Work Text:
| Jane: I land in Boston at 10.
| Lily: I have reservation at 1. Does this work for u?
| Jane: Yes! Is Svetlana coming?
| Lily: Yes.
| Lily: When you come do not ask host for Rozanov. Just ask for best hockey player in the league. They will know what you mean.
| Jane: But I will be standing right in front of them?
| Lily: I can’t believe everyone thinks you are nice, Hollander. They do not know the real you.
| Jane: 0:)
Svetlana jumps at the chance to meet Sai the moment Liliya puts it on the table. Really, she should’ve known she would be like this. Her friend had long been a supporter of Sai’s, vehemently defending her to her father when the subject of Canada’s Golden Girl had come up in their discussions of Liliya’s future prospects, back when she still lived in Russia full-time. What does surprise her is the way that Sveta chooses to dress for their lunch. Her friend has always been a well-dressed and put-together kind of woman, but the extra bit of eyeliner on her lids and the sheerness of her top that leaves her dark bra visible when the sunlight hits her chest make her think that there might be an alternative motive. When Liliya raises an eyebrow, Sveta just shrugs.
“Hollander is hot,” she says, guiltlessly, Hollander’s name sounding unfairly alluring with her Russian accent curling around it without a hint of anglicization. Liliya wonders if it would sound half as nice in her own voice. “I mean, her hands? They’re like a dream.”
“I didn’t know that you liked women like that,” Liliya says, pushing down the acid that begins to boil in her chest. “Congratulations. Welcome to the club.”
“It’s Hollander.” She says this slowly, like Liliya could have possibly misheard. “It’s not really about whether I like women or not.” Then she smiles. “Would be a good place to start with women though, wouldn’t it? She’s pretty perfect. Hot, amazing at hockey, what more could I want?”
It’s funny how right Sveta is, even without all the pieces. She doesn’t know about Sai’s little routines and the endearing way she always unpacks her suitcase, even if she is only staying in the hotel for a single night. She doesn’t know that she has been buying the same deodorant for ten years and drove to a Shoppers Drug Mart in the middle of the night when she realized she was about to run out before a roadie. She doesn’t know that that deodorant is scented like shea butter because all the other ones smell too strongly for her, even though she would never admit it. Hell, Sai might not even know that about herself, since it’s not something she’s explicitly said, but more just something Liliya has learned by paying attention to the way her nose wrinkles when she catches the scent of Liliya’s cologne or other deodorant. Or at least, the way her nose used to wrinkle. Liliya doesn’t wear those scents anymore.
They’re sitting at a restaurant that Liliya likes and somewhere she knows will have something that fits into Sai’s diet. Like clockwork, she spots Sai step into the restaurant at one o’clock exactly and waves her over to their table in the corner.
“Hi,” Sai says, smiling in that awkward way of hers, where she doesn’t quite look at the other person dead on, instead bowing her head a bit so she’s looking up from under her lashes and her mouth pressed into that flat media smile. “I’m Sai. Hollander. It’s nice to meet you.”
She offers her hand, and Sveta shakes it once, smiling at her like a shark. “Svetlana Vetrova. But you can call me Sveta, Lana, whatever you like.”
“Okay, Sveta.” The diminutive is clumsy on Sai’s tongue, and her face is red enough that Liliya can tell that she hears it too.
It makes Liliya wish she could hear one of her own in Sai’s voice. She imagined how it would sound, how Lilyusha would be mangled by her Canadian tongue. She thinks it would probably be cute.
“You are even prettier in person,” Sveta says smoothly. “But I do like the look of you in hockey gear.” She hums consideringly. “I’m not sure which look I like better.”
Liliya watches, faintly horrified and faintly horny as Sai somehow goes even redder, particularly in her ears.
“Thank you?” Sai’s voice rises at the end, like it’s a question. “You’re very pretty too.”
Unable to take it any longer, Liliya interrupts. “Yes, yes, my two friends are very pretty girls. I bring them togehter and they forget all about me.” Liliya huffs, jokingly. “I am hurt, Hollander. I thought we were friends.”
