing an entirely different sport. What imaginary benchmark does Grigori think that Ilya should have crossed by now?
But David knows men like Grigori well enough to know that the benchmark is always changing. That’s the nefarious abuse of it all. Ilya can succeed and chase his father’s praise, and Grigori will always be dismissing his accomplishments because Ilya is the one to have done them. It will never be enough.
The behavior makes David’s skin crawl. He knows he hasn’t been a perfect father. He didn’t always know when to push and when to let go with Shane. His emotional outbursts as a small child had been baffling to navigate, frankly, and everyone had had an opinion on how he and Yuna were parenting a boy wrong. He’d been so hyperfocused as a teenager, almost too easy, and David had worried about all the things he missed out on. And of course now, they know full well that Shane has felt the need to perform with them as well, to never let himself be anything less than perfect even with them, the people he was supposed to be the safest with in his imperfections.
But David knows he’s at least never weaponized those imperfections against Shane. He’s never invented false imperfections. And he knows damn well for that all his mistakes, that Shane has always known how much Yuna and he love Shane.
Yuna still appears amicable, but David can tell she’s thinking the same. But this sort of conversation is where she excels, honestly. She loves a verbal battle encased in politeness.
“Oh, I find that hard to believe,” she answers. “Just because he makes it look easy and fun, well, we all know that you don’t just happen into one of the top athletes in the world, no matter how skilled you are, right?” She turns to smile at David. “But maybe we’ll count ourselves and Shane lucky then, because if Ilya was any better at hockey, it would positively unbelievable. Superhuman, even.”
The group around them has gone silent. The tension between Grigori and Yuna is clear, even if everyone is baffled as to why and what, exactly, is happening.
“As you say, Mrs. Hollander,” Grigori says, with the pretense of polite indifference.
…
Shane has carefully given Ilya space tonight. Not that they would interact, really, in a public space like this, but he hasn’t so much as caught Ilya’s eye or texted him tonight.
Grigori’s visit had been an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.
(“He knows I am keeping something from him,” Ilya had said. To be fair, he is on a rapidly decreasing countdown to telling his father that he is heading to Ottawa. The public announcement will be made shortly. Shane has tried to stay out of it, to not nag at Ilya to get it done and over with.)
But when his parents cross the room to talk with Grigori, Shane can’t help but watch Ilya’s reaction, who is so obviously, intensely stressed by the conversation happening across the room, even though he’s still pretending to laugh with Marlow and some of the other Raiders.
Luckily, the conversation appears to be short and polite. His parents, obviously, don’t out them to Ilya’s dad. There’s no dramatic conclusion, no screaming or shouting, just his parents drifting back away from Ilya’s dad. And, okay, Shane thinks. That’s fine. They’re all fine. They probably talked about the weather or something. How the flight from Moscow was. A thousand things before, so, did you know your son is regularly sticking his dick in ours? And your son is about to rock the hockey world by moving to another different country to do that on a more regular basis? All without, hopefully, ruining either of their careers? No? Well, what do you think of the wine selection tonight?
Shane breathes. He smiles at a punchline to a joke that JJ tells without catching any of it.
Ilya walks out the back doors to the dimly lit balcony that overlooks the gardens. It’s rainy and cold tonight, all things considered, and the outdoor space has gone mostly unused. Shane wonders if he can catch Ilya outside and check if he’s okay. Or will his proximity just stress Ilya out more? It can be hard to tell. At a hockey function, it’s not like they’re forbidden from interacting at all. But Shane is always doing mental gymnastics as to how it will appear to other people. Would some other version of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov who really just competed against each other, without all the love sewn into them, would they hold a casual conversation in this moment?
Shane edges toward the back doors. Maybe, they don’t even need to exchange any words right now, he thinks. He’ll just gets eyes on Ilya. And Ilya will nod at him and let him know he’s okay, or he’ll ignore Shane entirely, and Shane will know to keep his space. To check in on him later, when Ilya has proper privacy again.
He’s just in the door frame when he realizes that Ilya isn’t alone after all. In the midst of all of Shane’s fretting and planning, Grigori had followed Ilya outside. Now, it’s just father and son outside, talking in low, harrowed Russian.
