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Cliff Marleau knows Ilya Rozanov is his best friend and the closest thing to a brother he’ll ever get. They’ve been through seven fucking years of hockey together, training camps and playoff seasons and glorious wins and brutal losses and weekend benders that always end in Cliff or Rozy or both puking their guts out, most of the time into a toilet or a bush and one memorable time in the back of Carmichael’s ugly fucking pickup truck.
All that to say, he’s the first one in the hospital waiting room when Rozy takes a hard hit from Montreal in the tail end of the second period and collapses against the boards. Cliff doesn’t see the hit, only the replays after the game, but the way Rozy’s head snaps against the glass, violent and sharp even through his smudged phone screen, threatens to make him vomit.
Hammersmith is on Comeau as soon as Rozy hits the ice, and St-Simone helps him off the rink. It’s a small miracle that he can stand up even with help; he’s obviously dizzy and keeps cycling through the same three Russian phrases.
Cliff only recognizes two of them as St-Simone drags Rozy by the bench and down the tunnel, mostly strings of curses that Rozy has used generously over the last seven years, and the third thing sounds like a lot of smudged vowels and shanya, another word he doesn’t understand. Rozy’s not unconscious, though, so Cliff will take what he can get.
He’s the first one out of the locker room as soon as the game ends. St-Simone makes him promise to tell them if Rozy’s up for visitors and only cusses him out a little bit when Cliff claps him on the shoulder and tells him he’s being thrown to the media scrum.
It’s a tense drive to Montreal General, fingers tapping nonsense rhythms against the nice leather steering wheel as he waits for the light to turn green. He’s not even sure he’ll be let in– he’s not on Rozy’s emergency contact list.
With a start, he realizes he doesn’t know who would be Rozy’s emergency contact. His dad is dead, he never talks about his mom, and Rozy’s only mentioned his brother once in less than charitable circumstances. Also, his brother is in Russia. He doesn’t have anyone in Boston, and Montreal is enemy territory, especially after tonight. Maybe that friend he keeps insisting isn’t his girl… Svetlana? But she isn’t around much anymore– Rozy said offhandedly that she works in some sort of fancy travelling car sales, and sold him his gorgeous orange Chevrolet Corvette as a farewell gift.
Regardless, Montreal isn’t particularly sadistic, and they probably won’t kick a guy when he’s down, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.
The light turns green. Someone behind him honks. Cliff resists the urge to get out of his car and smash the other car’s headlights in, but only because he’d probably get arrested, and Rozy doesn’t deserve to be alone in a hospital room. He looked concussed on the ice, and waking up in a hospital room by himself will probably freak him out more, even if he’d never admit it.
When he gets to the hospital and marches through the front doors, he makes a beeline straight for the front desk.
“Ilya Rozanov,” he says, short, and the woman’s eyes flick up at him for a moment before she resumes tapping away at her keyboard. After a moment, she says, “He was brought in an hour ago. Are you on his emergency contact list?”
Cliff frowns, frustrated. “No, but he’s my teammate. Is he okay? Can I see him?”
She shakes her head. “No, sorry. Unless you’re an emergency contact, no visitors until the doctor calls you from the waiting room. You can sit with your other teammate over there.” She points to the far wall, clearly done with the way Cliff looms increasingly further over the divider.
He tries to rein himself in, tells himself not to harass the hospital workers because that’s common decency, and he cannot put himself at the level of Dallas fucking Kent. He’s still seething even though he’s trying not to when he finally registers the other part of her statement.
“Teammate?” he echoes, several beats too late, and the woman points again. “He came in ten minutes ago, also for Mr. Rozanov.”
Cliff turns.
He’s never seen this guy before.
The guy is sitting ramrod straight in the hospital chair, hands placed stiffly on the tops of his jeans, and feet flat on the floor. He’s wearing an oddly familiar long black coat with a gray hoodie, wrinkled to hell and back. The only part of him that doesn’t seem rigid to fucking snapping is his head, which is dropped against his chest, black hair covering his face.
Cliff doesn’t realize he’s walking over until his shoes stop just in front of the stranger. The man’s head snaps up at the squeak of rubber on linoleum.
