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Ottawa Centaurs 
@ottawacentaurs
Ilya Rozanov (C) will not participate in tonight’s game against Detroit due to illness. Get well soon, captain!
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Cliff Marlow @cliff_marlow_official · Mar 13, 2019 Replying to @ottawacentaurs
@realrozanov81 roz lmfao didn’t you tell me russians do not get sick
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RA-RA-ROZANOV @@realrozanov81 · Mar 13, 2019 Replying to @cliff_marlow_official
canadian flu has been bioengineered to kill me specifically
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Caitlin Dykstra is many things. Ordering the list is difficult and comes with its own set of positives, negatives, and implications depending on which way she chooses to arrange the words, so she prefers to list her various titles and attributes in a random order. Today, Caitlin Dykstra is a partially stay-at-home mom to her one year old daughter Susie, long-suffering wife of professional hockey player Evan Dykstra, frequent volunteer at two separate women’s shelters in Ottawa, huge fan of diner breakfasts, known lover of hamsters and guinea pigs, and more recently, a fan of vampire television shows.
Caitlin is also, apparently, the only person the entire Ottawa Centaurs team knows who has enough free time on a Thursday morning to check in on Ilya Rozanov.
Ilya Rozanov is also many things. In no particular order, Caitlin knows that Ilya is a major star within the ranks of the MLH, freshly-crowned captain of the team her husband plays on despite transferring to the team just a few months prior, originally from Russia, known for being brash, a loud-mouth, a party-goer, and likely a bit of a fuckboy, and more recently, co-founder of a mental health charity alongside the man the entire hockey-loving world once considered his arch nemesis. According to Evan, Ilya also loves dogs and is, apparently, not at all what the rest of the Centaurs expected him to be when the news first broke that he’d be crashing their rink like a cosmonaut hurdling towards the steppes of Kazakhstan.
Evan told her that the team was not planning to press the matter and risk scaring the guy off (what if they ask him questions and he goes straight to their coach's office to demand a trade? What if they manage to fumble having one of the greatest hockey talents in a generation by simply asking too many questions?), but god are they having a hard time getting the man to come out of his unexpectedly hard shell. By all accounts, this is a different man than the one they were promised save for the hockey talent (which is definitely there). The media, from what she has seen, has no clue what to do with the rapid changes they’re witnessing in a man they thought they had pinned down perfectly. Quite frankly, no one knows what on earth international party boy Ilya Rozanov was thinking when he packed his bags and high-tailed it to Ottawa, and it seems like Ilya has no intentions to let any of them in on his secrets based on the way he always seems to be MIA when he doesn’t have a hockey stick firmly grasped in his glove.
Caitlin has seen all kinds of insane theories online: Ilya Rozanov moved to Ottawa because he is being punished for something. Ilya Rozanov is running away from potentially being punished for something. Ilya Rozanov is a spy. Ilya Rozanov had a mental breakdown and signed the contract while in psychosis. Ilya Rozanov got drunk and threw darts at a dartboard to decide which team he would sign with. Ilya Rozanov has a secret kid in Ottawa. Ilya Rozanov is running away from a secret kid in the US. Ilya Rozanov gets off on challenges and decided that he needed to swoop in to save the poor low-ranked Centaurs from themselves. Ilya Rozanov has become a born-again Christian and has sworn off his sinful lifestyle and moved to a quieter city to ensure he is free from temptation. Ilya Rozanov fucked the wife or girlfriend of one of his former teammates and decided to hop the border before the whole situation blew up in their locker room. Ilya Rozanov would prefer a Canadian passport over a US passport. Ilya Rozanov owes someone in the Centaurs management team a lot of money. Ilya Rozanov was manipulated by Shane Hollander into transferring to the Centaurs as a way to tank his career into the ground. Ilya Rozanov is fucking Yuna Hollander, Director of his new charity organization and mother of his archrival-turned-maybe-friend Shane Hollander.
It’s a lot. Caitlin doesn’t really believe any of it, but she’s willing to keep an open mind. In her time as a volunteer, she’s heard a lot of crazy stories involving decisions she considers unwise but made sense to the decision-maker at the time. The human mind is a strange place, and it isn't right to judge someone without getting the full picture first.