Okay, Shane figures. Now is definitely not the time. He needs to retreat without being noticed.
He hasn’t taken a single step back when Grigori suddenly slaps Ilya across the face. His palm is full spread, and the sound cracks into the night, unnoticed by anyone but Shane. Ilya’s head hangs to the side for the briefest of a second. The slap couldn’t have really physically hurt Ilya, no, who took heavy full-bodied hits from some of the roughest hockey players in the league. But that isn’t the point, is it? The point is that all of that is true about Ilya, and Grigori can slap him, humiliate him, and Ilya apparently will let him.
But Shane won’t.
No, Shane Hollander, who has denied himself nearly every fight on the ice, goes white-hot with rage. Shane Hollander, who has meticulously planned on the most cautious way for him and Ilya to be together, is ready to stride into the night and slap a senior citizen back for daring to lay hands on the man he loves.
He makes it half a stride before a cool hand wraps around his wrist and yanks him back inside.
“Don’t.”
Svetlana, who’s accompanied Ilya tonight, and hung prettily off his arm, but hasn’t done more than hug him at any point throughout the night.
Shane is trying to make his peace with her. Ilya had begged to tell her last year.
“She is like my sister, Hollander,” he had said.
“Your sister who you’ve fucked,” Shane had said sourly.
He finds his own jealousy unappealing. It seems as if there is an endless stream of obstacles for him and Ilya to navigate now. He doesn’t like feeling that he is the cause of one. He wants to be okay with Svetlana. She’s Ilya’s oldest friend. She’s been with him through everything. She’s the only tie to home that he values. Fucking each other had always been just for a convenient fun, not an extension of the love they feel for one another.
And yet, Shane struggles. Svetlana would be easier. Shane knows it. Ilya knows it, even if he says he wants Shane and all the messiness that comes with him. In many ways, Svetlana knows Ilya better than Shane does; she can talk to him in ways that Shane never would be able to. Ilya says that he loves her, but he also has slept with her, but he says that the love and the sex aren’t related, and that is the part that Shane can’t rationalize in his own mind. Their connection is enough that Ilya wanted to fuck her at some point, and, certainly Shane and Ilya haven’t been in love for the vast majority of the time they were fucking.
But she’s important to Ilya. Out of all the life he’s giving up for Shane, she is the only thing that he’s asking to keep.
So, Shane tries.
He likes her. Like Ilya, she’s ruthlessly funny. He loves talking hockey with her; she knows more than almost all of the players he’s actually played alongside.
And yet, sometimes, that thorn of jealousy is relentless. Tonight, for instance. Yes, Ilya and Svetlana curb how much they touch, out of respect for Shane and Ilya’s new relationship. That didn’t mean that it doesn’t sting when Svetlana can hug Ilya in public, and Shane can’t. When the press and seemingly the whole league gossip about Ilya and Svetlana, and how stunning they look together, and if Svetlana has finally tamed the infamous playboy of the MHL, and damn, their kids would be gorgeous and hockey royalty.
And all Shane can do is stay quiet and sip his ginger ale and pretend to not care about the conversation, because there’s no logical reason Shane Hollander would actually be interested in who Ilya Rozanov was dating.
He’s struggled with Svetlana’s presence all night. He doesn’t want to see her now. He wants to go out to Ilya.
“I’m not standing by,” Shane snarls at her.
“You will make things worse,” Svetlana tells him calmly. “Ilya will be embarrassed. And Grigori will be worse if he senses this.”
Shane deflates.
“I will go get him, okay?” Svetlana murmurs, patting him gently on the chest. “And bring him to you.”
Shane breathes out hard. He closes his eyes, counts his breaths for a moment, and then nods. He doesn’t feel that he can do nothing in this situation, but he also doesn’t want to make things worse for Ilya. It’s hard to trust Svetlana, but she has more experience deciphering and defusing the volatile moods of Grigori Rozanov.
“Okay,” Svetlana says. She squeezes his arm, kisses his cheek, and slides out into the night.