“Hi Ilya,” Sai says with a huff of her own. “You’re so impatient. And we are friends. You know that.”
Next to her, Liliya can feel the way Sveta’s eyes are following their every moment, flicking from Sai’s softened face to the way that Liliya involuntarily preens at Sai’s acknowledgement.
“Ah, don’t worry, we think you’re pretty too, Ilyusha,” Sveta teases him. “Don’t we, Hollander?”
“You can call me Sai, you know,” she says, pointedly avoiding the question.
Sveta is not fazed. “We find him pretty too, don’t we Sai?”
“Of course.” She almost blurts this, like it’s something she’d been holding back before this. “Ilya is very pretty.”
It’s like a star is being born inside her chest, like the pervasive coldness that lives there has suddenly collapsed inwards into a warmth birthed from a single sentence from Sai’s lips: Ilya is very pretty.
“You should call him Ilyusha,” Sveta tsks, making Liliya’s sun grow even warmer. She thinks, sometimes, that Sveta can read her mind. “To call him Ilya is very formal in Russia. Only strangers call him this, and you two are not strangers. You should use diminutives.”
“Ilyusha,” Sai repeats dutifully. Hearing it is almost like music, like hearing a cover of a song she never liked that used to play on the radio when she was young. Sai turns to Liliya. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
Liliya shrugs, almost unable to speak or really talk about it at all in a way that would make any sense to Sai. How can she say that Ilyusha is both better and more painful to hear than Ilya? It was an extension of a name that was hers, and that wasn’t. It was spoken only by people who were supposed to know Ilya, supposed to see him as someone close to them, who didn’t really know who she was at all. Strangers have Ilya Rozanov, and those close to her have Ilyusha, and she is the only one who has Liliya. How can she say that it hurts that there might never be anyone who says Lilyusha out loud? How is she supposed to say this aloud in a coherent way when she has barely let herself think about it?
Instead of any of that, she says, “Is a Russian thing. I do not tell my American friends to call me Ilyusha either.”
“Your American friends? Do you mean your teammates?” There was a test in her question, and Liliya can feel it, but thinks it might be fun to fail it anyway. If she is lucky, Hollander will make a cute little face. It might make her feel better after this confusing diminutive nightmare.
“Obviously, Hollander.”
“Most of your team is Canadian, asshole,” Sai huffs. “Most of the League is Canadian.”
Liliya can’t help the way she starts smiling at the sight of Sai getting wound up over this. “Is same thing. Everyone is from North America, yes?”
“It is not the same thing,” she grumbles. “But what I was going to say was that they all call you Roz, don’t they? That’s sort of similar, right?”
“They call me Roz because we are hockey players.”
“No, no, she is not wrong,” Sveta says, smiling. “Russians have diminutives and hockey players have nicknames; they are similar in use, no?” She turns to Sai. “What is yours, Hollander?”
“Um, Holly, mostly,” Sai says, shrugging, her face going a little flat. “They think it’s funny, I think. Because it’s also a girl’s name.”
“You don’t like it?” Liliya asks.
“What? What makes you think that?” Sai looks truly baffled, as if she hadn’t been wearing her displeasure on her face.
“You make wet kitten face.” Liliya pauses to mimic it. Next to her, Sveta laughs.
“I do not make a face like that!” Sai says, making said wet kitten face as she does.
“No, no, he is right,” Sveta says. “It looks exactly the same. Practically identical.”
“Fuck you guys,” Sai says, a smile creeping onto her own face.
“But why do you let them call you that, if you do not like?” Liliya asks, dragging them back into the darkness despite herself.
She’s aware of how this might be construed as hypocritical, but the situations are decidedly not the same. Liliya lets everyone call her Ilya because there is no other choice. Surely Sai can tell her team she does not want to be called Holly.
Sai shrugs, sobering slightly. “Well it’s just easier, isn’t it?” she says. “I’d rather have a nickname I don’t like than no nickname at all.” Then she pauses, and a small smile returns. “Besides, it could be worse. They used to call my dad Colly.”
“Colly?” Liliya asks.