Regardless, Ilya Rozanov is in Ottawa and is sick with the flu, the Centaurs are freaking the fuck out about it, and now Caitlin Dykstra is driving to Ilya Rozanov’s ridiculously-large house with some food and medicine while her daughter hangs out with her aunt for the day.
It all began bright and early in the morning.
[Author's note: if you have the creator's skin on, the WhatsApp chats scroll! Please do not go past them without scrolling through!]
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OttaWAGs |
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Multiple people are typing… |
Caitlin pulls into Ilya’s massive driveway with far too many containers of food made by Zane Boodram all piled into three freezer bags, several bottles of gatorade straight from the vending machine at the hospital and a small collection of flu medicine hand-selected by Lisa Hayes, a hello from Carmen Boyle, and a promise from Selena Chouinard to bring him “something good” from her parent’s sugar shack in Quebec.
With some effort, she drags the whole care package out of her car and to Ilya’s front door. She knocks. No one answers.
She knocks again.
She knocks again.
She rings the doorbell.
She does not have Ilya Rozanov’s phone number and no one thought to give it to her. The entire team is actively at practice, and all of the WAGs are busy with their jobs and other morning activities.
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Cassie Boodram |
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Cassie is typing... |
The first thing Caitlin notices about the house is that it is loud. The television is absolutely blaring with the screams of a crowd and a couple of loud, obnoxious men talking about carrying pucks through the neutral zone. No wonder Ilya didn’t answer the door, she thinks. It’s so fucking loud in here that she can barely think. She should probably introduce herself, at least, since he’s probably awake. She should probably also apologize for breaking into his home. She thinks that if someone broke into her home to leave a bunch of delicious food behind, she would appreciate an apology.
The sound alerts her that Montreal’s Hayden Pike is in control of the puck. Somehow, over the speakers, she can hear a loud groan that sounds like it’s coming from a flesh-and-blood person, not a screen. That must be Ilya. She hears the sound of a puck being slammed directly into goalposts and ricocheting off with a clang, and the ensuing groans and gasps of the audience and commentators. Ilya laughs, but it sounds scratchy and broken.
She’s heard that the guy lives and breathes hockey, yeah, but seeing (well, technically, hearing) it in action is something else. He’s too sick to work his job so he’s at home…watching his job? Caitlin laughs softly and shakes her head although no one can see her do it as she kicks off her shoes and places them next to the shoe rack by the door. Ilya’s got multiple pairs of slippers, a whole family’s worth, really, arranged in a careful line. She very briefly debates slipping her feet into one of those pairs (does he have three pairs arranged there for guests, or do they belong to anyone in particular?) and decides against it. Surely he’ll be fine if she walks his floors in socks.
The television loudly alerts her that Scott Hunter is taking the next face-off against Shane Hollander. Ilya sniffles loudly. It’s impressive to be able to sniffle loud enough to be heard over what is probably the loudest television Caitlin has heard in her entire fucking life. She thought Evan was loud…Ilya Rozanov is an entirely new level of loud. Maybe one’s loudness is interconnected with one’s hockey ability. That sounds like something stupid here husband would say.
Clearly, Ilya hasn’t heard the front door open, nor Caitlin fussing over her shoes, nor the rustling of the bags Caitlin has carried in. She might as well, she thinks, drop the food off in the kitchen before she checks up on him in the living room. On her way to the room where the too-loud television is screaming, she stops by the kitchen to drop off the metric fuckton of food Zane Boodram prepared for Ilya. Caitlin has always said that he should retire from hockey and open a catering business with the way he can whip out a meal in practically no time at all. She slams a few plastic containers of meat, soup, and a tinfoil-wrapped pile of roti onto Ilya’s granite countertops with audible thwops, which can barely be heard over the sound of the commentators screaming about Shane Hollander and Ilya’s impressively loud sickly sniffling.
Caitlin swipes her hands together when she finishes unloading the heavy care package and takes a moment to look around the kitchen. It’s pretty clean, all things considered, save for a singular bowl and spoon in the sink, an empty mug (literally shaped like a puck with a novelty miniature hockey stick serving as a stirring spoon…jesus, everything really is hockey with this man) with a dried-out teabag on the countertop, and a single leather jacket tossed over a chair next to the fancy-looking breakfast bar that...
Huh...says…Hollander? #24? On the back? In big embroidered text?