…
That same night, but later, the three of them are back at Ilya’s apartment. Ilya is asleep. Shane had iced his face, but they hadn’t actually discussed that Shane had seen Grigori hit Ilya.
Shane can’t sleep. He watches Ilya for a long time, the rise and fall of his chest, the cross nestled into his chest hair. The barely there bruising around his eye that no one else will even know to look for.
Shane gets up eventually to get a glass of water and finds Svetlana still awake as well. She has a hockey game on, because of course she does, even though the sound is off. She turns to look at him as he approaches. Her hair is pulled back and away from her face, and she’s wearing a silky robe, still somehow so astonishingly beautiful despite being awake in the middle of the night.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks him.
He shakes his head, and she pats the couch beside her. He hesitates for a moment. He doesn’t want to disturb her. And moreover, he hates not being with Ilya during the little time they have together. But he relents, rounds the couch, and sits down next to her regardless. They’re both quiet for a bit, the apartment almost deafeningly silent, the light from the television casting long shadows without any other light source.
“His father will try to force him to come back to Russia,” Svetlana says quietly, apropos of nothing.
Shane stiffens.
“What?”
Svetlana turns to look at him.
“He has never liked that Ilya plays hockey here. He has always wanted him to play back in Russia. When he hears about the trade, he will be worse than before. You must not let Ilya do this, do you understand?”
Despite himself, Shane shivers. He’s never heard her talk so seriously about anything before. He’s used to the way that she and Ilya banter and rib each other.
“Would he?” Shane asks. He didn’t know this was something he needed to worry about. He wishes, so badly, that Ilya had less of his dad in his life, but he’s never considered that Ilya would actually choose to go back to Russia all together.
“Grigori is dangerous because he is persistent,” Svetlana says. “He wears people down. He makes them small. This is what he did to Ilya’s mama, and he now he does this to Ilya. Ilya can survive it because he is a world away. He will not survive it if Grigori is the only voice in his head all the time.”
My father would kill me, Shane remembers Ilya saying. He hadn’t known then, that this was how.
Shane’s throat and chest are so tight that he feels like he can’t breathe.
Svetlana reaches across the couch and drapes one of her perfectly manicured hands across the back of his.
“I will never take him from you, do you understand? I am so happy he has found you. You are so good for him. I see how you love him. You ground him. But I will also never not tell him how I love him too. He needs as much of this as possible to drown out his father’s voice. It is a very loud voice that he has heard for too long, that he gives too much weight to, no matter what he says.”
Shane’s jealousy pops. Gone, almost as if it had never been. The only feeling left is the faint embarrassment at having felt it in the first place, because he can understand now that Svetlana, if he is to take her at her word, is his ally, not his competition. Maybe he can’t exactly place a neat label on what Svetlana and Ilya are to each other, and as a person that likes labels, that’s difficult. But all that matters now is that Svetlana’s love is working in concert with his own, not trying to overcome it.
“I do love him,” Shane says, choked. The words feel paltry in comparison to what she’s just told him, but he can’t say anything more—or truer—than that. He loves Ilya Rozanov, and he wants that love to be a safe place for Ilya.
Svetlana smiles impishly at him.
“Oh, I know, darling,” she says and squeezes his hand.
…
Now that Shane is no longer leaving after they fuck, the main thing he learns is how often Grigori calls Ilya, and how Ilya feels compelled to answer. Mostly, he calls to critique Ilya’s hockey.
(“Is best to just get it out of the way,” Ilya says, in that tight way he does when he really doesn’t want to discuss something with Shane and is simultaneously pretending that something is fine. That tone comes out most often with Grigori but also with Russia in general and Alexei.)
Grigori usually calls sometime within the first 24 hours after Ilya has finished a game. (But not always.) He usually calls in the early afternoon hours of Moscow, making it early morning in Ottawa. (But not always. Sometimes, he seems utterly unaware of the time difference. Shane has been there before when he’s called Ilya at 2 or 3 in the morning, and Ilya will kiss Shane’s shoulder in apology and take the call all the same.)
Ilya always leaves the room, but Shane’s in tune all the same. Win or lose, the calls all sound the same. At first, Shane mostly just hears the tone: hard and commanding. And Ilya answering the same short phrases over and over again: Yes, Father, yes.