“Short version of colander,” Sai laughs, then turns to Sveta. “You’re not the only one with a goalie father.”
“Your dad played?” Sveta asks. “In the league?” She pauses, then, as if running through her Rolodex and finding nothing, she shakes her head, “No, he couldn’t have. I would remember if there had been another Hollander.”
“He played in university, not the league,” Sai says, shaking her head. “He was pretty good, actually. He was a back-up at World Juniors, but then he met my mom in CEGEP and she was going to McGill, so he decided to go there instead of with one of his NCAA offers.”
“What is this word, colander?” Liliya asks, leaning forwards.
“It means that Mr. Hollander was not a very good goalie,” says Sveta, “Unless the name was ironic.”
“A colander is the bowl with the holes in it that people use when they’re draining pasta,” Sai explains. “And I’m pretty sure it was ironic.”
“Only pretty sure?” Liliya asks, pleased with the new word.
Sai shrugs. “I mean, when I look at the tape from when he used to play I think he’s pretty good. Not a first round pick or anything, but maybe fifth or sixth? I don’t think he would’ve played much in the league, but considering that McGill’s team wasn’t very good in general, he was good in comparison.” She turns to Liliya. “Did your parents play, Ilyusha?”
Hearing the diminutive again does not change the effect it has on her: the weird tingly sensation that isn’t quite nice but isn’t painful either, sort of like when your foot goes numb, and it is not yet painful.
“Ah, no,” she said. “But my mama was a figure skater.”
“That makes sense,” Sai says immediately.
Liliya looks at her, baffled. “What?”
“I mean, look at your edges,” she says. “You’re very graceful on the ice. I used to train with some figure skaters actually, so I can spot the influence now that I am thinking about it.”
Liliya’s throat has gone dry with the thought of Sai knowing her skating so well that she can imagine it at the drop of a hat, that she can see it in her mind’s eye clearly enough to make a judgement call like that.
Lucky enough for her, the waiter saves her from having to speak, and they all order their food. Sai orders the salmon, just like Liliya knew she would.
When they finish their food, Sai pays the bill before Liliya has the chance.
“Just for that, I think I will wear your jersey tonight at the game,” Sveta says, winking at Sai. It makes her red again, her freckles contrasting more sharply against her flushed skin. Liliya really wants to kiss one of them, or five of them. Maybe all of them, probably.
“You are sitting in my seats,” Liliya gasps, offended. “What will the WAGs think, when you sit there with a Hollander jersey?”
“They will probably be jealous when they see it is signed,” says Sveta, cheekily. “If you do not mind signing it for me, that is?”
“Oh. Yeah, that’s no problem,” Sai says. “But, um, where are we going to buy them? I didn’t think they really sold my jersey in this city.”
“I already have one.” Then from the depths of her bag, Sveta pulls out a Hollander jersey and a Sharpie, laying the former on her back, and handing Sai the latter before turning around.
“Oh!” Sai blinks in surprise, her pretty blush back again.
Liliya thinks she might make a game of it, trying to see how many times she can turn her face that perfect shade of pink. She signs it quickly, her signature perfect and loopy despite the rough surface of the fabric. Despite having done it as many times as Sai has, Liliya still hasn’t mastered her own signature and leaves most people with a messily scrawled ROZ.
“Perfect, thank you, Sai,” says Sveta, admiring Sai’s handiwork. “Everyone will be very jealous.”
“Of course,” Sai says. “It really was no problem.”
Later, when Sai is gone, and Liliya and Sveta are walking back to her apartment, her friend sighs loudly.
“I can’t believe you let me flirt with her for all of lunch,” says Sveta, offering them a veil of privacy in their native tongue. “You want her so badly, it’s sort of pathetic.”
“We are just friends,” Liliya says automatically.
“There is nothing friendly about the way you look at her. You look at her like you want to eat her. Or eat her out, I guess.” Sveta huffs, laughing to herself a little bit. “Nothing friendly about the way she looks at you, either.”
“We are friends and that is it,” Liliya says. “Besides, she doesn’t date hockey players.”