Caitlin picks up the jacket to inspect it. There’s a Montreal Voyageurs logo embroidered carefully on the front. One sleeve has VOYAGEURS running down its length. She stares at it hard for a few moments in confused silence, scrunching her eyebrows and squinting on occasion like maybe she’ll finally make sense of it, because actually: what the fuck?
Theoretically, she knows it's a WAG jacket. She saw the same jackets with different names and numbers on Instagram a few weeks ago. The Montreal Voyageurs WAGs ordered and posted photos of their jackets way too early in the year, seemingly knowing that their team was a shoo-in for the playoffs. It's a level of smug confidence she found a little off-putting when she first saw the photos being shared around of Marie-Eve Comeau and Julietta Miitka posing with their asses pushed out at awkward angles while wearing their jackets. Then again, it's not like she can say a whole lot. The Centaurs never bother to get jackets made knowing full well that the team will end their season before the playoffs begin. If she complained about the way certain teams designed, ordered, and showed off their matching customized jackets well before their boys secured playoffs spots, well, they’d just shoot back that she’s jealous because the Centaurs never make it to the playoffs.
That’s fine. That’s not what she should be focusing on right now. The specific jacket in front of her right now is way more important.
What she can't quite puzzle out is why Hollander’s WAG’s jacket is in Ottawa Centaurs Captain Ilya Rozanov’s home.
She places the jacket back on the chair, fussing until it looks like it wasn't ever touched by a stranger.
In the other room, a commentator mentions the score for the Ottawa vs. Detroit game that “is happening right now.” That game was last night (and was a relatively good game, in her opinion. Evan put up a point, along with Zane. They were beaten by Detroit, who had two goals on them, but two goals is better than none. The guys have been playing marginally better since Ilya Rozanov shocked everyone and joined their ragtag team, like they’re operating on pure divine inspiration since Hockey Jesus joined their ranks. Or, perhaps, Ilya has been putting them through the fucking ringer at practices, which is equally possible), which means Ilya must be currently watching a replay of last night’s Montreal vs New York game that happened at the same time as the Ottawa game. He must have watched the Ottawa one live last night and is now catching up on what he missed, Caitlin thinks. He really does live and breathe hockey.
Caitlin takes a moment to sit down and sip on one of the Gatorade Lisa intended for Ilya. Surely he won't mind; he can probably order one for delivery if he desperately needs it later. Caitlin, meanwhile, feels like she is actively running a marathon and needs a few electrolytes to help her stay upright. Sparing a few sideways glances at the leather jacket, Caitlin begins to consider the facts she has:
- Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander have co-founded a charity together and announced that they are longtime friends (although few people actually believed the validity of this claim. From what she has seen online, most people suspect it’s some kind of strange PR stunt ordered from some higher ups to help refresh the rivalry storyline. It’s always been a solid advertising strategy for the MLH, after all, and Ilya’s surprise move to the Centaurs probably threw a major curveball in the MLH’s marketing plans. The Irina Foundation, albeit an odd PR move, has reignited some interest in the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry).
- Ilya Rozanov is close with Shane Hollander’s mother, Yuna. Yuna is the director of their charity, which implies some level of closeness between her and Rozanov. Caitlin also knows that there are fresh rumours that Ilya and Yuna are having a torrid affair, which Yuna publicly laughed at on her Twitter account. The affair rumours exist because allegedly Ilya cooked some soup for Yuna and her husband a mere few days ago.
- There is a Hollander WAG jacket in Ilya’s home right now.
Caitlin takes these facts and spins them into hypotheses:
- Shane Hollander’s girlfriend was here earlier. This makes the most sense, although it seems strange that she would make her way all the way to Ottawa just to visit her boyfriend’s friend/rival when he is sick, go out of her way to wear her special new WAG jacket, and also leave it there. From what Caitlin knows, Shane Hollander isn't publicly dating anyone. She is fairly certain she would have heard about that by now if there was a woman out there flaunting her Hollander WAG status. Montreal WAGs are not exactly known for their subtlety (exhibit A: the 2019 playoff jackets existing and shown off way before playoff spots are clinched), and she really doubts the Montreal C-WAG would be shy or secretive by any means.
- Yuna Hollander was here and was for some reason holding her daughter-in-law’s jacket, brought it inside, and then somehow accidentally left it here.
