Archive of Our Own

Like the start of a bad joke, it goes like this: a hockey team’s captain, a star player on a shit team, and a local gay bartender sit in a circle and wait. The punchline, the meaning, the point never arrives.

And much earlier, when Scott finds him in the employee parking lot of the Ottawa Centaurs’ arena, Ilya Rozanov is crouched by the wall doing coin tricks with his left hand.

It’s the first game of the pre-season for both the Admirals and the Centaurs, and Scott spent a not insignificant amount of the summer thinking about this. This game, partially, but also just about Rozanov in general.

To be fair to himself, everyone in and around the league has been thinking pretty non-stop about Rozanov. About how he’s inarguably amongst the best players of his generation, if not the overall best. About how, in one swift fell move, he signed a single trade contract to destroy his entire career. About how he has not yet been able to offer a good explanation as to why he did it.

“Rozanov,” Scott says, approaching him slowly. He stops a few feet away. The rest of the Admirals are behind him; Carter is helping wrangle the group off the bus. Scott would normally be helping, but he spotted Rozanov and wanted to greet him.

Rozanov rolls the coin over his middle finger with his pointer finger, and then catches it in his palm. He says, the words spoken in an unbothered drawl, “Captain’s over there, Hunter,” and nods his head towards another man approaching.

A burly, solid defender, probably on the verge of retirement, has been the captain of the Ottawa Centaurs for the past nine seasons. Scott didn’t actually expect him to hand the captaincy over to Rozanov in his first season, but—but it’s been fucking years since Rozanov didn’t wear the C for a season. Judging by Rozanov’s casual attitude, Scott is probably feeling weirder about it than he is, but—but still. Why the fuck did he do it?

“Right,” Scott says awkwardly. He stares at Rozanov for a moment, not sure what to say.

Rozanov tosses the coin up in the air again, and then catches it in his other hand. Scott’s eyes track the movement of the coin as it glints in the sunlight.

Rozanov arches his eyebrows again. “Are you going to go talk to him, or…?”

It’s a clear dismissal. Scott doesn’t actually have anything else to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

“It’s just weird,” Carter is saying, waving vaguely with one hand and struggling to put his shirt on with the other. “I don’t like it.”

Scott snorts. He asks, incredulously, “You don’t like beating Ilya Rozanov?”

“No, fucking obviously I like that,” Carter corrects. “It’s just—it’s weird. Isn’t it weird? He was, like, the number one most annoying person to lose against in the conference. And now the fucker’s never going to win again.”

“I don’t know about never,” Scott tries. He’s going for diplomacy, but it sounds less confident than he wants it to be.

In all honesty, it is weird. It feels wrong. Rozanov has never been one to just let things happen to him or his team; he goes after what he wants and he fights hard and scrappy and he always takes when he’s after. He wins, and he rubs it in your face, and he boasts and exaggerates and gloats, and he does it all with that stupid, cocky smirk.

And he hadn’t been any less frustrating to play against than usual tonight. Playing on a shit team didn’t make him a shit player overnight. He still goaded Admirals players into stupid mistakes and got into at least two fights that ended with the Centaurs on a power play. He still looked as at ease and confident as ever, even as they gave up two goals in the second period.

He’s still as good and annoying as he’s always been. But passes weren’t reaching him fast enough, and no one was ever where he set them up to be. He spent too much of the game cleaning up others’ mistakes and collecting their shitty passes and trying to send passes to people not fast enough and, well, one good man does not a good team make.

All of it just feels…it just doesn’t add up. There’s no reason Rozanov should have asked for this. Scott knows that the Raiders have been at their tightest these past few years, and he knows that they have the kind of locker room environment most players dream of. He knows that Rozanov has been a big part of that culture.

So to see him here on Canadian ice, losing like he did—it just feels strange.

“You watched the game?” Rozanov, standing just around the corner from where Scott had been about to call Kip, hums low in his throat. “I wish you had not.”

Scott swallows hard, his phone clenched tight in his hand. They’re in some back hallway of the Centaurs’ arena, the first place Scott had found some privacy. Just his luck that Rozanov would have found it too.

“No, no,” Rozanov says quickly, completely oblivious to Scott’s presence. “It’s—thank you. For watching. I know you are busy.”

There’s quiet, while the person on the other end of the phone call talks. Scott can’t help but wonder who it is—someone Rozanov left in Boston? Someone he met in Ottawa? Someone who knows hockey, clearly. Someone Rozanov didn’t want to have watched him lose, someone who watched anyway—something Rozanov seems quietly pleased by.

“We’ll get better,” Rozanov says, and he suddenly sounds so tired. “It’s only been one game.”

He’s quiet again, and Scott risks a glance around the corner. Rozanov is by the opposite wall, sitting with his knees up to his chest. He has the phone clenched tight in one hand, and the other is fiddling with that coin. His eyes are closed, head bent back to lean against the wall.

“No, of course not.” Rozanov says something in Russian, and then waves a hand dismissively; the coin is carefully balanced between his middle and ring fingers. “I don’t regret it at all. You are worth it, Shanya. Losing to Scott Hunter is an embarrassment, but I will get over it.”

Scott bristles a little at that; it would have been a more satisfying win if Rozanov actually seemed at all affected by it. Then what Rozanov actually said starts to sink in. You are worth it, Shanya.

“Ok,” Rozanov says, his voice so much gentler than Scott ever thought imaginable. There’s a kind of deep adoration in how he talks now and all the pieces are starting to click together in a way that makes Scott feel somewhat sick. “Detroit tonight, yes? Call me after you lose.” A small smile plays at the corner of Rozanov’s lips. He looks young, and sweet. “Uh-huh. I love you.”

And—yeah. Okay. There’s no way to write that one into something else. There’s no way to make that one something that it’s not.

Scott turns away, as quietly as he can. This was not his to see, or hear. This was not his to know. He didn’t want to know this, and he shouldn’t have stayed. He shouldn’t have listened to any of this.

But the reality is that he did. The reality is that he did eavesdrop, and now he knows something that was supposed to be Rozanov’s alone. And there’s no unknowing it.

Scott keeps the secret to himself. He’s had his suspicions for years now and he has yet to say anything to anyone; this conversation doesn’t change that.

But he can’t stop thinking about it.

They’re so fucking stupid, is the thing. It was dumb when they were rookies trading hotel room numbers on the ice, it was dumb a few years into their legacies when they got too touchy about every mention of the other, and it’s dumb now that they’ve apparently tried to make something real out of it. It’s fucking stupid now that Rozanov’s ruined his life for it.

But love makes you do stupid things, and it makes things that look stupid from the outside feel right on the inside. It makes you brave, or dumb, or both at once. Scott knows this very well. His Stanley Cup kiss with Kip is still being used as a reaction image a year or so later.

And he doesn’t regret it, is the other thing. He doesn’t regret coming out, even if it’s changed everything. He doesn’t regret falling in love—never once for a second has he regretted choosing Kip Grady.

So maybe he’s being a goddamn hypocrite in thinking that Rozanov is being stupid. Or maybe it’s not that he thinks Rozanov is stupid, then. Maybe it’s that he’s just fucking terrified for the kid. For both of them.

“Did you know that after you die, your fingernails keep growing?” Rozanov asks.

They’re at the Kingfisher, an odd collection of hockey players all shoved in a booth at the back of the bar. Scott is pressed tight between Carter and Kip; across from them are Rozanov and one of the Admirals’ rookies this season, Tommy. Tommy still looks a little shocked to, one, have been invited out with them, and to, two, be seated next to Ilya fucking Rozanov. Scott had invited him specifically because he idolized Rozanov, and he knew Rozanov would be coming. This look on his face was exactly the goal.

“You’re full of shit,” Kip tells Rozanov, snorting. For some reason, he still seems to find him endlessly endearing even at the times Scott kind of wants to punch his stupid face.