They stare at each other. Cliff can see the man’s glasses now that his face isn’t hidden anymore. Thin black frames. He’d look like a nerd if he weren’t built like a brick shithouse.
The man’s eyes are rimmed with red, but otherwise his expression is perfectly blank. He’s holding himself so stiff that if Cliff tapped him he’d probably shatter all over the hospital floor like glass.
“Hi,” he starts, because who the fuck is this guy?
“Hello,” the man says back.
They continue staring.
“You should sit,” the man finally says, not unkindly. Cliff nods stiffly and sits one chair away before immediately turning to stare again. Jesus fucking Christ, he really needs to get it together. Maybe start by learning what’s going on, like, for example, “Who are you?”
The man blinks. “I’m,” he starts, and swallows, and restarts. “My name is Shane Hollander. Il– Rozanov is my– friend. We’re friends.”
Cliff stares. He’s not usually this bad with new people– hell, between them, Cliff is usually the one dragging Rozy out of bar fights and settling ruffled feathers. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t make his own messes– Carmichael has had to save his ass a fair few times, and Rozy can and will laugh at Cliff before making sure he gets home fine.
But Rozy isn’t here. He’s in a hospital room, and this man that Cliff doesn’t know and has never seen before is sitting here saying he knows Ilya Rozanov, Captain of the Boston Raiders, well enough to call him his friend and sit in a hospital room to wait for him, not even an hour after he was admitted, and Rozy has never even mentioned this guy before. Not, I know a guy in Montreal, or, my friend in Montreal, or, my friend, Shane.
Shane Hollander.
Rozy is his best friend, the closest thing he has to a brother.
No offense,” Cliff says, bluntly, “But I’ve never seen you before. If you’re Rozy’s friend, then why haven’t we ever met you?” Shane flinches. His expression tightens.
Something in Cliff is telling him to shut up, some deep instinct that keeps him upright in hockey and tells him when to shoot and when to get the fuck out of the way, but he steamrolls right over it.
“I don’t think– I’ve never even heard your name before.”
He thinks Shane might get angry, might insist that yes, he knows Ilya Rozanov, we’re friends, of course Ilya’s told you about me.
He’s not prepared for the twist of grief, an expression so wild and an ache so deep Cliff almost recoils– before Shane’s face smooths out again and he returns to looking empty.
It’s worse, somehow. He looked blank before, but now he looks like he's scraped hollow. Cliff doesn’t understand. It’s making his teeth grind.
“It’s complicated,” Shane says, finally.
“Complicated how?” Cliff demands. “I didn’t even know he had any friends in Montreal. It’s not exactly friendly for him. You Montreal fans get so fucking angry about a stupid game; it’s no wonder I don’t trust this random fucking guy that I’ve never heard about claiming to be friends with him.”
It’s too biting, too sharp. He knows he’s being rude and a hypocrite. His entire career is about the same stupid game he’s ragging on Shane about.
He finds he doesn’t particularly care. He’s Rozy’s wing and his Alternate. They support each other, on and off the ice, and sitting uselessly in this fucking hospital waiting room, waiting for news, this is the only way Cliff knows how.
Shane won’t meet Cliff’s eyes anymore, instead settling somewhere between his shoes.
They sit, again, in silence. Cliff stares at Shane and Shane stares at the tile.
After ten minutes of this incomplete triangle of not talking, Cliff takes a deep breath. Okay, okay. This clearly isn’t helping anything, and honestly, Cliff is fucking tired. This guy might be built as hell, but it’s definitely nothing Cliff can’t handle if it comes to blows.
“Look,” he starts. Shane doesn’t even twitch. “I think– no, I’m sorry. I’m being rude.” He scratches his neck, turning, finally, to face the general room instead of the statue sitting next to him. It’s blessedly empty– hopefully a video of him yelling at this random guy doesn’t end up on social media. Janice in PR would probably kill him for causing another incident.
“It’s just hard seeing Rozy go down like that, and I got defensive. The guy’s my best friend, you know?”
When Shane doesn’t say anything, Cliff continues, a little awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to get in your face about it. Rozy is his own person, and– yeah, he doesn’t have to tell us everything. Or anything. I was just shocked that there was anyone here except for me, cause the rest of the guys are coming later if Rozy’s up for visitors, so.”