- This is Ilya Rozanov’s jacket...which would be a whole different can of worms.
A commentator's voice in the living room alerts her that Matti Jalo has received a 2-minute minor penalty. Ilya laughs.
Caitlin takes another sip of Gatorade and decides that maybe it is time to alert the owner of this house that she is inside of it, drinking his Gatorade, and fucking around with his stuff while he watches a hockey game that has already finished.
Caitlin isn't really sure what she is expecting to see when she walks into the living room. She expects to probably see Ilya Rozanov sitting normally on his couch and watching the game with vague, sleepy interest. Part of her expects to see the man in question with a clipboard taking notes on the game. Maybe, perhaps, he is scrolling on his phone idly while the game plays out in front of him.
She definitely does not expect to enter the room and see Ilya Rozanov curled into a large ball on the couch, wrapped up in a cocoon of several thick blankets, face red, puffy, and wet with tears. Jesus Christ, okay.
“Hi,” she says in the doorway after standing quietly, waiting for a solid minute for him to notice her. Ilya spends that quiet minute staring at the television screen, gripping the edges of a blanket closer to his face so he can scrub some of his tears on it.
When he hears Caitlin, Ilya startles, face whipping up to look at her. He blinks for a few moments, visibly confused. Once understanding finally dawns on his face, he grabs the television remote and presses pause, causing the room to fall into an uneasy silence. “Dykstra,” he says after a few tense moments. It sounds a bit like a question.
“Caitlin,” she offers. “Uhm, sorry to interrupt?”
“You have caught me at a bad time,” Ilya says solemnly, cheeks flaring redder with embarrassment underneath the already-there redness from crying.
“I see that,” she says with a brief, breathy laugh. “The team and WAGs sent me,” she explains. “They’re worried you're going to starve or die from lack of medicine.”
Ilya’s face flashes through a few rather complicated-looking emotions. “That is…nice,” he says, stilted. “But you did not have to do this.”
“I know,” Caitlin says. “But everyone cares about you, and I don't have anything more important to do today, well, until like 4pm.”
Ilya sniffles loudly.
“Are you okay, man?” Caitlin asks.
“It is the sickness,” he explains before scrubbing his eyes clear of tears with the back of his sweatshirt sleeve.
Caitlin hums, shifting her weight to her other foot out of sheer awkwardness. “There's a lot of food in the kitchen, and, uhm, some medicine from Lisa, you know, Wyatt's wife? The doctor?” She babbles. “And Zane was terrified you weren't going to eat today, so he cooked enough food to feed a small army. Also, Carmen Boyle says hi. She was really insistent that I tell you that. Selena said something about sugar, I don't know. I can heat some food up for you so you can take the meds, if you want.”
Ilya just stares at her, face carefully impassive. She does not mention the tears welling in his eyes again, threatening to spill over his water line.
“Thank you,” Ilya says, wobbly. “I can get up and get myself some food. I don't want to take up more of your time.” He blinks, causing a tear to eke out, which he immediately scrubs off with his sleeve.
“Again, I've got nowhere to be until 4,” Caitlin says. “And I haven't watched this game,” she says, gesturing to the game on the television.
“You want to watch the game?” Ilya asks. “With me?”
“Yeah,” Caitlin says. “And I want some of the food Zane made. I won't lie. It smelled fucking delicious in my car. Let me grab us both some and we can watch it.”
Caitlin insists on staying mostly because she’s concerned about the emotional, sickly acquaintance in front of her, but also…she wants to figure out which one of her theories on that stupid fucking leather jacket is true. Mostly, however, she stays because she has a hard time leaving people alone when they start crying.
Ilya restarts the game despite Caitlin’s protests that she can just hop in where he left off, fixing her with a deeply unimpressed look and rewinding the video as she insists that this is definitely not necessary, come on, I’m a guest in your house, and do you really want to rewatch that much? I can just figure out what happened from, fucking, I don’t know, context clues! Oh my god, no, you definitely don’t need to rewind all the way back to the warmups, I mean, it’s your house, I guess you can do what you want…You want to rewatch the warmups? Okay…
Objectively, Caitlin thinks she should probably feel a bit weirder about sitting cross-legged in a chair, hunched over a plate of chicken and roti, in Ilya Rozanov’s personal home with Ilya Rozanov himself bundled up in a blanket next to her. Somehow, it’s… not weird at all. Ilya up close is nothing like the infamous image that’s been conjured up and disseminated on social media accounts and commentator booths for the past decade. Right now, he seems like a weird cross between a sickly cat and a friend-of-a-friend.