“No, really,” Rozanov says. “I read it in a book.”

Carter raises his eyebrows. “You read books?”

“In more languages than you can,” Rozanov says, smirking. He doesn’t seem offended, even though he probably could have been and Scott wouldn’t blame him.

“Um,” Tommy says, looking like he might pass out. Kid knocks out a goal and an assist against the Centaurs, and now he might have a heart attack at age nineteen because he said something stupid in front of Ilya Rozanov. “Your hair keeps growing too. After you die.”

Rozanov fucking beams at him, clapping his shoulder. “And this is why they’ll make you captain of the Admirals after they finally decide it is illegal for senior citizens to play in a professional league.”

Scott rolls his eyes. Kip sends him a stern look, and that’s the only reason he bites back some comment that would have been just as cutting. Probably. In all honesty, Rozanov’s comments have gotten more and more mild over the years, and he’s lately been starting to recognize the teasing for what it is more than he has been getting frustrated by it.

Carter starts to say something, and then Rozanov’s phone, face down on the table, begins to vibrate. He grabs at it immediately, and his face lights the fuck up when he sees the caller ID. Without further acknowledgement of the rest of them, Rozanov makes an excuse and then steps away from the table, already answering the phone call.

It’s been twenty minutes of Rozanov-free peace when Scott offers to get another round of drinks for the table, and another soda for Tommy. He’s just managed to grab Kyle’s attention when he sees Rozanov, back turned towards him, sitting in an otherwise empty booth. He has one hand in his hair, the other palm pressed flat against the table. His phone is sitting to the side, screen facing up.

Mentally apologizing to Kyle, who will be bringing a tray of drinks to a Scott who isn’t waiting for them, Scott makes his way over to Rozanov.

The kid—and he will always, just a little bit, be a wide-eyed rookie to Scott, phenom or not—looks up when he approaches, quickly schooling his face into something neutral. But there’s still something so defeated in his eyes that Scott can’t even begin to imagine what might have been said on that phone call.

“You good, Rozanov?”

He waves a hand vaguely. “Long day. Should go back to the hotel soon, probably. Team curfew.”

Scott chews at his bottom lip, considering. “Who called?”

“No one I want to talk to you about,” Rozanov says, and he sounds so bitter about it that Scott’s heart breaks for him. Rozanov tries to shrug non-chalantly, but it just looks stiff. Then, “I need a smoke.”

“Thought you quit.”

Rozanov gives him a weak glare. “Don’t remind me.”

“Sorry.” Scott sighs, glances wistfully over to the table they had been at, and then sits down across from Rozanov.

Rozanov doesn’t acknowledge it; he just straightens up to dig a hand through his jacket pocket to find something. After a moment of searching, he finally seems to have found it when he digs out a coin. It’s wrapped carefully in plastic wrap, which Rozanov unfolds from around it and then balls up in his fist.

“Did you know they call these coins loonies?” Rozanov asks. “Because of the loon on the back.”

He’s not looking at Scott, instead holding the coin carefully between his thumb and pointer finger. He stares at it for a long moment, not really seeming to want an answer from Scott. Then he rolls it over his knuckles, because he’s a fucking show off, and then he puts it between his lips like a cigarette, because, oh, apparently he’s serious about quitting this time.

“That’s disgusting,” Scott says, probably unhelpfully. “Do you know how many germs are on coins?”

Rozanov shrugs. He pulls it from between his lips and then flips it between his fingers. “I’ve had much dirtier things in my mouth than a coin that’s been cleaned by someone who loves me, and who did it very carefully for this specific purpose.”

Scott blinks at him. “Is that a fucking blowjob joke?”

It’s not his most tactful moment. Rozanov rolls his eyes. “That’s the one you pick up on? I’ve been making them all fucking night and it’s that one that you get? That was fucking terrible, Hunter.”

“I—what?”

“Team curfew is in thirty minutes,” Rozanov says abruptly, rolling the coin over his knuckles again. “I should go.”

He stands up, ready to leave, but before he can get far, Scott grabs his wrist. “Wait, Rozanov—”

Rozanov freezes under his hand, and Scott lets go instantly. Rozanov doesn’t turn around to look at him. His fist is clenched tight around that coin.

“The someone who cleaned that coin for you,” Scott says, carefully, “if you’d like to bring him with you sometime—”

“No,” Rozanov says sharply. There’s no arguing with his tone, with the taut stress in his shoulders, with the tense strength of his clenched fists, with the dark undertone of his voice. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I know better than any—”

“You don’t,” Rozanov snaps, spinning around to glare at him. There’s an unbridled frustration in his voice, and it leaves Scott reeling. His voice lowers to a hiss. “We are not the same. I am not the can-do-no-wrong-golden-boy captain of NYC. I do not get to kiss the smoothie shop boy. I do not get to do it at home or on the ice or in a bar. I do not get to bring him to my team’s afterparties. I—fuck. It’s—fuck. Fuck. You don’t know shit about this, Scott Hunter.”

Scott opens his mouth to respond, but before he can figure out how to move his tongue, Rozanov is turning on his heel and stalking away. He slows down only to hand Kyle a tip, and to make sure the door doesn’t slam behind him.

When Scott goes to sleep that night, curled around Kip with his forehead pressed against the top of his spine, he thinks of another hotel room, seven years ago. He had been in the room next door to Rozanov, and the sounds of sloppy blowjobs and hushed panting gasps had barely been stifled by the wall between them.

He hated them for it, at the time. These fucking rookies—they have everything at their fingertips, everything they’ve ever dreamed of, everything that every hockey player dreams of as a kid. They’re good enough to not only make it, but to fucking thrive.

But they’re going to throw it all away as if it’s nothing to them, all for the sake of some rushed sex. They’re playing with fire, they’re being fucking stupid. They’re fucking ungrateful. It’s disgusting, the way that they’ve turned their famed rivalry, their biggest selling point, and made it into a mask for this. This gentle wanting, this gentle beginning; this violent desire, this violent end.

He hated them, at that moment. They were taking hold of things that none of them have ever been allowed before, and never will be allowed to have in the light of day. They were taking it all, greedy and hungry and desperate. They were taking it all, and they can’t ever keep it in a way that matters. Scott fucking hated them, in some vindictive and angry kind of way, just for trying.

And another hotel room, at last year’s All-Stars, sharing a wall again. He had made it known then, too, that he was next door, but he hadn’t expected much to come of the warning. He hadn’t expected much beyond the same burning anger, hatred, and jealousy that he felt the first time. That time, though, the only disturbance he had all night was the sound of muffled laughs, and the shower running for hours.

There was a moment, or a series of moments, when he met Kip for the first time, where Scott forgot that he isn’t Scott from Rochester. He forgot that his name matters, has weight. He forgot that this game comes with responsibility.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Because he forgot that he was Scott Hunter, and so he let himself fall in love. He let himself experience something he had never allowed himself before. He let himself be human, be honest, be real.

It is also a bad thing, because it means he forgot about the responsibility he has. The power. He forgot what it would have meant to him—to a fifteen year old Scott from Rochester wanting to kiss a boy at hockey camp—to see a Stanley Cup winner kiss a boy on the ice.

He didn’t kiss Kip for the sake of representation or for a political move or for anything like that. He kissed Kip because he fucking loves Kip, and because he wanted to share the greatest accomplishment of his career with him. He didn’t kiss Kip for any reason other than, I want the love of my life here with me.

So in truth, it had nothing to do with being the first out player, or with being a role model, or with being a hero. No, it was entirely selfish. It was for himself—for the one that’s so head-over-heels for Kip Grady that he’s willing to come out, and for the fifteen year old self who wanted to kiss a boy on the ice.

He wasn’t thinking about anyone else. He had no dreams that one kiss would change lives in the way people have said it did. There was no goal that this moment could ever help people, just by virtue of it being so visible.