There’s a short silence before the chair next to him creaks, long and slow, and Cliff looks over to see Shane bent over with his forehead on his knees, and his hands, previously placed nicely on the tops of his thighs, are knotted in the sleeves of his jacket.
Cliff stares. “Uh,” he tries, “Dude,” but doesn’t get much more out before a door swings open and someone says, “For Ilya Rozanov?”
Shane and Cliff’s heads both snap towards the voice. The woman Cliff assumes is the doctor has a clipboard and a bland expression, which could be normal doctor shit, or it could mean Cliff’s best friend is dying.
“Yes– yeah,” Cliff says. “Yeah, I’m his teammate. Is he okay?”
Shane says nothing. His chair creaks, though, as he sits up from his pseudo-fetal position and places his hands back on his thighs like nothing happened. Cliff eyes him, wary.
“My name is Dr. Perez. Mr. Rozanov is awake. He’s got a moderate concussion and a fractured collarbone, but nothing that will require surgery. Regardless, we’d like to keep him for observation for the next 24 hours to make sure no complications arise.” She consults her notes. “He’s on fairly heavy medication, but he said he’s willing to have visitors if you’d like to see him.”
Cliff stands hurriedly. “Yeah, I want to see him.” He only hesitates for a moment before jerking a thumb at Shane as well. “We both want to see him, please.”
He ignores Shane’s shocked look, which, while reasonable because Cliff was borderline about to strangle him not even five minutes ago, still sort of stings. He’s a big guy, and he knows he looks intimidating, but he tries hard to be friendly and personable when he can. He doesn’t like being scary unless he’s on the ice. It kind of sucks that he let his anger get the best of him. Shane doesn’t say anything else, though, just stiffly rises to his feet to follow Cliff and Dr. Perez through the hall.
No one says anything until they reach a hospital room on the third floor, and Dr. Perez leaves them after a strict warning not to touch any of the machinery. “Press the call button if anything seems wrong, or if you have any questions. One of our nurses will answer, and they’ll come get me if necessary.” She walks off, and then it’s just Shane and Cliff.
Neither of them moves to open the door. Cliff’s placed at the better angle– he can peek through the little side window and see that Rozy’s awake and lying back on the hospital bed with a vaguely annoyed expression. Dr. Perez said he was on heavy painkillers, but surely it can’t be that bad if he isn’t actively grinning at the ceiling or crying?
“I should… I should go.”
Cliff blinks.
“I shouldn’t be here. I– I, uh, I need to go.”
Cliff, incredulous, turns to look at Shane. “Dude, what? We just got here, and I almost decapitated you in the waiting room for this and you’re just gonna leave?”
Shane looks fucking miserable, actually, and Cliff regrets the words before they even leave his mouth, but then Rozy’s voice, muffled by the door, says, “Cliff Marleau, can you shut your ugly mug up?” and then the jig’s up, and Shane pushes past Cliff with surprising force and wrenches the door open and trips into the room with a strangled sob and says “You fucking asshole,” which makes Cliff bristle, and then follows it up with “You scared me! Fuck!” which makes Cliff choke on a surprised laugh.
He watches, incredulous, as Rozy’s neutral-to-annoyed expression melts into something Cliff has literally never seen before, a wide, toothy grin overtaking the bottom half of his face while his eyes crease into squinty little crescents with the force of his smile. Cliff can see his fucking gums with how hard he’s smiling, Jesus Christ.
“Дорогой!” Rozy coos, one hand lifting from the blanket to clumsily grasp at both of Shane’s, who heaves a shuddering breath and rearranges them so Shane’s cradling Ilya’s hands in both of his.
“You scared me,” he repeats, soft and wavering. Rozy’s ridiculous grin folds into something smaller, and his lazy hand in Shane’s tightens so he’s actually holding Shane’s hands in return. “I did not mean to, моя любовь. I am sorry.” He does a little shimmy with his injured shoulder, wrapped up in a sling, and ignores the way Shane makes a noise of protest. “Is not so bad! Does not hurt, okay? Don’t make sad face, моя повязка.”
“Bandage? What?” Shane says, still holding Rozy’s hand and still looking two seconds away from collapsing.