Caitlin has already forced Ilya to take some medicine alongside another mugful of tea (in a mostly-plain mug that says “world’s most acceptable hockey player,” which seems like something that has a story behind it, but Caitlin isn’t sure if Ilya is willing to spill its secrets). Ilya isn’t quite up for the massive, hearty meal Zane Boodram prepared for him, but he did accept some roti slathered with butter before guzzling a probably too-large gulp of Nyquil, so that’s something. A win is a win. Some of the cloudiness in his eyes has dissipated, but he definitely doesn’t seem…perfectly well. There’s still a faint pink flush on his cheeks and he sways on occasion.
Caitlin tries to convince him to nap instead of rewatching the first half of a game he literally just saw, but Caitlin is quickly learning that Ilya is as stubborn as an ox. Maybe she should have suggested they watch something else; perhaps a baking show or a documentary about the ocean would have lulled him to sleep. Instead, Caitlin is stupidly allowing a hockey-obsessed man to watch more hockey. Of course he is refusing to fall asleep. This is his livelihood, after all. Whatever. Caitlin isn’t his mother, and if Ilya wants to watch hockey with her, well, who is she to say no?
Caitlin decides to treat the game watching experience the same she does whenever she watches games with Cassie, Selena, Lisa, and Carmen. That is to say: she spends way too much time commenting on which players are hot, which ones she thinks might be assholes, and openly mocking the commentary.
“Smash,” Caitlin says without a second thought when a still image of Carter Vaughan flashes on the screen. The commentator says something about Vaughan returning to play after missing four games due to an injury, but she isn’t really paying attention. This is something she does often with Cassie, Selena, and Carmen. Lisa is no fun to play smash or pass with because she passes on everyone except her own husband. She doesn’t even care that the OttaWAG meetups and chats are safe spaces to sexualize and objectify hockey boys, which is their god-given right as partners of professional hockey players. In a way, her dedication to only being interested in Wyatt is charming, but it’s also boring. Like, hello? It’s not like any of them are going to spill each others’ secrets; the OttaWAG space is a sacred one.
Ilya lets out a low, considering hum as he takes another sip of tea. “Pass,” he says, after a moment.
Caitlin simply nods in acknowledgement at first, her eyes not leaving the screen. Then, what just happened finally slots into place in her mind, and everything comes to a screeching halt, like a car hitting the brakes abruptly a solid 20 meters after knocking down a mailbox.
Is Ilya fucking Rozanov playing smash or pass hockey player edition with her?
Caitlin decides to test the waters further. The camera swings to where Matti Jalo is hitting an absolutely obscene stretch.
“Smash,” Caitlin says.
Ilya nods. “Neutral,” he says. “Would not be much fun. I have heard he is not a generous lover. It is unfortunate because he is so hot.”
Holy fuck! Holy fuck! Holy fuck!
The camera moves to JJ Boiziau.
“Smash,” Caitlin says.
Ilya just rolls his eyes. “Pass.” Then, Shane Hollander skates close to Boiziau to talk about something the cameras and microphones do not catch. The two of them laugh as they chat and stretch together.
“Smash,” Ilya says, quickly and unprompted, smiling into his mug.
“Smash,” Caitlin nods in agreeement. Ilya’s eyes flick to her own briefly, face impassive (at least, what she can see of it, as it is partially hidden by his mug, again, the one that declares him the world’s most acceptable hockey player) before snapping his gaze back to Hollander.
Very interesting.
As the game progresses, Caitlin becomes increasingly aware that Ilya is definitely a little delirious with his fever, despite his valiant attempts to put up a functional front. Her strongest evidence is the way that he seems to have little-to-no filter right now.
Ilya Rozanov isn’t necessarily known for having a filter at all, but anyone with a brain can tell that he works the media with some form of a filter. It’s just a different-looking filter than other players use. It’s a filter that allows him to pretend to not have one at all. It lets him play around with the press while refusing to say a whole lot of anything of substance about himself. He's quite good at saying self-important little quips until the press is satisfied enough to allow him to steer the interview towards what Ilya actually wants to talk about, which is usually the way his teammates are playing.