He doesn’t understand, not truly, just how much it accomplished in one beautiful move, until Ilya Rozanov comes up to him at the league awards a few weeks later and says, “Do you smoke? Come outside with me. I will share a pack.”

“No,” Scott says, and then, “I could have sworn you were supposed to quit when you were a rookie.”

Rozanov rolls his eyes, fingers tapping against his own thigh impatiently. “Hunter, I am trying to get you outside so that I can talk to you. Fucking come on.”

“Oh.” Then a surge of discomfort rolls up his spine. “Um. I think I’m going to finish my drink here.”

In public, with witnesses, he thinks but does not say.

Rozanov sighs; a little more dramatically than the moment calls for, in Scott’s opinion. His fingers stop tapping and go to rub at his face. “Fine.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

Another sigh. Rozanov slides into the chair at the bar next to Scott, and his knee starts bouncing anxiously immediately.

“What you did.” He stops. Thinks. Then, “You were brave.”

Scott blinks, gaze still on the glass of whiskey in his hand. That’s not what he had expected.

Then, even less predictably, Rozanov adds, “You should not have had to be. But you were. That will…it will change things.”

People have been telling Scott that what he did was brave for weeks. If someone has something positive to say about it, they’ll say it was, above all else, brave. No one—not a single other person—has mentioned that, whether or not he was brave, he should not have had to be. It shouldn’t have been a spectacle, it shouldn’t have been the story of the year. It should have just been a player celebrating with his partner, just one kiss of many.

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t, and it did take bravery, and that’s so fucking unfair that for a moment the anger grips Scott’s throat so tight that he can’t find words.

Rozanov continues for him. “So thank you. For being first. It will make it easier for someone else to be second. And for someone to be third. And maybe, one day, it will not take so much bravery. It will not cost so much.”

The words are still caught in Scott’s throat by the time Rozanov claps him on the back and stands up again. He’s clearly said his piece, and now he’s going off again as if this hasn’t changed Scott’s entire understanding of the world.

“See you next season, Hunter,” Rozanov says, and without even a joke about retiring, he disappears into the crowd.

Scott only overhears the end of the phone call.

It’s November of the 2019-20 season, and Scott and Kip are celebrating their engagement. The Centaurs had lost spectacularly against the Admirals two nights ago, and Rozanov is still in the area for a game against the Scouts, so he’s been invited to the Kingfisher for the celebration too.

Some company tonight will probably do Rozanov good, Scott figures, as will having something to celebrate. He hasn’t had much of that lately. Beating the Centaurs so badly had stopped being fun at some point this season or last, once it really sank in that Rozanov’s move was permanent, and that it’s ruining him.

Rozanov has been subdued all night, despite the general joyous atmosphere of the bar at the moment. He’s been nursing the same vodka for hours, rolling that coin over his fingers. Scott can’t help but wonder vaguely if it’s the same coin he had bitten into a year ago, or if he has a stash of Canadian dollar coins saved and cleaned specifically for his fidgeting purposes. He doesn’t ask.

Eventually, he excuses himself and disappears into the crowd. Scott waits ten minutes, and then he follows. He doesn’t have a good excuse or reason, he just—he does it. He chases after him.

“I know for a fact you were invited,” Rozanov is saying quietly, sitting alone at the backdoor of the bar. “And I know you’re in the city already, for the game tomorrow.”

Scott, in a terrible sense of deja vu, knows he should not be listening to this. This is private, secret. He listens anyway, because he’s horrible and curious and everything about Ilya Rozanov right now is devastating and so he could maybe use anyone at all who knows, even Scott Hunter.

“Yes, Jane, because when we are in the same location for work entirely by coincidence the first thought that everyone in the room has is ‘Surely Rozanov is stupidly in love with him and we must expose them both to the entire world.’”

There’s something so dry in his voice that Scott almost flinches. Rozanov is quiet, listening to the other side of the phone call, his face shadowed by the overhang on the backdoor of the bar, and Scott really, really needs to walk away. He can’t bring himself to move.

“I know,” Rozanov murmurs, clearly unable to argue anymore. “Will I see you tonight? I can, um. A different hotel, maybe. I don’t have a roommate this time. No one to notice I’m gone. And Pike will get over it.”

Quiet again. That same sick feeling that comes every time Scott has heard or seen Rozanov on the phone crawls over him again, his heart turning over uncomfortably.

Rozanov blows out a slow breath between his lips. “Yes. I know. I’ll text you the room number.”

A pause. Scott gets the sense that there are no words coming from the other end of the phone call either; as if they’re both just settling into the sound of each other’s breath.

Then, “I should go back inside. At least text Hunter your congratulations. His boyfriend is nice, and deserves sympathies.”

Scott rolls his eyes. Engagement party, and still Rozanov doesn’t let up. Yet somehow it doesn’t bother him as much as it used to.

“I’m being very good,” Rozanov protests, a laugh on his lips. He quiets again. “Okay. Go. Just was thinking about you—maybe one day, will be—” A pause. “I love you too.”

Rozanov hangs up the phone, and then carefully places it to the side of him. He exhales very, very slowly. Then he takes out from his pocket that coin again, and rolls it over his knuckles. He’s gotten good at it over the past year.

“You can come out now, Hunter,” he says loudly. “Call is done. We will pretend you didn’t hear.”

Scott flinches, and steps out into the dim light of the back porch. “Sorry.”

Rozanov shrugs as Soctt sits down next to him. “You’re not.”

“If you want to talk about it—”

“I don’t.” A beat. Then, “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

Scott leans forward, elbows on his knees and arms slung out between his legs. “Yeah. I get it.”

And Scott does get it. He probably gets it better than anyone, and even then, he doesn’t get it enough.

He’s never been in love with another player in the league, much less acted on it. He’s never been Russian, never been at risk of deportation and being sent back to a homophobic country if he loses his job over falling in love. He’s never been voted the most punchable player in the league, and he’s never been deemed a secret by his boyfriend. He’s never been the hidden one like this—he was the one doing the hiding.

He thinks about the conversation he had with Rozanov back at the league awards, after he had won MVP over both Rozanov and Hollander—a feat that only a scattered number of people have been able to pull off in the past decade.

It will change things, Rozanov said. Maybe one day it will not cost so much.

And it has—it has changed things. But it hasn’t been enough. Scott is still a side note in their story, just one positive event in a series of negative ones. It’s not enough.

Maybe one day, they’ll all get it right. Maybe one day, they’ll all do or say exactly the right thing to make it a better, safer world. Maybe one day, they’ll all have done enough.

“Sometimes I think I am going mad with it,” Rozanov says quietly.

He stares at the coin in the palm of his hand, then pinches it on its side between his thumb and first finger. After a moment, he carefully passes the coin into his other hand.

The coin clatters to the ground between his feet and he swears lightly before picking it back up again. Scott really hopes it doesn’t go in his mouth later; the sidewalks of New York City aren’t exactly known for being sanitary.

“No one else is allowed to see,” Rozanov tells him, eyes still on the coin, “and so no one can ever know it is real. Can it even be real if no one else knows?”

He takes a heavy breath, passes his opposite hand in front of the coin again, takes it in his fist. This time the coin stays firmly into his hand, until he opens up the palm of his second hand and the coin has vanished. A small smile creeps onto Rozanov’s face. In his first hand, he makes a sharp, snapping motion and the coin reappears between his first two fingers and his thumb.

It’s a child’s trick, one you pick up from Beginner’s Guide To Doing Magic books when you’re eight with a fixation on magic. Rozanov looks deeply proud of himself anyway. He tosses the coin between hands, satisfied with the trick.

“It’s real if you call it real,” Scott says. It’s not very comforting, and he knows it. “You both know about it. The rest of the world isn’t important.”