After they play against one another, Shane catches his own name: Hollander, Hollander, Hollander. The yard stick by which Ilya’s father measures him and finds him wanting. It makes Shane hate his own name. He grinds his nails into his palms. He wants to grab the phone from Ilya. He wants to hang up. He wants to tell Grigori Rozanov to fuck off, because Ilya is an incredible hockey player and only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see that.
He starts to learn Russian words from hearing Grigori say them over and over, a mantra of shame that Shane will never need in his relationship with Ilya.
When Grigori is finally done, Shane will slink out of the bedroom to find Ilya on the couch or at the kitchen island, stooped over, head low with the weight that his father has placed upon him.
He kisses the back of Ilya’s neck gently. And Ilya only tenses further.
“Don’t,” Ilya says, a low warning.
“I didn’t say anything,” Shane says before he can stop himself. Fuck, he doesn’t want to fight. He has to go back to Montreal soon, and he doesn’t want to waste time with Ilya.
“Yuna is involved all the time in your career,” Ilya says.
Shane feels off kilter. He feels like they’re having two entirely different conversations, and he can’t help but feel defensive. I didn’t say anything, he wants to say again. Sure, he wants to say. My mom is overly involved in my career. But she doesn’t call me just to tell me how I played terribly. How I threw away my career. How I’m a shame to the country I’m from.
His mom trusts him to play hockey well, to know what he’s doing at this point. She’s proud of him when he wins and when he loses.
She can get caught up in the hype of his brand and his image, but that’s because she cares about making sure that he’s set after hockey and that his legacy is lasting. And after everything with Ilya, she’s been working to delineate the line between mom and manager more, so that Shane knows that she’s there for him as a mother before anything else. Their relationship is more complex than just Shane’s ability to play hockey. Which means that if Shane does miss a phone call from her, whether it’s about his career or not, it doesn’t evoke the primal sense of fear that he sees Ilya.
When Shane fails to say anything, Ilya looks up at him and shoots him a look. Shane doesn’t know what it means, other than that Ilya still isn’t pleased with him.
“Your dad’s a dick, Ilya,” Shane says finally, scowling, pushed over the edge and no longer able to hold his tongue for the sake of trying to keep the peace. The peace is apparently gone anyway. “What do you want me to say? I hate the way he treats you, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. If anyone talked to me the way that he talks to you, how would you react?”
Ilya’s face clouds over.
“Lucky you are perfect then, Shane,” Ilya says coldly. “So no one speaks to you this way.”
Shane wants to grab Ilya and shake him. He wants to demand Ilya explain the hold Grigori Rozanov still has over him. This has become such a sore spot between them, an intense point of contention--
Shane grabs both sides of Ilya’s face, and Ilya startles visibly.
“You don’t need to be perfect,” Shane says quietly, staring into Ilya’s face, into his wide eyes. “And you still deserve for him to treat you better than he does. You deserve everything.”
Ilya looks at Shane as if Shane has struck him.
“Hollander,” he says weakly.
And Shane can’t take that. Can’t take him putting any sort of barrier back in between them.
“You are one of the best goddamn hockey players in the world,” Shane murmurs, smearing a kiss along Ilya’s left cheek. His own heart is beating so loud in his ears he can barely hear his own words. He’s not good at these sort of declarations, not like Ilya is. “And that’s because you are fast and strong and dedicated and smart. You read other players, other people, better than anyone I know. You are, without a doubt, one of the best captains in the league, because you see people in a way that no one else does. You make them feel cared about.” He kisses Ilya’s right cheek. “And I’m so fucking happy to be yours, finally. Because whenever I’m with you, you make me feel so loved. Because nobody keeps up with me on the ice the way you do, Ilya.”
“Shane,” Ilya says, voice breaking.
“I love you so much,” Shane presses. He holds Ilya’s face and kisses him, heedless of Ilya shaking beneath him. He can taste Ilya’s tears, and Ilya isn’t so much kissing him back as letting himself be held by Shane. When Shane parts their lips, he pulls Ilya in against him, holding him tight, pressing more kisses to the top of his head.