He does not have that media filter on right now.
“I just think that you should give Olsson a chance,” Caitlin finds herself saying. “He’s built as hell and has a pretty face to go along with it.”
"Pass. One thousand times pass. Ugh," Ilya says. “He is nothing compared to Shane.”
He keeps doing this– Caitlin tries to restart the smash or pass game, compliment a player, literally anything about someone who isn't Shane Hollander, and Ilya brings the conversation straight back to Hollander (or Shane, as he keeps saying. He gave up on saying "Hollander" a while ago) and his edges or backhand or abs or arms or freckles or smile or whatever else Ilya can think of. The only distractions she has found have been Scott Hunter (which forces Ilya, seemingly unconsciously, into shockingly ageist commentary for extended periods of time) and Hayden Pike (who Ilya seems to hold a very intense hatred of. She's never heard someone describe another person as "poutine covered in chemical waste"). Everyone else either gets a simple “eh…” as flippant acknowledgement or a snippy comment about what they could be doing better, be it in hockey or in their personal lives.
Caitlin never expected to know so much about Gilbert Comeau’s personal life, dropped onto Caitlin's head in spurts like the world's most diabolical light drizzle. Like, Ilya seems to have an insider source, and that source has a hell of a lot to say about the man.
On the screen, Shane Hollander slams the puck into the Admirals’ net.
“Wow,” Caitlin says and braces herself for whatever Ilya may or may not consciously be planning to say.
“Very sexy goal,” he murmurs softly. Then, to Caitlin’s utter shock and horror, he bursts into tears. Like, really messy, loud, gulping sobs.
“Oh my go–” Caitlin lets out before she can stop herself. Then, she swallows and remembers her training on how to remain calm and collected when someone starts ugly sobbing in front of you. It’s just that, you know, she’s a little more used to women she barely knows doing that, not her husband’s team captain.
“Are you okay?” She asks.
“Shane,” Ilya says in lieu of an answer, voice wobbling. “He…” Ilya coughs a little, spluttering and hacking so hard that his face turns a twinge purple.
Once Ilya regains his bearings, lubricating his throat with a small sip of tea, he heaves a tremendous, choked-up sigh. “I miss him,” Ilya sniffs while a fat crocodile tear rolls down his cheek.
“You must be good friends,” Caitlin says. She wants to give him an opening; while she is fairly certain that they’re a little more than friends, Caitlin wants to ensure that Ilya has the opportunity to choose whatever relationship title he is most comfortable using in front of an acquaintance.
Then again, he’s on a hell of a lot of Nyquil that he’s been fighting off for the past hour, so…maybe now’s not a good time to be letting him make choices.
Ilya sniffles pathetically. “My husband,” he corrects.
“Ah,” she says. “Just to clarify: you are telling me that Shane Hollander is your husband?”
“Hollander-Rozanov,” he grumbles. On the screen, Shane Hollander(-Rozanov) leaps into the bench for a much-deserved break and is replaced by Bouchard, who offers his captain a clumsy fist bump that nearly misses and almost turns into a punch. At least, it makes Ilya giggle.
“Shane Hollander-Rozanov,” Caitlin repeats.
Ilya nods, smiling and sniffling as he does it.
Through his fever, Ilya manages to weave a tale that Caitlin imagines is an approximation of their epic love story, probably sans some important details in parts and with some exaggeration in other parts due to the fact that his brain is being boiled in its own juices and trace amounts of acetaminophen. Somehow, without Caitlin really acknowledging what was happening, she finds herself on the same couch as Ilya, legs stretched so her feet rest on his (expensive-looking) coffee table, while Ilya rests his head in her lap. She doesn’t acknowledge how weird this is until she realizes that her hands are slowly passing through his sweaty curls as his tears slip out and moisten her jeans. She doesn't move; Caitlin just acknowledges how fucking weird this entire situation is and keeps pressing her fingertips against Ilya's hot skin.