“Glad to see you’re looking better, Rozy,” Cliff says because he has no fucking sense of timing anymore, apparently, and the speed at which Rozy rips his hand away from Shane– the sound Shane makes–
His hands twitch forward, chasing Rozy’s, before slowly curling into fists tight enough that his knuckles bleach white. They return to his thighs. His eyes are red.
Cliff wants to throw himself into the Boston Harbor, actually, or pay someone his entire salary for the rest of forever to have them invent a time machine, because he is one hundred percent not smart enough to make one himself. The abject misery on Shane’s face despite his failing efforts to keep it neutral is making Cliff’s heart hurt, and he doesn’t even know the guy.
“Marley,” Rozy says, much less enthusiastically, and Cliff says, “Yeah, I’m just– I’m just gonna go, actually,” and closes the door before he can fuck things up further. Just to be safe, he retreats down the hall and plants himself in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs three doors down, and resolutely stares at nothing.
So.
Shane Hollander.
Built like a brick shithouse, kind of stuffy and rigid, and important enough to Ilya Rozanov to be allowed to hold his hand and cry when he gets hurt. Who holds Ilya Rozanov carefully, like he’s a porcelain bowl instead of a 200-pound, six-foot-something professional hockey player who runs people through the boards on a daily basis and laughs while he does it.
Cliff thinks about a near decade of Montreal games, and how he attributed Rozy’s excitement to the fact that Boston and Montreal are division rivals, and it always makes for a good game. He thinks about the way Rozy always rushes out of the locker room after Montreal games, and how it’s slightly different than his regular hook-up rushes; instead of a swagger, he’s just excited.
How long have they known each other? How long have they–
“Okay, no,” Cliff says aloud. “No guessing. He’ll tell me or he won’t right?”
The hallway provides no answers.
He sits there for another ten minutes, trying to give them time to– what? Fix whatever mood Cliff broke? He’s just gonna wreck it again if he comes in unannounced, so should he just wait until Shane leaves? Should he try to introduce himself to Shane again after he leaves? He definitely fucked it up in the waiting room, but Cliff’s nothing if not persistent, so he’ll try again, and hopefully it’ll go better? Maybe Shane will be more settled once he knows Rozy is fine.
Though, considering how shaken they both looked when Cliff interrupted them, maybe not.
His phone buzzes.
SAINT SIMMY: is rozy dead
SAINT SIMMY: if i find out from the fucking news that cap died and you didnt tell me im going to wring your neck
Oh, shit.
Cliff looks back at Rozy’s room. If he was that nervous about Cliff walking in, what would he do around the rest of their team?
He doesn’t think they’d take it badly. They live in Boston; it’s impossible to throw a rock without hitting at least three pride flags and a feminist, but they also play professional hockey. Cliff might not be the sharpest crayon in the box, or whatever the saying is, but he’s not deaf. He knows what the guys say on and off the ice, and even if it’s not as bad as Toronto or Tampa Bay, that’s a pretty fucking low bar.
All that to say, it’s maybe reasonable that Rozy didn’t tell anyone about his secret boyfriend. And Cliff kind of ruined it for him. He didn’t mean to, of course, but as a kid his sister beat into him that the fact that he apologized didn’t change the fact that he did eat her pudding cup.
Pudding cups aren’t really equal to secret boyfriends, but Perry would probably beat his ass again if he didn’t realize it’s the same principle.
So.
BIG RED DAWG: chill bro
BIG RED DAWG: just a concussion, saw him for a sec but he said no visitors
BIG RED DAWG: wouldnt be able to take seeing all ur ugly mugs
BIG RED DAWG: said itd make his head worse
SAINT SIMMY: coward
SAINT SIMMY: hes just scared ill be prettier than him now
BIG RED DAWG: ur last haircut made u look like my dogs hairball
SAINT SIMMY: 😡😡😡😡😡😡
SAINT SIMMY: ill let coach know rozy is ok
Cliff pockets his phone. Their teammates are probably taken care of now. Cliff is temporarily captain while Rozy’s out, so they’ll listen to him for the most part, so there won’t be any visitors for today. Tomorrow is a whole other thing, but he’ll get to it when he gets to it.