“It is,” Rozanov says harshly. “The rest of the world is the only important thing, sometimes. We can pretend all we want that we don’t care about what the rest of the league thinks or knows. But it’s a lie and we both fucking know it.”

He sighs, pressing both his palms to his eyes. It takes a long moment of silence before he drops his hands to his sides again, fingers gripping the edge of the concrete step.

The motion sensor light on the back porch has flickered out by the time that Rozanov speaks again. “There’s a moment when you’re younger and you’re playing hockey and you just think to yourself, This won’t last forever. Yes?

“And I don’t remember that moment, exactly. Just—at some point in the middle, I understood that there has to, one day, be something other than hockey. And we don’t always control when it happens, when that something other than starts to be the only thing, instead of a distant thought.”

“Right,” Scott says slowly, not sure where he’s going with this.

Rozanov shifts, flicking the coin up into the air and catching it with his other hand. The motion sensor light blinks back on with a harsh click.

“But the thing about that—that, like, hockey death, is that you never really see it coming. And then all of the sudden it’s here, and you think about all the things you sacrificed for the sake of hockey, and you don’t know if it was worth it. But you never get that until it’s over. Because you can’t—you can’t have both. You can’t have both hockey and something more than hockey.”

“Rozanov…” Scott trails off into quiet. He knows exactly what Rozanov is saying now, and he hates it.

Shrugging stiffly, Rozanov pockets the coin. He says, “You don’t get to practice it. Or train for it. Life after hockey. It just happens to you. Suddenly, all at once. And then it’s fucking just unbearable to act as if hockey is the thing you would choose over everything else.”

Scott swallows hard. Thinks of Kip, thinks of Kip walking out because Scott was always, always choosing hockey. Thinks of all his teammates who get to have both hockey and love. Thinks of the moment in which he chose to take both, chose to force it—force it to be allowed. Thinks of how it had to be taken by force, and how it could only happen once he won, once he undeniably belonged in the sport.

“And I made my choice,” Rozanov says. Soft, suddenly. “I didn’t choose hockey. And I don’t regret it. I couldn’t ever. And even if I could, I can’t ever let myself start.”

A pause. “But?”

“But I feel crazy with it, sometimes.” Rozanov leans back on his hands, staring up at the dark sky. There are barely any stars, not over this part of New York City. Scott wonders if he misses the ones in Boston, in Moscow. “I feel crazy with it, because hockey is still taking all of me anyway.”

Hockey is a game that takes.

And they—all the queer players, the people of color, those who are other in this world—have forced hockey to take them. They have worked and worked and worked; they train and practice and skate until their heels are raw and their toes are numb. They must become the best, they must be what people want to see, because if they aren’t, they disappear.

Hockey is a world which has been dragged into accepting them kicking and screaming. If they could do anything less than what they can, they would not have gotten this far. They would never have been allowed to.

It is a game that will take everything from you if you let it. Hockey is, at the same time, a game that will only take you in, accept you, if you allow it to break you down to the bare bones. The skating precision, the sharp accuracy of your shot, the puck handling, the speed at which you run from yourself.

This world they live in will only take you if you allow it to take everything out of you. People like Scott and Rozanov and Shane Hollander and Troy Barrett and Ryan Price and and and—they must shape themselves into something tolerable for hockey fans, in a way that other people don’t have to shape themselves into something other than what they are.

The elusive captain of the city; the enthralling, foreign bad boy; the notoriously clean model player; the picture of the classic male athlete; the one who never settled before leaving—they have to create an image that’s acceptable, because the reality of their otherness always outweighs their skill. Sometimes Scott forgets that that image isn’t who they all actually are. The cost of keeping the archetype up all of the fucking time—

And it has to be worth it. Winning, losing, just getting to play the fucking game like this—it has to have been worth it. They cannot have let hockey take everything from them just for it not to be worth it.

But can’t they just have both? Can’t it be that easy? To have both hockey and something more? Can’t it be that simple?

There’s no going back from it. From kissing Kip Grady at center ice. This is something that sinks in right before media appearances right after the Cup win. There’s no going back.

And as he steps out into the press room and the cameras flash bright and sudden in his face and the searching, hunting eyes of vultures start to burrow under his skin, another thing that sinks in: he doesn’t want to go back.

Does he want to step forward? Into a world of hockey where the first has already happened, where he has come out to everyone in the most public way he possibly could have? Does he want to live in that world, where he is the first? Where he subjects Kip to everything terrible about the sport? Does he want to go onwards?

He doesn’t really know, if he’s being honest. He doesn’t know what happens now, what comes next. When he sits down in front of those microphones, he has no idea what he’s going to say.

He sits down anyway. Takes a breath. It’ll be the same ice when he steps back out onto the rink to skate next season. It’ll be the same puck, the same rules, the same game. It’ll be the same sky when he leaves the arena and steps out onto the streets of the city.

He’s come this far, and maybe going forward, things could be better. He just kissed his boyfriend at center ice after winning the Stanley fucking Cup—anything can happen now.

At the 2018 league awards ceremony, Rozanov sits at the bar and starts entertaining some of the rookies with coin tricks. Scott can’t tell if they’re actually entertained by it or if they’re just so in awe of Ilya Rozanov giving them the time of day that they’re willing to be entertained by anything. It’s all simple sleight of hand magic, and Scott is sitting next to him rolling his eyes with Carter.

Shane Hollander comes by, at some point, and Rozanov brightens in a way that doesn’t have words. His facial expression doesn’t change, but something about his entire demeanor does. He straightens up a little bit, closing his hand in a fist around the coin he had been slipping up his sleeve.

“Hollander,” he calls out, and Hollander turns almost before he’s even finished the third syllable. His cheeks are a little flushed, as he looks at Rozanov. His eyes flick from his eyes to his lips to his hands in fists to the gaggle of rookies around him. “Come here!”

Hollander goes closer, clearly somewhat wary. “What?”

“We’re playing games,” Rozanov says mildly. He makes a fist with both hands, and then holds them out to Hollander. “Tap the hand that has the coin in it. You can keep it if you can find it.”

Hollander’s eyebrows arch, but he taps the back of Rozanov’s left hand. “This is a child’s game.”

Shrugging, Rozanov says, “And you’re playing it aren’t you?” He opens his left hand up to reveal the coin. “Damn. Best of three.”

Rozanov puts his hands behind his back, likely exchanging the coin between hands. Then he offers Hollander both fists. Hollander taps one, then shakes his head and taps the other. Rozanov doesn’t register that he changed his mind, though, and inadvertently unfurls both hands and reveals a coin in both palms. Canadian coins, Scott notes. A loon on the face-up side of both.

“You had coins in both hands,” Hollander says, brow wrinkling and something annoyed in his voice. “The fuck was the point then?”

Rozanov shrugs, something almost embarrassed washing over his expression. The rookies standing with them are bouncing their gazes between the two legends, focusing on all the wrong things. Focusing on the fact that two stars are standing there and bickering, and not at all on the sleight of hand underneath their every word. The blush, the fondness.

“You needed a win, yes?” Rozanov says, mouth curling upward at the corner. “It must have been a while, since we knocked you out of the playoffs so soon.”

“You’re an asshole,” Hollander tells him flatly. Rozanov’s smile widens, just a little, and Hollander rolls his eyes again. “Whatever. Congrats on the Art Ross, Rozanov.”

Rozanov smiles at him with all his teeth. The teeth are mostly fake, but there’s something about the way he looks at Hollander that makes his smile look soft and almost—adoring. “And congratulations for winning the scoring race, Hollander. I will not go down so easily next year.”

Hollander smirks a little; the golden persona slips out of his hands for just a moment. For just long enough to say, “You always go down easy.”

“Fuck off,” Rozanov says, but instead of being offended by the double entendre, he sounds almost delighted by Hollander’s comment.