He’s so tired of the narrative spun around Ilya. Tired of the way that the media spins him as dumb and aggressive, as a womanizer who doesn’t care about the people he sleeps with. Tired, because he knows part of that narrative is what Ilya has made of it, trying to pretending to be the man that his father wanted him to be. Tired, because every time they tell anybody about their relationship, they’re shocked; they tell Shane he can do better, find someone nicer.
And Shane doesn’t know how to tell the world that Ilya is actually one of the kindest people he knows. That he continues to be staggered by how thoughtful Ilya is, how he’ll take time out help people he doesn’t know. That he never rushes a kid when they want to talk to him, and he’s allowed himself to be pulled along by old women in the grocery store to reach items on the top shelf without complaint, and volunteers at the local animal shelter. That he drops everything on a dime the minute that Yuna or David indicate they need anything at all.
That this man just has so much love, and the world keeps insisting that he’s not made for it.
“You are perfect, Ilya,” Shane says.
Ilya laughs wetly.
“I know you do not believe this,” Ilya says, “when I am chewing loudly or leaving my dirty clothes about—”
“No,” Shane cuts him off. “You are.” He doesn’t know how to explain that those are habits, sometimes mistakes. And none of it changes that to Shane, Ilya is perfect, just as he is. Even in his own mind, the notion is contradictory. But it doesn’t change anything.
“You’re perfect,” Shane says again, with another kiss. “And I love you.”
…
Years after their draft, some intern is digitizing a bunch of footage that had never been used. In the background of a clip that is seconds long, a man can be heard saying, “He needs discipline. He can be, how you say, lazy.”
The intern posts the clip to Reddit, and overnight the thing has gone viral.
Has to be Grigori Rozanov, right?? one user writes. Accent sounds Russian.
For sure. You can see Rozanov with the Boston GM in the background about a minute before.
Dude is talking about his son? That’s fucked up! Can you even imagine?
I mean, if Ilya Rozanov was my kid, sure? Can you imagine what he was like as a teenager? Must have been a nightmare. People are too quick to forget Rozanov’s Boston days!
Wild take? He was the first draft pick! Man has done crazy work both in Boston and Ottawa and has three Stanley Cups. Have you seen him skate? You don’t get all that by being lazy.
He could be the laziest motherfucker in the world, and his dad is still a dick for saying this. Like, that’s his new boss, basically? Shit-talking his son at his own draft. WTF.
I think Grigori Rozanov has cancer. Don’t think you should be calling him a dick…
Wasn’t aware that getting cancer gave you a pass from shitty behavior!
By this time, Shane and Ilya have been together long enough that he doesn’t need to theorize over whether the clip is really true. He knows it is, so they don’t ever talk about it. But that doesn’t stop Shane from listening to it over and over again, looping endlessly. His chest burns, and he imagines that he is 18, and this is all he has heard in a long time, and he has been told that it is love.
…
But it’s true. Grigori Rozanov has cancer.
Shane is a terrible person, because he’s so goddamn happy about it. It keeps him up at night sometimes, worrying about the kind of man he is because he’s relieved that his fiance’s father is going to be dead soon.
And part of him doesn’t give a shit, because Grigori Rozanov has been terrible to Ilya his entire life.
When Shane had proposed, he had made it clear that he was ready to come out whenever Ilya was. Ilya hadn’t believed Shane at first.
“Montreal will not be good to you,” Ilya had insisted.
Shane knew that Ilya was probably right. Montreal probably wouldn’t be good to him. But after years of not knowing what he wanted from Ilya and then more years of being together but sneaking around, Shane was done pretending. He’d put hockey first his entire life, but he’d watched as Ilya’s family continued to fail him, and Shane just couldn’t let Ilya think that his love for him was second to anything. Not anymore. He wasn’t ready to retire, and he had no delusions that coming out would be easy, but he’d at least played some really good hockey if everything ended now. He had the cups and the awards and the records.
“When my father is gone,” is what Ilya had finally decided, quiet. He’d looked at Shane, like he had expected Shane to be angry with that response—maybe that he wanted Shane to be angry with him.
“Okay,” was what Shane had said.