What about the nurses? They probably have an NDA or something, but it probably won’t be good for Rozy if one of them walks in while he’s holding Shane’s hand again.
He could probably sit in front of the door and warn them, at least, before someone walks in. Or just ward them off. He’s pretty intimidating; as unfortunate as it’d be, it’d probably work.
So he stands up and moves back to the chairs by Rozy’s room. He can’t really hear anything, so it’s probably fine, right? As long as he moves before Shane leaves the room, it’s probably good.
The faint murmur of conversation ebbs and flows, and Cliff gets a little distracted– his fingers are tapping against the uncomfortable plastic armrest in an absent rhythm. It takes him a bit to realize their conversation is getting louder, more strained, and then–
“I can’t keep doing this, Ilya,” Shane says, and even muffled through the wood, it sounds wet at the edges. Cliff’s fingers stall on the armrest.
“Shane–”
Cliff doesn’t remember standing.
“I can’t keep doing this,” Shane says again, and this time Cliff catches the end of a sob, shallow and hitched. “You– I can’t– you’re hurt, and I watched you get hurt, and I can’t even come see you because we can’t be on any paperwork and I have to wait and wait and no one would even know to tell me if I wasn’t watching–”
“Shane–”
“And I know why, I do, I know you have– I know you can’t go back and hockey is keeping you here, I know, but it hurts,” and his voice breaks, “that it has to be like this. But Marleau doesn’t even know my name, and you won’t even look at me with other people around and it’s been nine years, Ilya. Nine! And I– I won’t leave you, I can’t leave you, but I’m still so fucking selfish and I want more, even though I know we can’t, and it hurts to see you hurt and it hurts that I can’t even take you home with me and you won’t let me take care of you–”
“Shanya, дорогой, breathe– you are having panic attack–”
There’s a sharp sound, and everything stops for a moment.
“Don’t touch me, please.” It’s barely audible. “Please don’t–” A shuddering breath, in and out. “I can’t do this.”
The door swings open just as Cliff steps back, hands raised, and Shane steps out of the room. He doesn’t even look at Cliff or maybe even realize he’s there before stumbling down the hall and disappearing around the corner.
Cliff watches Shane disappear around the corner, then slowly turns to face Rozy, who is watching the newly vacated chair at his bedside with an expression rivaling someone who recently saw their loved ones get run over by a semi truck in slow motion.
“I don’t think I was supposed to hear that,” Cliff says slowly.
Nothing happens for five seconds, and then the next minute and a half are spent doing literally everything in Cliff’s power to keep Rozy from scrambling out of his hospital bed and cracking his head open on the tile to chase after Shane.
In order: Rozy pitches sideways, and Cliff rushes into the room to keep him from falling off the bed, except Rozy is over 200 pounds of Russian hockey god muscle and bone, so Cliff staggers under his weight, and for a solid thirty seconds it’s just Rozy rambling incoherent Russian into Cliff’s shoulder blade as he tries to push Cliff away enough to move out of the bed. Then Cliff manages to get him upright, but all of the wires are straining scarily because Rozy keeps throwing his limbs around, so Cliff uses one hand to pin both of his forearms and another to push him back onto the pillows, and after Rozy’s head finally hits the mattress, he stops wriggling long enough for Cliff to hesitantly release him.
It’s only after Cliff steps away that Rozy even addresses Cliff at all. He’s got another sort of fancy monitor wire twisted around his arm, and Cliff’s debating if it's a big enough deal to press the nurse-summoning button when Rozy brings up his hands to rub at his face and tangles it even further.
“I think I am the worst boyfriend,” he states plainly, and Cliff gears up to defend Rozy from himself even though his head is spinning with boyfriend, okay, boyfriend, and the way Shane had said you won’t even look at me, and then Rozy continues, “I think I would probably kill myself if someone treated me the way I treat my Shanya,” and then Cliff says “Woah, Rozy, hold on,” and then Rozy starts crying, actual tears welling at the corners of his eyes and spilling down his cheeks, and Cliff sort of– gives up, a little bit.
What the fuck is even going on anymore, he doesn’t know– maybe he’s the one who got slammed into the boards, and he’s having some sort of concussion-induced hallucination.
Cliff sits down heavily in the chair Rozy’s maybe-boyfriend-Shane-Hollander had evacuated.