Hollander actually laughs at that, and it’s light and happy and nothing like the Shane Hollander that Scott has come to understand over the years. It’s simple and comes with ease, pulled free of all the constant tension by Ilya fucking Rozanov. The kind of sound Scott kind of thought he’d never hear from Hollander.

“Gladly. See you next season, Rozanov,” Hollander says, like it’s their own private joke. Yes, it’s their own private joke, one that only the two of them could ever understand, and Rozanov grins, wide and easy and happy. As simple as anything.

Hockey is nothing more than theatre. It’s all a performance, it’s all acting. This is something that some of the players know better than others.

Scott gets the sense that Rozanov is one of the people that knows this well. He also gets the sense that Rozanov uses this to his advantage sometimes.

He knows that this job is a performance, and he knows his role, his typecast. Rozanov has his lines memorized and he’s constantly tracking where they are in the script. He’s always performing, always acting as if he’s on stage or could be at any given moment.

With this being true, it becomes very, very easy to hide. It becomes easy to make the mask of a tragedian into who everyone thinks you are; it becomes easy to take who you actually are and shove it far, far down. So far down that no one else can see it.

Scott, who used to hide too, who now is spending his life rewriting the script and reworking the staging, knows this well. He also knows that it’s just not sustainable to live like that. It can’t last forever.

The rumors reach New York City sometime in the fall of 2018. News travels fast within the league, and gossip is dispersed easily and efficiently. Give away a secret in the locker room on Monday and it’s all over the opposite coast by Friday. Scott is well aware of this, but still, he’s never heard something travel as fast as Shane Hollander’s secret does.

The story goes like this: the Montreal Metros captain starts telling his teammates one by one, at first, until eventually it’s kind of an open secret amongst the team that he’s gay. Once it’s gotten out to most of the team, if not all, he starts confirming it when asked. Uncomfortable and stiff and tense and unsure, probably, but confirming it all the same. From there, it takes off down the coast and then flies to the other conferences just as fast.

Scott considers reaching out. Offering some kind of support, to whatever degree he’s able to. Kip encourages the idea. But what would be the point, really? Hollander is already out, and you can’t ever put the dead cat back in a closed box and pretend it’s alive again.

Overnight, Shane Hollander goes from the best player in the league to a guy no one wants to share a locker room with.

Oh, his game is just as sharp, focused, and driven as always. He doesn’t let the gossip change the fact that he’s the best player in the league—better than Rozanov, in Scott’s opinion, but that’s subject to constant debate and Scott will admit he’s kind of biased—and his individual stats don’t change. But something hardens in him, in the way he looks at his teammates.

Something changes in the way that his team looks at him, too. There used to be respect, admiration, trust. The Montreal Metros were a well-oiled machine: vicious against opponents, deadly on the power play, precise and intentional with every strategy. By the time snow starts falling on the East coast, the Metros are showing more instability and infighting and disconnect with each other than they’ve shown in almost a decade.

Scott has always known Hollander had guts and audacity and bravery. It’s in every aspect of his gameplay; it’s in every step towards his success. He knows now, too, that there is something rotten in the Metros locker room that guts and audacity and bravery on the ice cannot fix.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? The heart of the issue?

You can be as brave and strong as anything; you can hold up the weight of the world on your shoulders without flinching. You can be respectful and just as powerful. You can be a hero, you can be a role model. You can be a man peers look up to, a man that kids want to grow up to be one day, a man that superiors can profit off.

You can be all that and more—and it’s never going to be enough. It’s never going to be enough if you are different, because they will take advantage of your existence but they will never, ever love you.

Scott knows this well; has known it from the second he understood his sexuality. Rozanov, a bisexual Russian immigrant with an accent and refusal to apologize for any of what he is, surely knows this too.

Shane Hollander, who, for years and years, has been cutting himself up into little remnants of who he is for the sake of the Metros, and who is now treated with a strange disdain and sense of embarrassment these days, probably knows this better than anyone. You can remold yourself into all they want you to be, but they will never forget what you are underneath, and they will never love you for any of it.

Or maybe the problem is that Hollander doesn’t know it.

Or maybe he just doesn’t accept it, or can’t accept it, because—even as the seasons pass, even as the Metros’ subtle disregard for their captain gets worse and worse, even as his desire to play hockey obviously sharpens focus into just proving a point—he keeps trying. He keeps trying to make them love him.

It’s painful to watch. Rozanov mentions once, offhandedly, with a vague sense of disguised concern, something about Hollander’s various diets. A rumor passes by the Admirals locker room that Hollander trains alone for hours before and after practice. Someone lets slip that the Metros coach is putting Hollander through the wringer in a way none of the other players have to bear.

And still—Hollander is trying to be what they want him to be. Still, Hollander is trying to get them to remember who and what he is. Shane fucking Hollander, the best player in the goddamn league, the captain who has carried their team on his back for years, who scored the winning goals in all of their Cup wins from recent memory.

And still—he is gay and he is Asian and so he is different from them, and they are never, ever going to forget that.

In the summer of 2018—a month since Rozanov got himself traded to Ottawa and subsequently blew up everything the hockey world thought they knew about him and the Raiders—Kip asks if Scott has friends on other teams. He says he’s asking because he’s just never really heard Scott mention anyone close who isn’t also on the Admirals.

There’s nothing wrong with having friends on other teams, not exactly. It’s not something Scott makes a habit of, but that’s mostly just because he’s not the most sociable of the players out there. He likes some of the guys on other teams; he likes some of them a lot, even. They’re not close, but they’re friendly.

Between All-Star matches and national teams and other events, friendships over team lines can’t be uncommon. But rivalries, too, cannot be uncommon. It’s only natural for players to get on each other’s nerves and start biting at heels, in a world like this.

But still, Scott says, “No. Not really.”

“Is that…not allowed?”

Scott shrugs. “It’s fine, I guess. As long as you’re not, like, trading team secrets. Which I doubt anyone ever would.”

Kip nods slowly, considering that. Scott chews at his lip, thinking for a moment before he says honestly, “And I guess it depends who you are. What your brand is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like…Rozanov and Hollander, for example,” Scott says quietly, hating himself for every word. “If they ever said they were friends, the league would implode, probably. Between their personal rivalry and team rivalry—hating each other is their whole thing. That’s their selling point, that’s the league’s selling point. That’s where the money is. Without it, they could lose everything.”

Kip looks at him thoughtfully for a long moment, and doesn’t say anything. Scott avoids his eyes, and he knows that Kip notices. He’s terrible at lying to Kip, terrible at lying to anyone at all, but this isn’t his secret to give away.

This should never have even been his secret to know, to keep. It shouldn’t have been, but—but he’ll protect it now. However awfully he thinks it will end, he’ll take great, great care to protect it for now.

In December 2018, the Admirals are scheduled to play a four game-long stretch of home matches. The first is against Ottawa, the second against Montreal, a day later on the 23rd. The next week, they’ll play LA, and then a few days later, Vegas will be arriving in the city to play as well. The league is shoving as many matches in before Christmas as possible, Scott figures, and though he’s bitter about losing free time during Kip’s holiday break, he’s excited for a series of fun and challenging matchups too.

It’s after the game against Ottawa that Scott decides to be bold. It’s something about Christmas, about the holidays. Something about the freedom he’s been feeling lately; the weight that’s fallen away from his shoulders and never returned. Something about how bright Kip looks when he suggests hosting a dinner for some of the other teams’ players in the city that Scott is close with.

The list is small; when he really thinks about it, he doesn’t particularly want to share his precious little time with Kip with people he doesn’t know very well. It’s a spur of the moment decision, when Rozanov mentions that he’ll be staying in the city after the game, seemingly spending Christmas Eve alone, that Scott asks him to the dinner Kip wants to host.

“I have plans,” Rozanov says, seeming unsure of it. “There’s a friend in town that I will be spending time with.”