But now, here they are. Ilya’s father has cancer, and he’s dying.
Shane is in the next room, listening as Ilya finishes making travel arrangements with Alexei and then switches to a video call to chat amicably with his niece and nephew, cheering them up.
As soon as Ilya hangs up, Shane is in the room with him. Ilya slumps down on the couch.
Shane takes a breath and steels himself.
“I want to go with you.”
Ilya’s eyes shoot up to him, and Shane doesn’t think he’s ever seen him so surprised.
“Nyet,” he says, pauses, and then corrects, “No. Absolutely not.”
Shane bites the inside of his cheek. His first impulse, of course, is to argue with Ilya. But that’s always a trap when Russia and his family are concerned. He’s not trying to win a fight, he reminds himself (which can be so goddamn difficult when a cornerstone of their relationship is the way they challenge each other).
He’s trying to do right by Ilya.
So, he doesn’t demand why not, even though that is so, so what he wants to do.
“It is important to me to be able to support you during this,” Shane says, in a slow, measured voice, channeling his therapist. “I obviously won’t draw attention to us. I won’t leave your apartment, if that’s what you want. We won’t go anywhere together. I just—I want to be near you.”
Ilya looks at him like he’s grown two heads. The expression is enough that Shane almost wishes he’d gone with their more traditional mode of miscommunication.
But then Ilya sighs and rises slowly from the couch. He takes Shane’s face gently in his hands, and Shane’s eyes close on instinct alone. Which, dammit. He’s not going to let Ilya pet him out of this conversation. He knows as well as Shane that Shane’s brain tends to turn off the moment that Ilya touches him, even if there’s no sexual intent.
Shane blinks his eyes furiously open.
“Shane,” Ilya murmurs. “You are my heart. You know this, yes?”
“Yes,” Shane whispers.
“I am … soft, with you,” Ilya continues, “in a way that I cannot be there, not in Russia, not with my family. Not if I am to get through this.” He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Shane’s mouth before Shane can protest. “Please. Stay here. With David and Yuna and Anya. So, that I will have all of you to come home to.”
Shane wraps his arms tightly around Ilya and buries his face in his chest.
He doesn’t like not doing anything, though, he wants to argue. Sitting at home waiting for Ilya to return will feel like torture to him. And he hates, hates the idea of Ilya being in Russia by himself. Never mind that Ilya has gone plenty of times since they’ve started dating. But they both know this will be different. This will be the last time. His father will be dying, and Polina and Alexei will be unpredictable.
“Is Svetlana going with you,” Shane mumbles into Ilya’s chest.
Ilya tucks his knuckles under Shane’s chin to raise his head.
“What is that, sweetheart? I could not hear you.”
Shane scowls at him.
“Is Svetlana going with you?” he asks, practically shouting the words into Ilya’s face.
Ilya’s eyes widen to comical proportions.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ilya answers. “How could I ask you to deal with that? Bringing along my former lover to place where we have so many shared memories during an emotional time? And Russia is so cold at night. One thing leads to another, and then we are naked together in front of fireplace on bear rug…”
“Is she going or not, asshole?” Shane demands. But Ilya is smiling, and that’s worth everything right now. They’ve been together long enough, and Shane knows Svetlana well enough now that he doesn’t need to feel threatened by her. Svetlana and Ilya get quite the kick out of calling each other “brother” and “sister” when they visit now.
“She has offered, yes,” Ilya answers. “Would it make you feel better to know she is with me? I will tell her yes.”
“As long as you’re confident you can keep your dick to yourself,” Shane gripes.
“Oh, sweetheart, this I will leave in bedside table in little box just for you,” Ilya teases. And then has the audacity to lick along the side of Shane’s face.
Shane lets out a strangled shout.
“Why are you like this!” he demands. He’s pushing at Ilya’s chest, but not with his full strength, and they both know it.
“I thought you were going to miss me!” Ilya cries, pulling Shane back against him. “I will have to get you one of those tiny bottles to catch your tears in.”
“What?” Shane asks. He has no idea what Ilya’s talking about, and he forgets to continue his faux struggle. He looks up at Ilya in confusion.