“So,” he starts, “That guy, Shane, he’s your boyfriend?” He means for it to be a peace offering, like, hey dude, tell me about this boyfriend you’ve been hiding, and he seems to really care about you? What’s that all about, but Rozy snaps straight up in his bed and whips his head around to glare at Cliff with an intensity that, frankly, scares him. It’s worse because his eyes are still wet, and in the weird hospital lighting, that wet glint makes Rozy look like he’s genuinely planning murder. Cliff recoils.
“Who told you that?” Rozy snaps. “Is supposed to be secret. No one knows. Who told you?”
If this were any other day, Cliff would find this high and forgetful version of Rozy hilarious, but he’s tired and confused and honestly slightly upset that Rozy hadn’t told him anything about this very obviously important part of his life, so he’s feeling a little mean. “You told me, like, three seconds ago. You said you thought you were a bad boyfriend and then called him Shanya– which, hey, you also said that on the ice–”
Rozy stares at him. “You think I am bad boyfriend?” He drops his face into his hands. “Marly, I have never seen you with a girl longer than ten seconds, and you need eight of them just to get your fucking dick out of your pants. If I am a bad boyfriend then you are fucking– I don’t know, what is– fuck.” He presses his face deeper into his palms, muffling the sound. “You are bug that eats husband. Man-tick. The church one.”
“Dude,” Cliff says. “Did you hit your head that badly? I thought it was just a small concussion?”
Rozy looks up. “I have concussion?”
“Dude,” Cliff says again.
“Man-tick bug,” Rozy insists. “Bug with long fast arms. Богомол. English is stupid fucking language, help me Marly. Where is my Shanya? He knows.” He blinks, and his expression immediately crumples. “I am worst boyfriend.”
“Dude,” and Cliff sounds like a broken record at this point, “So he is your boyfriend?”
“No.”
“...No?”
“Shane will leave me, and it will be good for him,” Rozy mumbles, scowling. “Maybe I am church man-tick bug. He makes me happy and then I hurt him. Maybe he should eat me instead.”
Cliff gives up. After seven years of this, he knows when to pick his battles, but Rozy still manages to surprise him somehow.
“I love you man, you know that?” he says. “You’re always gonna be my best friend, no matter what, okay?”
Rozy pauses his self-soothing rocking to squint at him. “I am taken,” he says suspiciously. “Marly, I do not know if you know this, but I have boyfriend.”
—
“Hey– hey! Hollander, hold up for a second.”
The nurse eventually came to kick Cliff out of Rozy’s hospital room for more scans. It’s late enough that visiting hours will probably be over by the time he’s done, so Rozy makes Cliff promise to get him four McGriddles with extra sausage tomorrow morning so he can be saved from horrible hospital food, and then begins wheedling the nurse to let Cliff slip him McDonald's after the nurse flatly refuses that request.
Cliff thinks it’s a distraction from the way Rozy’s head had immediately snapped to the door when the latch clicked open, like he was expecting someone.
After Cliff leaves, he finds Shane Hollander having a mini panic attack in the parking lot, and then accidentally makes it worse by popping out from around the plant pot he was crouching behind and saying, “I was looking for you!”
He wasn’t, actually, but Rozy clearly was, so maybe he can convince Shane to bring Rozy some McDonald's instead. Peace offering and avoidance of scary nurses in one go.
Unfortunately, Shane flinches, badly, and before Cliff knows it, he’s halfway across the asphalt. Cliff, stupidly, yells his name across the parking lot and watches despairingly as Shane flinches hard enough to stumble and whirl around.
“Can you be any louder,” Shane hisses, eyes red, and Cliff holds up his hands in surrender as he slowly crosses the parking lot like he’s trying to approach a feral cat. Like, it’s not not similar, right? Shane is certainly bristling like one, shoulders up to his ears and so fucking tense.
When Cliff gets close enough, Shane says, like it costs him something, “Can I help you?” and Cliff sighs.
“I just wanted to apologize,” he says, and he thinks it’s warranted and a reasonable thing to say for accidentally walking in on him and Rozy and also scaring him like thirty seconds ago, except Shane stares at him like he’s offered to kill his firstborn child or something.