And Scott knows. He knows exactly what Rozanov isn’t saying, even if Rozanov doesn’t seem to register how obvious it is to him. Scott says, shrugging, “Bring your friend. It can be just the four of us.”

Rozanov stares at him for a long moment. Then, because he is nothing if not constantly surprising, “Okay. I will ask.”

The text comes in a few hours later: My boyfriend says yes. To dinner tomorrow night. I will send you the dietary things.

Scott stares at the message for a long, long time before telling Kip that Rozanov and a plus one agreed to dinner. Kip raises his eyebrows, asking, “Why do you look so confused by that?”

“I don’t know,” Scott says slowly. “I just…didn’t think he’d ever admit it. To anyone, much less to me.”

“Admit what?”

Scott closes his phone and pockets it, running a finger over the lock button. “That he has a boyfriend, and that he wants someone to meet him.”

Kip hums, looking back down at his laptop. He’s on school break, but the year-long research project he’s doing isn’t going to write itself. Time off from classes, as he has told Scott multiple times, is the perfect time to do work that isn’t for classes, even if it’s still schoolwork.

“Do you know who his boyfriend is?” Kip asks, a little absentmindedly. He’s chewing on his lip, leaning forward to squint at his computer as if it will allow him to understand what he’s reading better.

“I have a guess,” Scott says, quiet again. He leans over the back of the couch to kiss the crook of Kip’s neck. Something in him settles again. “Let’s not theorize. I’m going to get started on dinner for tonight.”

All of which brings them to this: sitting in Scott and Kip’s living room, Rozanov on an armchair with his knee bouncing wildly, all of them waiting, waiting, waiting. Rozanov’s eyes flicker to the apartment door every once in a while, clearly still hopeful, clearly still anticipating an entrance, clearly still believing that it’s going to come.

By the look on his face, Kip gave up at least thirty minutes ago. Scott gave up probably around an hour ago. Rozanov is waiting, waiting, waiting, all while the other two people in the room are getting more and more certain by the minute that his boyfriend is never going to show up.

Scott wonders, vaguely, if Rozanov has ever been stood up like this before. Given his reputation and general confidence, probably not. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t given up hope yet. Or maybe he’s just so in love that it doesn’t matter that his boyfriend isn’t coming—maybe it just matters that Rozanov wants him to, and therefore needs to believe he will.

Perhaps this is the punchline, then: Ilya Rozanov, notorious playboy, famously hard to tie down, falls in love. He falls in love, and the person he loves so terribly deeply does not want anyone to know he is loved in return.

There are a million reasons why this might be true.

Coming out is fucking hard; it’s not something that they can take lightly. If Rozanov’s boyfriend isn’t ready for Scott Hunter to know, it doesn’t matter how many times he’s reassured that Scott is a safe person to talk to. Logic doesn’t matter in face of the fear.

It’s a very individual, personal journey. And people like Rozanov’s boyfriend—people like Rozanov, people like Scott—have so much at stake. There is so much to risk, so much to lose.

So being stood up tonight, not wanting to be associated with him like this despite the love in private—it’s not Rozanov’s fault. It’s not. It’s not his boyfriend’s fault either. The hurt and the loneliness doesn’t have one true source of blame. Scott knows this. But that doesn’t mean the hurt and loneliness aren’t there.

Summer, 2020; Scott is invited to help coach at the Irina Foundation’s second annual hockey camp, and he readily agrees. He’s kind of shocked that he had been asked to help out, given everything he thought he knew, but Rozanov convinces him somehow. It hadn’t taken much convincing, in all honesty, but either way, he ended up here.

Here, where he’s been sent to find wherever the fuck Rozanov and Hollander disappeared to right before drop off was supposed to begin. Between the two of them and Yuna Hollander, the staff are usually able to keep the day running on time, straight down to the minute. It’s strange for both of them to have wandered off like this, forcing everyone else to go hunting for them.

He’s just stepped outside of the building into the smoking area when he hears voices. There they are—both of them, just to Scott’s left. Rozanov is crouched on the concrete with both hands tangled in his hair and tugging, an awful sobbing noise being wrenched from his throat. Hollander is kneeling next to him, one arm tight around his shoulders and the other hand on his knee.

He’s murmuring something, soft words that are meant only for Rozanov to hear, meant only for the two of them to know about. But Scott is there anyway, and he can hear, and his heart is fucking breaking.

“I know,” Hollander murmurs; his words are a shield and the love in his gaze on Rozanov is holding up the sky. He presses a kiss to Rozanov’s shoulder, and Scott goes tense at the sight, suddenly poised to run. “She would be so proud of you, I’m sure of it.”

Then he says something in Russian—and when the fuck did he learn Russian—which helps Rozanov seem to start to catch his breath, choking on a sob and then going silent again. Hollander kisses his shoulder once more, the lightest of touches.

Lifting his head, he catches sight of Scott and his eyes go wide. He tenses, and it’s clearly taking all of his self control not to pull away from Rozanov in a violent, damning movement. His eyes flick between Scott and Rozanov—Rozanov, who hasn’t noticed him, who hasn’t looked over, who is so terribly vulnerable right now, who is putty in the hands of his supposed greatest rival—and he makes a choice.

He stays right there, and he mouths something silently to Scott. Scott blinks, taking a second to decipher it.

Don’t fucking move.

“Hey,” Hollander says, still just as soft as he shifts his attention back to Rozanov. “It’s okay. You’re okay. The day is going to be good, and if it’s not, we’ll just stick through it and then do it better later.”

Somehow, he pulls a weak, watery laugh out of Rozanov. He says, voice shaky, “Okay.”

Hollander hums, shifting so that he can take Rozanov’s hands into his own and pull them gently away from his hair. He kisses Rozanov’s knuckles and draws his eyes onto him. “There you are.” He smiles a little, and something in Scott’s chest is aching. “Tell me your name.”

Rozanov frowns at him. “What?”

“Your name.”

“Um. Ilya Rozanov?”

Hollander shakes his head a little, and leans forward to press their foreheads together. “Today, you’re just Ilya. And I’m just Shane. The kids who are coming today love Ilya, even though they all think that Centaurs are lame. And I love Ilya too, and I know the Centaurs are lame. Okay?”

Another quiet, weak laugh; it’s a laugh nonetheless. Rozanov leans forward and kisses him—brief, chaste, simple. Scott is left reeling with the revelations in it anyway.

“Okay,” Rozanov whispers, once he’s pulled back. “Okay, Shane.”

And Scott knew, is the thing. He already knew that the two of them were more to each other than they ever let anyone know. He already knew that the two of them shared something private, something no one else can ever be allowed to see.

He’s been given bits and pieces of it so many times now; just clipped, aborted motions of reaching for each other and hushed voices around the corners of hallways. Like a man caged in a cave seeing shadows dance on the walls, Scott has been allowed to see the possibilities of Hollander and Rozanov. The outline of what they could look like in the light.

But this is different. This is them actually in the daylight. This is the whispers taking real shapes, revelations of their shadowed forms being sculpted into real people. This is not Hollander and Rozanov, this is not the rivalry he once told Kip trapped them into who they are. This is not the two greatest players of the century murmuring sweet nothings into phone calls that Scott only hears one side of.

No, this is Shane and Ilya. And that is completely, entirely, absolutely different.

July in Ottawa is hot. It’s something around 80 degrees, bright and humid and sunny, and Scott can’t fucking stand it.

“Less humid than last week,” Hollander says mildly, not seeming to care either way. He’s putting up the kids’ name tags on the stalls in the locker room. It’s all very official looking, and Scott figures all the kids will love it. “It’s been rainier than usual this year, though, which is too bad. Ilya was hoping to take the kids to the yard for lunches.”

Scott blinks. “I forget that you grew up here.”