“You know,” Ilya says. “The tiny glass bottles that sad Victorian ladies cried into to prove their love?”
“I don’t know,” Shane answers flatly. God, where does Ilya get these things from?
Ilya shrugs, as if he can read Shane’s mind.
“David sends me article. Apparently, historians are not sure what little glass bottles are for, actually. Maybe tears. Maybe perfume.”
“God,” Shane gasps, exacerbated. He pulls Ilya down for a bruising kiss. “I am going to miss you.”
…
Shane stays at his parents while Ilya is in Russia. It’s a good distraction, but it’s not enough of a distraction. He is forever calculating the time difference between them and Moscow. And then wondering what Ilya is doing or saying or feeling. They are messaging using Svetlana as intermediary, and Shane hates it.
He doesn’t sleep well the entire time that Ilya is gone. He spends the entirety of his days worrying about Ilya.
But at night, his brain has become stuck on a different scenario. He’s not proud of it. If anything, he feels a deep sense of shame when he recalls what he’s basically fantasizing about. All the same. He can’t help it.
He imagines if he had actually gone to Russia with Ilya. And in this weird little fantasy, he’s somehow been left alone in the room with Grigori Rozanov. A man with whom he’s only exchanged a handful of words, but whose influence has stretching tendrils across his entire life.
He doesn’t even know what Ilya’s familial home looks like, to be fair. He’s seen a couple of photos from when Ilya was a kid. So, the room is mostly generic, and Grigori is in a regular bed with machines beeping around him. The details don’t matter, really, and Shane knows they’re not right.
Maybe the nurse is taking a break, and Ilya has just stepped out of the room for a minute, and Alexei and his family aren’t expected there for whatever reason.
Sometimes Grigori is awake and aware in Shane’s imagination. But a lot of the time, he’s not.
“I love your son so goddamn much,” Shane whispers into Grigori’s ear. “And he loves me too. We’ve been fucking for forever now. He makes me feels so good in my body. But it’s more than that. We’ve built a whole life together. A house we share. A bed we share. My parents love him too. I’m going to raise my kids with him. And as soon as you’re gone, I’m going to tell the whole world how much I love him and how good and kind he is. And I am going to spend every minute of the rest of our lives making sure that he knows how loved he is and good and kind he is until nothing you’ve ever said to him or taught him even matters.”
In his own childhood home, he holds the words in his mind with almost feverish intent, broadcasting them, as if across the planet, Grigori Rozanov will somehow still hear them, and they will be the last thing he consciously knows before he fucks off to the great beyond.
…
Shane picks Ilya up from the airport, and they drive back to Ilya’s house without really talking the entire time. Rather, Shane talks. Shane talks about things that don’t matter: the groceries he’s picked up for Ilya, and the places he cleaned while Ilya was gone. What Anya and Shane’s parents got up to while Ilya was away. (And Ilya has heard almost all of those stories already anyway, but he still smiles faintly.)
But Ilya is so quiet and still that Shane is terrified. It makes him nervous and jittery, compelled to obsess and pick in the name of fixing. He has to bite his tongue, because he wants to know every detail of Ilya’s trip. If Alexei was as terrible as Shane had imagined, and if Polina had taken anything that should have rightfully been Ilya’s, and if there were other family members that had surfaced that Shane didn’t know about. Was there any legal paperwork left that Ilya was going to have to go back to Russia for? How is Ilya feeling? Did he book an extra session with Galina? Did he talk to Svetlana at all while he was there? Had his father’s death stirred up anything about his mother’s death?
Shane doesn’t do with well with nothing or problems that he can’t fix.
He grabs Ilya’s bags, and, for once, Ilya doesn’t fight him. And that scares Shane worse.
But once they get inside, Anya comes barreling toward Ilya. She loves being with David and Yuna, but in the end, she only has eyes for Ilya.
He drops down right there in the doorway, wraps his arms around her and buries his face into her fur. She wiggles feverishly, trying to lick at his face while he murmurs to her in Russian that Shane can’t entirely hear.
Shane’s chest loosens a fraction.
Shane leaves Ilya’s suitcase near the laundry room so that he can wash its contents and then goes to the fridge to fetch a Coke for Ilya.