“You– apologize for what?” His voice is strangled.
“For interrupting you and Rozy. I, uh…” Cliff scratches his neck. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. He didn’t tell me anything, yknow, so I was just kind of surprised, but I promise I won’t tell. You seemed pretty freaked in the waiting room, and then Rozy panicked when he realized I was there, which, sorry about that too? I wouldn’t have interrupted if I knew. And uh, also, after you left, Rozy was talking about a– a church bug with long arms? And then he started asking for you, because you knew the word, and… uh, sorry, man, can you say something? I promise I’m not rambling on purpose.”
“Mantis,” Shane says weakly. “Praying mantis. We watched a documentary about them last week.”
“Oh. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Do they actually eat their husbands?”
“The females do. Yeah.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They stand there, again, in awkward silence. Fuck, Cliff has got to stop doing this– if Shane’s gonna be a permanent fixture in Rozy’s life, and it seems like he’s gonna be, then Cliff’s gotta get used to talking to him, and he cannot keep gaping at him like a stupid fucking fish. Get it together, Clifford Marleau.
“So, can I get your number?” Cliff says, and at the same time, Shane blurts out, “You can out me if you want, please just leave Ilya out of it.”
They stare, again, and this time, Cliff says, “Dude, what? No, I’m not gonna do that!” and then immediately eats his words as Shane pales to a frankly alarming degree and says, “Do you want money? I– I can pay you–”
“No! What!”
“I can– do you want sex? I can b-blow you, or–”
“No!”
“I– I promise I can make it good–”
Cliff, out of a desperation the likes of which he hasn’t felt since his ear-wrenching third grade band recital, closes the last few feet between them and slaps his hand over Shane’s mouth. “Please,” he begs, “can you just listen for, like, ten seconds? I’m not gonna out you! Or him! Neither of you! He’s my best friend, I wouldn’t do that to him, okay? And doing that to you would probably be just as fucking bad, so no! Are you calmer now? Also, God, no, I don’t want you to blow me, where did that come from, dude?”
Shane’s breaths are still coming in kind of weird and hiccupy through his nose, but he doesn’t seem like he’s going to keep spewing out more horrible offers or pass out, so Cliff cautiously steps back and removes his hand from Shane’s mouth.
“We good?” he asks, carefully. “I just– I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I guess it happened, so. I was gonna ask for your number, just in case this happens again, so you can, like, text me to ask about him, and I can get you into the hospital easier. If that’s fine.”
Shane is still staring at him and still looks like a feral cat. He looks vaguely less hostile, though, and his shoulders are lowering, and then all at once his face floods with a million different shades of red.
“Okay,” he says, and looks like he wants to say literally anything else. “Yes, you… yes, that works. Okay. No blowjobs.”
“No blowjobs,” Cliff agrees, hoping the extent to which he agrees to this statement is clearly plastered on his face with highlighters and neon markers. “No sex acts and no money. Okay?”
“Okay,” Shane says, for the fifth time this conversation. Cliff is abruptly sick of it. Christ, he just wants to visit his best friend and take an actually good shower and eat three cows and sleep for twenty hours.
They swap numbers. Cliff sends him cliff marleau and Shane sends back Hello, this is Shane Hollander. Thank you for your contact information. I will be in touch.
Jesus Christ.
Cliff pockets his phone. Shane slips his into the pocket of his black overcoat. Cliff recognizes it, now. It’s Rozy’s.
“Rozy was really sad after you left,” Cliff says, carefully, because Rozy gave this man his coat and smiled with all his teeth out, and Shane looked at Rozy like he was something he wanted to hold forever. Shane stiffens again. “Like, I had to wrestle him back into the bed cause he was trying to follow you.”
“You… heard everything, then?”
“No,” Cliff says, like a liar, and somehow Shane believes him, because his shoulders drop and his head drops and he says, “That’s good,” and somehow he’s a worse liar than Cliff.
“Look, man,” Cliff starts, shoving his hands into his pockets, “I just think… I mean, you’re obviously both scared, right? But you’re not gonna get anywhere by not talking. And I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box–” Shane’s brow furrows and Cliff happily ignores it– ”but you guys obviously care for each other, and Rozy is my best friend, and I want to see him happy. So I think you should go talk to him tomorrow once visiting hours start.”