Hollander hums absentmindedly. “And I spend a lot of time here now that—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, freezing in place. He has a nametag in hand that he’s wrinkling with how tightly he’s gripping it. Scott raises his eyebrows, waiting, but Hollander doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Hollander,” Scott starts, carefully, as if trying to approach a wild animal. A feral street cat. A flight risk.

“Shane,” Hollander says quietly. “While we’re here.”

Scott licks his lips, studying the tension that’s tight in the line of Hollander’s jaw. “Shane. You know that I know, right?”

Slowly, Hollander lets out a measured exhale. He does not look at Scott. His hand tightens on the nametag and it bends in half. He closes his eyes, takes another deep breath, and opens his eyes to step forward to carefully hang the nametag above a locker.

He says, voice entirely neutral, “I’m aware.”

Sitting with Rozanov in a circle in Scott and Kip’s living room—the starting lines to a bad joke with a bad punchline, should the punchline ever be spoken aloud—is one of the most uncomfortable experiences of Scott’s life. He keeps glancing at Rozanov, waiting to see the moment that his resolve breaks and he admits that his boyfriend isn’t going to show up, except the moment never comes.

Kip says, tentatively, at some point, “Maybe we should eat now. The food might get cold soon.”

The food is already cold, Scott is absolutely sure of it. Rozanov doesn’t deflate even at the suggestion that they eat without his boyfriend having arrived. His boyfriend, who has a whole host of dietary restrictions that are fucking impossible to navigate, who Rozanov clearly loves so much, who isn’t here, who isn’t coming.

“Shouldn’t let it go to waste,” is all that he says, and then he follows Scott and Kip to the table.

There’s no mention of the missing fourth guest. The placemat that has been set up and gone unused just haunts them. Every other sentence from Rozanov ends with space for someone else to complete; there’s a gap in between what he’s saying and what he’s not that should have been filled by someone else. But there’s no one there to speak. There’s just Rozanov, and the boyfriend who didn’t show up.

He’s there, in all of the things that Rozanov says but doesn’t say. He’s there, in the back of Scott’s mind, a distant image that’s so familiar while so unknown. He’s there, in the glances Kip makes to the empty plate across from him. He’s there, every time a creak in the walls or floorboards sounds like a weak knock and they all look to the door. He’s there, but he’s not here.

Scott has never pitied Ilya Rozanov before and he’s not going to start now. But this moment brings him very, very close.

Is this life ever going to be enough? When they have each partitioned themselves into such distinct little boxes? When they have each broken up who they are into pieces that belong to others, to the league brand and to their name’s brand and to themselves, to each other? Are they as the people they are ever going to be enough?

Scott doesn’t know if they really can ever be satisfied with their lives, with themselves. Can you ever be fulfilled when everything that you represent belongs to someone else? When everything you are belongs to a concept branded by a marketing scheme to make other people rich?

They, as hockey players, belong to the game. To the league. To the concept of hockey. They have sold their bodies and their skillsets and their likenesses, in a way that not everyone fully comprehends. The vast grand scheme of it evades Scott sometimes, too. Sometimes he can’t bear to understand it all.

But it’s a sacrifice they were all always going to be willing to make, when asked. They were always going to say yes, because it’s hockey, because they love this game, because it’s a great privilege to sign an NHL contract. Because not everyone gets this, and aren’t they grateful?

Sacrificing the person you could have been without all this has to be worth it. Sacrificing the very ability to be who you want to be has to be worth it. Sacrificing choice and freedom and change and revelation and love has to be worth it. It has to be worth it. It has to be, or else—

“Two years ago,” Hollander starts, voice fierce but strained, “you invited Ilya to dinner.”

He had come into the room in a whirlwind, almost frantic with the words that spill from his tongue the instant he sees Scott, and sees that he’s alone. They’re in the breakroom at the ice rink; Scott had arrived earlier than usual and been starting a pot of coffee for himself and the rest of the coaches, until Hollander burst in.

Scott turns away from the coffee pot to stare at him, overwhelmed by Hollander’s anxious energy. “Um. Yes. I did.”

“Why did you do that?” Hollander asks, and there’s something almost pathetically desperate in his voice.

Scott blinks. “I don’t know. To be nice? To hang out? I thought he’d be alone for the holiday and I didn’t like the idea of that. When he said he wasn’t going to be, I figured I’d invite both him and his…”

Something in Hollander’s jaw tightens, his mouth pressed in a thin line while he considers that. There’s something almost wild in his eyes. He repeats, “To be nice.”

“I guess,” Scott says. Then, trying to get Hollander to lighten up even just a little bit, he adds, “You’re not going to get me to admit out loud that we’re friends, no matter how hard you try.”

It doesn’t seem to calm Hollander at all. Instead, he starts rocking back and forth on his feet, his gaze focusing hard on some distant point beyond Scott’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Scott asks. “This was two years ago. Why—”

“Because I love him,” Hollander snaps, and then rears his head back to stare at Scott with eyes wide as a cornered animal, terrified of the wake of his own words. When Scott’s expression doesn’t change, he lets out a short breath. “Because I love him so fucking much, and it’s been years of loving him, and I still can’t do it right.”

Scott swallows hard. “What do you mean by ‘right?’”

“He doesn’t ask for what he wants,” Hollander says stiffly. “Or what he needs. He just fucking—just lets me think he doesn’t need it. And he asked me for one thing, for this one fucking dinner. And I couldn’t make myself show up.”

Another short, sharp breath. Hollander’s gaze slides away from Scott’s face and onto the point behind him again. The wall, maybe. A poster on it. A crack. A bubble in the wallpaper.

“Why couldn’t you?” Scott asks quietly.

Hollander presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to steady himself, but he’s still rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He still looks unmoored, looks entirely unsettled.

“Earlier that day,” Hollander starts, dropping his hands to his sides and shoulders sagging, “some of my teammates were just—just saying shit. Just awful things, about gay people, and about Ilya, even though they didn’t even know about him, and about me, and about me and Ilya, as if the very idea of us liking each other as friends, much less more, was the funniest joke or worst insult in the world—and I just couldn’t face it again. The risk was too high, because it would hurt us both so much fucking more if it was you saying it.”

“I wouldn’t ever—” Scott stops, cutting off the sentence before it turns into a lie.

Because the truth is that, for all the time he has kept their secret, his gut reaction was still to hate them for having what he could not and to judge them for risking everything they have. For all that he has honored their privacy, he has also been invading it at every other turn: eavesdropping on phone calls, having one-sided coded conversations they didn’t want to have, seeking out insight into something that’s none of his business.

The truth is that he doesn’t judge them for being queer men in love, but being gay didn’t take the hockey player out of him. He’s said it to Kip, and he’s also been thinking it to himself this whole time.

This relationship that they have dared to take for themselves will send shockwaves and tremors through the entire league, because taking things for yourself is not something people like them are allowed to do. It’s selfish, it’s a betrayal, it’s a disappointment, it’s unfair.

Scott spent so long thinking all of this to be true—it wasn’t until Kip, and winning the Cup, that he believed differently—and he unconsciously has been projecting that onto Hollander and Rozanov. He likes to think that, if Shane Hollander had shown up that night and introduced himself as Ilya Rozanov’s boyfriend, he wouldn’t have said anything awful. But can he really promise that?

Hollander nods sharply, like he’s followed every step of Scott’s thoughts. He seems almost vindicated by the response, and guilt seeps through Scott’s heart into his entire being.

“Why are you bringing this up now?” Scott asks quietly.

Hollander exhales slowly. “He wants to go on a double date—Ryan Price and his boyfriend. He keeps giving me chance after chance. And I want to do it for him.

“But then I think about all the things the Metros have said all over again, I think about the locker room I have to go back to in two months, I think about the, like, the culture in the team I used to think was everything, I think about how Ilya doesn’t have Canadian citizenship yet, and I just can’t—I can’t make myself.”