“He knew.”
The words are clear and loud and in English, and it still takes Shane a moment to realize they are directed more at him than the dog.
He turns slowly, the can making his fingers go numb. Ilya isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at Anya, scratching behind her ears. His eyes are rimmed red.
“What?” Shane says faintly.
“He knew,” Ilya says again, his voice almost flat. “He woke up briefly at the very end. It was just me and him, and he recognized me. Looked me in the eye and said, ‘I know why you went to that terrible Canadian team. That all these years that you have been playing house with some boy.’”
Shane is frozen. He stares at Ilya, trying to take in everything that Ilya is saying, quietly stunned by the magnitude of it at all. His heart is beating impossibly fast.
“And I said, ‘No, Father. Not some boy. Shane Hollander.’ He scoffed. He did not believe me!” Ilya laughs wetly. Hysterically. In all the years that they’ve been together, Shane has never heard Ilya laugh like this. And now that the tears have started, they don’t seem to stop. They’re streaming down his face as he holds Anya to him, and she whines, not understanding his distress.
“He says, ‘I have spent all these years being ashamed of you, Ilya. Hiding this shame for you. I thank God every day your mother did not live to see what became of you.’”
And then he’s crying too hard to say anything else, loud, hiccuping sobs that echo into the cavern of his chest. He buries himself into Anya, and she whines louder.
Shane drops the Coke. Without thinking, he’s across the room, wrapping himself around Ilya, holding him tight, and pressing insistent kisses to the top of his head.
“Fuck him,” Shane says thickly. He’s crying too. “Fuck him so hard, Ilya. He didn’t deserve you, and he didn’t deserve your mother either.”
Ilya rocks back into him, letting himself be held, although his cries don’t abate any. Shane holds him tighter. Keeps kissing him. Keeps talking to him—just saying that he loves him, so much, over and over again.
It takes a long time for Ilya to settle, slowly leaning more of his weight back into Shane until he quiets. Anya pushes up into his face to lick the tears still there, clearly desperate to comfort Ilya as well.
“I am stupid,” Ilya says, finally, his voice tired.
“No,” Shane insists. “You’re not. You’re anything but stupid.”
“I put our life on hold for him,” Ilya says dully. “Stupid.”
“Ilya,” Shane murmurs against his temple. “Us coming out is going to be hard enough. Trying to remove one difficult factor isn’t dumb, okay?”
“He was never going to love me,” Ilya says faintly.
“Not the way you deserve,” Shane admits. “But you have so many people in your life who love you now, okay? Because they see you for who you are.”
Ilya sighs softly.
“Yes,” he agrees. “I am lucky.”
Shane holds Ilya more tightly to his chest and keeps rocking him.
“I am so grateful to you for this,” Ilya continues quietly. “Because you made me understand all I am capable of feeling and how loved I can be.”
Shane’s throat goes tight, and he can feel tears pricking at his eyes again.
“I love you so much,” he manages to say.
“I know,” Ilya murmurs. He twists his head to press a kiss to Shane’s mouth. “I love you too. No more waiting, okay? I want to get married and come out this summer.”
“I’d like that,” Shane says. He’d expected as much when the news of Ilya’s dad’s cancer had broken. He’s set to be transferred to Ottawa at the end of this season anyway. “My mom is going to be thrilled,” Shane laughs.
Ilya laughs.
“Is there a word for Mom who is ‘bridezilla’?” he asks.
“You can ask her,” Shane answers dryly.
“Never,” Ilya vows, teasingly before gentling again. “I am so glad you brought your parents into my life too.”
“They love you so much,” Shane says. Sometimes, he think they’re all hardpressed to make Ilya understand just how much. It’s almost comical, when he thinks back to their initial reactions to learning that he was in love with Ilya Rozanov.
“They wanted to know if we wanted to come over for dinner tomorrow?” Shane asks. “They said if you’re too tired or still need some time to yourself or whatever, we don’t have to. But, you know, they want to see when you’re ready.”
“Shane,” Ilya interrupts him. He smiles. Kisses Shane again. “I can think of nothing better.”