“It’s– you’ve mixed the idioms, it’s the sharpest tool in the shed and brightest– though, I guess the sharpest could also… uh, sorry, not the point.” Cliff watches as Shane works out his response in real time, and it’s almost like Cliff can see the individual gears turning in his brain. It’s kind of cool, but also kind of freaky.
Eventually, Shane whispers, “What if he doesn’t want to see me?” and Cliff barks out a laugh so loud all the birds in the fucking parking lot fly away.
Shane stares, looking mildly insulted, and Cliff says, “Dude, I don’t think that’s possible. We talked for like half an hour after you left and all he wanted was you. Didn’t even ask about the game or anything.”
It’s true, sort of. Rozy still got weird and defensive if he asked outright, but if Cliff asked questions kind of sideways, then Rozy would run his mouth. He learned about Shane’s degree in physical therapy from McGill, and the clinic he works at in Montreal, and that his favorite fruit is mango even though he’s allergic to it and it gives him hives and nausea. He learns that Shane’s favorite color is the honey gold of the early morning sun on his cottage floorboards, and that he does yoga religiously to keep up his flexibility, and then Rozy starts getting that sideways little smirk he always gets when he starts talking about things no one wants to hear about, and Cliff thanks the nurse with genuine relief when she knocks and pokes her head into the door.
He doesn’t tell Shane about this. It’d be kind of weird, but the sentiment must get across, because Shane’s eyes go all wide and shiny, almost like he’s about to cry.
Shane’s mouth opens, and closes, and opens again. Cliff takes pity on him.
“Just go see him tomorrow. He’ll be happy, and you’ll be happy, and you guys can work out your shit, okay? Win win for everyone.”
“And,” Cliff grins, because McDonald's is a win for everyone, “I’ll Venmo you, like, fifty dollars for McDonald's! Rozy wanted some McGriddles, and then you guys can eat it together tomorrow! Win win again!”
Shane blinks. The shiny look goes away, replaced by a grimace.
“What?”
—
The next morning, Cliff wakes up in his hotel room with a million notifications in the Raiders group chat, a missed call from his Mom, and one message each from Shane Hollander and Rozy.
The group chat is a bunch of nothing, so Cliff laugh reacts to a few messages and closes the thread. He calls his Mom back, who tells him to visit home when he gets back to Boston because Perry dropped off a loaf of chocolate chip banana bread and asks if he’s eating enough and if he needs her to come visit his apartment while he’s away.
The message from Shane is simple.
SHANE HOLLANDER: Thank you.
Cliff sends back a thumbs-up emoji, then flips to Rozy’s chat.
It’s a photo, taken shakily and slanted sideways. The bottom half of the photo is covered by the shitty hospital blankets, like he’s trying to hide, but the side-eye Shane is giving the camera is just bitchy enough to make Cliff grin.
There’s McDonald's on the little rolling table, with three empty wrappers and the fourth McGriddle with a chunk taken out of it. Rozy’s hand is stretched across the blanket, making a grabby motion at Shane. Shane’s hand just barely crests over the edge of the hospital bed.
BIG RED DAWG: looking good rozy
Rozy doesn’t respond until after Cliff finishes packing his own duffel and tosses all of Rozy’s clothing into his suitcase. They’re rooming together, as usual, but Coach notified the team last night that Rozy would be staying in Montreal General for another night under observation, and had assigned Cliff to pack up his shit and deliver it to the hospital room.
His phone chimes just as he’s zipping up the last of Rozy’s suitcase.
ROROROZANOV: shane tells me you paid for mcdonalds
A peace offering, he thinks. He’s at least mentioning Shane and not freaking out about it.
BIG RED DAWG: ur man does not like mcds
BIG RED DAWG: took me like an hour to convince him for u
ROROROZANOV: how sad you got to talk to the most beautiful man on the planet for an hour
ROROROZANOV: boo hoo
BIG RED DAWG: fuck you
ROROROZANOV: no i am too busy
ROROROZANOV: not enough time for you marley even if you pay for mcdonalds
BIG RED DAWG: thats not the only thing i paid for
A pause.
ROROROZANOV: what
Cliff grins.