Periodically, Ilya is distracted by what happens on the screen despite having already seen a good chunk of this game before. Caitlin can't even fault him because he is actively telling her about how much Shane Hollander-Rozanov’s (what a weird change to process, she thinks. She has to keep reminding herself to tack on the second surname and make it not sound like an afterthought. Ilya gets even more upset when it sounds like she briefly forgot the Rozanov part of the name) freckles have changed his life, and then boom: the infamous freckles are right there on the screen. They're partially covered by a visor and the way Shane wildly chews his mouth guard like a teething puppy with a Kong toy, but you can still see enough to be distracted. Of course Shane’s loving, freckle-obsessed husband stands no fucking chance.
And god, Ilya just…keeps fucking sobbing over how much he misses his husband…and showing Caitlin pictures. He has so many fucking pictures of Shane. Caitlin’s pretty sure she has just seen more angles of Shane Hollander-Rozanov’s face than she has seen of her own mother.
She tries very hard not to think about the sheer quantity of dick pics Ilya has scrolled past in his efforts to clumsily show her photos that he thinks are relevant to the stories he is telling. Ilya accidentally taps his finger against a poorly-edited meme that threatens Hayden Pike's life, which she purposefully does not comment on. Ilya hits the back button and forces his finger to land on the proper photo, the one that was right next to the Hayden Pike death threat in his photo gallery: a photo of Shane Hollander-Rozanov flashing a peace sign outside of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. It's not even relevant to the story Ilya is telling her; he just wanted Caitlin to see the photo. He thinks his husband looks cute in it.
Caitlin learns fairly fast that Ilya hasn't seen Shane in five days, so all of this seems somewhat dramatic. Ilya is acting like Shane has been shipped off halfway across the world and been stuck there for months or sent to the International Space Station with very little contact with the planet he once called home, not…New York City. You know, just a small distance away, and fully contactable via phone.
Shane apparently also talked to Ilya on the phone in the morning before Caitlin arrived, which prompted the whole sobbing in front of the game thing she walked in on. Jesus.
Caitlin, at one point in the story, attempted to pause the game (it was getting juicy, okay! Sue her! It’s not every day that someone tells you that a beautiful frotting session turned into a situationship breakup that would negatively impact the lives of Ilya's entire team). Caitlin attempting to pause the game made Ilya freak the fuck out. The stubborn bastard is hellbent on telling his beautiful love story, thirsting over his husband as he skates around on the television screen, and fighting off the siren song of Nyquil-induced sleep all at the same time. It’s impressive. It's also deeply annoying.
Around 2:30pm, Ilya finally falls asleep. Caitlin takes the opportunity to maneuver his head off of her lap so she can free herself and clean up the small mess they’ve made. She goes back to the kitchen to wash their dishes and tries very hard not to laugh at the WAG jacket as she passes by it (Ilya had told her, in detail, about how amazing of a fuck they had when Shane saw Ilya in the jacket for the first time. She has learned a hell of a lot about gay sex today. She has also learned about the way Shane Hollander-Rozanov apparently goes crazy over seeing Ilya in his clothes. She probably didn’t need to know so much detail about that, honestly. She wears Evan’s jersey in bed, sometimes, but she’s not sure she’s going to be able to do that anytime soon without being bombarded by the mental images Ilya wove into her brainstem. He’s got a knack for really poetic and nasty descriptions of Shane Hollander-Rozanov’s precum soaking into his own Voyageurs jersey. Ugh).
There isn’t much to be done in the kitchen, and Cait’s got some time to kill, so she goes back to the living room and turns on an episode of What We Do in the Shadows while Ilya snores like his throat has been replaced with an exhaust pipe.
Midway through her episode, Caitlin hears the front door cracks open. She almost falls flat on her face in her attempt to grab the TV remote and pause the show quickly enough. "Ilya?" a voice Caitlin does not recognize calls out.
"Hello," Caitlin says, just loud enough to be heard from the other room. "Ilya is asleep."
In a flash, a smartly-dressed middle aged woman appears at the threshold of the living room, eyes locked in on Caitlin so intensely that they're practically glowing. Well then.
"Hi," Caitlin says, jumping up to approach the woman she is about 90% certain is Yuna Fucking Hollander, director of the Irina Foundation, Shane Hollander's mother, recent rumoured mistress of Ilya Rozanov, and as Caitlin Dykstra now knows: Ilya Rozanov's actual legal mother-in-law. "I'm Caitlin Dykstra, uh, my husband is on Rozanov's team?"
Something stiff seems to settle over Yuna Hollander as she stares at the stranger in her son-in-law's home. Her shoulders square and her eyes turn steely as she looks over Caitlin like she is interviewing her.