“Shane…”

A shake of his head, and Scott shuts up. Hollander looks down at his feet, and goes very, very still. “And there must have been something. Some point at the start of all this, where we could have fixed it. Made it go differently. Said no, or said stop; just unwritten the rivalry. Un-performed it. There had to have been something we could have done, or said, to change everything now. But we didn’t catch it in time.”

There’s a moment of quiet then. A silence that sickens him, that rots in Scott’s chest and makes him want to throw up or scream or collapse or just completely bury himself in the dirt, six feet underneath.

“Maybe,” Scott says quietly. “Or maybe not.”

Hollander shrugs stiffly. He doesn’t meet Scott’s eyes.

“But you’ll know better next time,” Scott tells him. He takes a step towards Hollander, wanting to squeeze his shoulder or give him a hug or something, but Hollander flinches back and Scott stops. “We’ll all know better next time. You have another chance now, don’t you? This double date he wants now? Give yourselves this.”

Hollander swallows visibly, eyes still directed down to his feet. He runs a hand through uncharacteristically unkempt hair, and nods sharply.

He doesn’t say anything else. Maybe there isn’t anything else to say this time. But maybe next time, they’ll say the right thing.

At some point during the dinner, Rozanov says, “There’s a plan.”

Scott puts his utensils down. Something in Rozanov’s voice, in the way his eyes flick to the door and then back down to his nearly empty plate, tells him exactly what he’s referring to. He asks anyway, “A plan?”

“For being together,” Rozanov clarifies. He keeps his eyes on his plate, pushing food around with a fork. “Me and my…there’s a plan. To make it work.”

“Okay,” Scott says slowly.

Ever curious, Kip asks, “What’s the plan?”

Rozanov takes a breath. He lifts his head, gaze turned up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.”

“What’s the point then?” Scott, studying him carefully, nearly flinches when Rozanov looks back down and meets his eyes.

“The point is that this—dinner with you—isn’t a part of it,” Rozanov says quietly. There is something so sad in him that it aches in Scott, too. “There’s no step for coming out to people one-by-one. There’s only friends who guess it and the endgame. There’s step one, and a goal, but no, um—no steps in the middle.”

Scott and Kip exchange a glance, and Scott really, really wishes he knew what Kip is thinking right now. Kip, who had been in a similar position as Rozanov, and who had left Scott over it. Kip, who probably understands better than Scott what it means to be someone else’s secret in the dark.

“Maybe you should talk to him about adding steps,” Kip says. His voice is quiet, soft; he’s remembering too.

Rozanov shrugs. “Maybe.”

They haven’t done anything wrong. None of them have; not Scott, not Kip, not Rozanov, not Hollander. The crime they committed—falling in love—should never have been offensive. They haven’t hurt anyone.

Then again, sometimes Scott thinks about all the time he spent hurting Kip by keeping him secret.

Sometimes he thinks about the way Rozanov looked at the door for so fucking long, so fucking painfully, so fucking patient and so goddamn hopeful. Sometimes he thinks about the things Troy Barrett used to say to him—to anyone who was different—to protect his own secrets. Sometimes he thinks about what he himself said to Hollander on the ice in front of a full stadium: you’re starting to sound like him; Hollander, I can practically see your greatest shame; I can see him all over your damn mouth—

And they haven’t harmed the people who hate them just by falling in love. It’s not fair to prosecute them for it. It’s not.

Neither is it fair to hate them for keeping it a secret. It was self-protection. It was survival. It was self-defense. It’s not fair to blame them for a sense of preservation and privacy amongst people that would hunt them down, worm their way into their sense of safety, and poison every good thing they’ve ever had if they had the slightest reason to.

But every once in a while, Scott isn’t so sure that they really, truly haven’t been hurting anyone. Sometimes he can’t remember anything but the feeling of staying silent in a world that demands protest. It was to protect his secrets, but fuck—to do so is exhausting, and it’s scary, and it’s painful. It hurt himself to grit his teeth and bear it like he was supposed to, and who else might it have hurt to see him turn a blind eye with what looked like ease?

A man who loves another man is not the cardinal crime many of Scott’s peers seem to think it is. He didn’t hurt any of those people by doing it. But God knows he’s murdered, again and again, a thousand versions of his own heart with the knife of secretkeeping.

Scott is just going for a walk. He doesn’t mean for it to be anything more than a walk. He hasn’t explored Ottawa as much as he wants to, so he figured he’d take advantage of being here for the hockey camps and wander downtown.

It’s a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, one that Scott stops at only to look at the menu taped up in the window. He’s investigating their list of appetizers when his gaze slides away from the window and into the main dining room.

There, at a small four person table, he can see Ryan Price and the man who must be his boyfriend. A singer, if Scott remembers correctly. He’s cute, though not really Scott’s type. Price has an arm around his shoulders, casual and relaxed in a way that Scott doesn’t think he’s ever seen Price be before.

Across from them is Rozanov. He’s smiling. It’s the same smile as he wore that night two years ago, when he sat in Scott’s apartment for hours, waiting, waiting, waiting. It’s the same smile he wore every time he looked at the door. Price’s boyfriend says something, waving a hand vaguely, and Rozanov’s smile widens a little. It’s still not really happy. It’s just a performance. Like hockey, like hiding.

And years ago, years and years ago: Scott stands outside of the Kingfisher and he watches Kip and his friends through the window. They’re laughing, celebrating his birthday, cheering as he blows out a candle on a cupcake. And Scott is just standing there alone outside of the bar like a fucking coward—

There must have been something. Some point at the beginning where things went wrong—some point at the beginning where they could have changed things. One different choice, one different word, one thing to fix it. The culture of the league, the team dynamics, the media circus, all of it and themselves too. There must have been some point where they went wrong, and where they could have done better.

But they didn’t catch it then.

Maybe they can catch it now. Maybe they can catch it, and do it better this time. Then maybe one day, they won’t want to try again. They won’t need to. They’ll be happy.

Maybe one day, it won’t cost anything. Playing hockey, falling in love—maybe one day, they won’t have to sacrifice one for the other. Maybe one day, the cost of getting everything you’ve ever wanted will not be so great.

“What are you doing here?”

Scott startles at the sound of Hollander’s voice behind him, and he whips around to find him standing only a few feet away, hands in his pants pockets. “Just—I was looking for a place to eat. I didn’t mean to…”

Hollander nods sharply. It doesn’t seem like he’s actually hearing anything Scott is saying. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Scott studies him for a moment. “Are you going in?”

Hollander shrugs. It’s dark around them; the sky is moonless and starless; completely void of any kind of comfort. The breeze is cool and biting.

Slowly, Hollander takes something out of his pocket. A coin. It glints in the light spilling from the restaurant’s windows, the loon on the back flashing into focus ever so briefly. He rubs it between his pointer finger and thumb, and both of them keep their eyes on it instead of each other.

“They’re waiting for you,” Scott says, unsure if it’s his place to say or to advise. It’s probably not. Judging by the way Hollander bristles at his words, it’s unwelcome.

“I know.” Hollander looks up, past Scott, through the window towards the table. His face is unreadable in the nighttime dark.

Scott bites his lip. He doesn’t have the words for this, for reassurance when he knows the cost of the fallout. He doesn’t have the words, either, for how it’s worth it.

He opens his mouth to say something, to try at the very least, but Hollander shakes his head and cuts him off. Scott goes quiet.

“Hunter—” he cuts himself off. Looks at him. Looks at the table visible through the window. Looks at Rozanov, probably. Then he just shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

Taking a deep breath, Hollander looks to Rozanov in the window. Wraps his fist around the coin. Holds tight. He takes a step—

(Now you see him—

And, like the start of a bad joke, Scott wakes up a year later to a riptide of sunlight casting warped shadows all over his life: Hollander and Rozanov are dead, gone in one fell cut of a FanMail video, and he watches from a distance as Shane and Ilya are thrust onto center stage.

—now you don’t—)