"Right, thank you for coming by, Caitlin," she says. "I'm glad Ilya has such a caring team." Ilya, Caitlin thinks. She calls him Ilya. Then again, she just called Caitlin by her first name instead of Mrs. Dykstra, so maybe it's a generational thing or a weird power move.
"The guys have been acting like he was nearly murdered," Caitlin says dryly, which to her delight, makes Yuna smile a little. "I had to do something."
"Hockey players are always quite dramatic," Yuna says.
Caitlin grabs her bag. "I'll head out, then," she says. Yuna doesn't say anything, just nods and turns her head to look at Ilya's sleeping form balled-up on the couch.
Right as she is about to open the door, Caitlin pauses with her hand on the front door handle, considering her next move. Caitlin has no intentions of blowing up Ilya's life anytime soon. She could just keep everything that just happened to herself. The whole secret marriage thing is, well, secret. Ilya seems intent on keeping it that way until he has more solid ground under his feet, and Caitlin is not the type of person to breach another person's trust like that.
Objectively speaking, Ilya should feel comfortable and open in his own home…but also, Caitlin knows from experience that sometimes the Ottawa Centaurs just...break into each other’s homes. A secret of this magnitude could be hard to keep if Ilya isn’t careful with his things. She suspects the only reason why the Centaurs haven't invaded Ilya's home already is because they're still trying to ease their new captain in, or perhaps they are intimidated by him still.
Caitlin thinks about the snot running down Ilya's face as he admitted to missing his husband and thinks ha, yeah, right, intimidating.
Well, if Ilya wants to hide that part of himself from his new team, he's going to have to be a little more prepared in the future.
"Mrs. Hollander?" Caitlin calls out, hand still paused on the door handle. "When Ilya wakes up, tell him he should be more careful about where he keeps his WAG gear, just in case, yeah?"
Caitlin feels rather than sees the body slam into her side, jostling her away from the door handle and back into the home. Yuna Hollander, all 5'4" and 140 lbs of her, positions herself between Caitlin and the door as if to trap her in the house. Based on her facial expression, the way she's gone pale, and her heavy breathing, she'll probably do whatever it takes to physically prevent Caitlin from going to her car. Caitlin has a few inches and pounds on the older woman, but she immediately gets the sense that Yuna Hollander can get scrappy with it if she needs to. Those manicured fingernails look sharp.
All things considered, Caitlin probably should have expected this. She recognizes pretty immediately that she could have phrased it better.
"Mrs. Dykstra," Yuna says in a careful monotone, like an art teacher trying to calmly convince a young child to not stab their seatmate with an x-acto knife.
"I'm not going to say anything, Mrs. Hollander," Caitlin says, bringing her hands up as if Yuna being able to see her palms will somehow placate her. There is no x-acto knife in her grip. "To anyone. Not even my husband. Don't worry."
Yuna stares at Caitlin like Caitlin might be a poisonous snake wearing a gecko costume. It’s a very particular look.
"I'd never out someone," Caitlin continues, palms still in the air. "Mrs. Hollander, I volunteer at women's shelters. I know how important safety is, and I know how devastating it can be when someone violates that."
Yuna, at least, looks a little more at ease. Caitlin lowers her hands and Yuna does not immediately have a bad reaction to the move. Caitlin feels like she's diffusing a bomb.
"The team has been known to invade each other's houses," Caitlin continues. "My house has been...victim of that, a few times, you know, once the guys knew it was okay to do that. I just want to make sure that, uhm, Ilya is prepared for that, or has a chance to tell the guys to stay far away if that's what he'd prefer."
"That is kind of you, Caitlin," Yuna says quietly. The tension bleeds out slowly.
The next day, Caitlin receives a voicemail from an unknown number while she is busy helping a young woman revamp her resume.
Thank you for yesterday, and also, I am sorry about yesterday, Ilya (Hollander-)Rozanov’s voice scratches out through her phone speakers. Can we agree to never talk about what happened ever again? Please? Thank you.
Caitlin sends him a text message as she walks to her car.
your secrets are safe with me, loverboy
Then, just for added measure, she sends Ilya a shirtless photo of her husband along with “smash or pass?”
Ilya reacts with the vomiting emoji. Rude.