“The fact that you know that tells me so much already,” Sveta sighs. “I suppose I know where she’s coming from. At least tell me you have accepted your little crush on her.”
Liliya is starting to suspect that the crush isn’t little at all, not by any stretch of the word. She supposes that’s what makes all of it so hard. If she wanted her less, she might be able to settle for being with Sai and lying to her about who she is. If she wanted her less, she might be comfortable enough to offer Sai the lie that was Ilya Rozanov.
But she can’t. She doesn’t think that she can do this halfway, and she can’t tell Sai the truth, which means that there is only one way that this ends.
“Ilyusha!” Sveta says, hitting him on the arm. “Tell me you are not in denial. I haven’t seen you this torn up over a girl in…” A little air escapes through her lips. “Ever, I don’t think. You’ve never been a chaser. If a girl didn’t want you, you didn’t want them. What is different about her?”
“There is nothing to deny,” she says. “I am not chasing anyone.”
“So you wouldn’t care if I tried to sleep with her?”
“You don’t even like girls.”
“Maybe I do, you never know until you try it, right?” Sveta asks. “And I meant what I said earlier. Hollander is hot, and now that I’ve spoken to her, very cute. Not really what I expected. She always seems so intense on the ice. She was so nervous.”
“She might not like girls either,” Liliya says, though it sort of chokes her to say it.
If Sai doesn’t like girls, that means that if she ever does like Liliya, all she has really done is fall for a lie. She doesn’t even want to think about that as a possibility.
“Hollander definitely likes girls,” Sveta says, “I will bet you ten dollars.”
Liliya does bark out a laugh at that. “Wow. Miss Spender.”
“I know, right?” She says, laughing. “Now, come on. Take the bet. Or admit I’m right, that’s fine too.”
“Ten dollars,” Liliya agrees. “Fine.”
Sveta laughs and cheers.
The rumours reach her ears in the locker room.
“Big night tonight, eh, Roz?”
She doesn’t get it at first.
“Yes, yes, rumours are true—“ The locker room bursts into whispers. “—I will be scoring hat trick tonight.”
“Brother, you gotta know that’s not what we’re talking about,” says Connors.
She pushes the discomfort from her mind when she says, “If not my hat trick then what?”
“I think Dubs is talking about the fuckin’ threesome you’re having tonight,” whistles Lando. “We all saw the pictures of the three of you at lunch. I have to admit man, I’m impressed.”
There were pictures?
“Mixed girls are the hottest,” agrees Connors. “I can’t believe you’re getting two of them at the same time.”
“Shut the fuck up, both of you,” Liliya says as she pulls on her pads with a little more force than normal. “Don’t fucking talk about either of them. You are all pigs, too concerned about where I put my dick because you’ve got nothing around yours.”
The locker room grumbles around him.
“They don’t mean anything by it Roz, you know that,” says Marley, nudging him with his shoulder. “And you’re right anyway. You’re a fuckin’ beautician with women. Most of these guys haven’t seen pussy in so long they’re sick for it.”
It’s not really what she wants to hear, but she supposes, for a locker room, it might be the best she’s going to get. She swallows.
“Da, obviously,” she mutters. “They can’t fuck, they can’t play. What would you all do without me? Team would be a bunch of virgin losers.”
“And, uh, if you’re just watching, that’s okay too, dude,” says Marley, his voice going sort of soft, like he’s talking to a rabid animal. “I’m not kink shaming.”
“Shut your idiot face, Marley,” Liliya huffs, her face quickly turning red.
Marley barks out a laugh, and Liliya feels something heavy settle in her stomach.
“You fuckin’ animal.” Marley smiles and mimes zipping his mouth shut. “Don’t worry, no one’s gonna hear it from me.”
Eventually, they make it to the ice. Despite it all (or maybe because of it), Sveta fulfills her promise to wear Hollander’s jersey to the game, a spot of red, blue and white in the black and yellow sea. Liliya knows that Sai sees her too, if the way she laughs is any indication. Next to her, Liliya watches as some of her team begin to laugh along with her, gesturing towards Liliya as they do so. She suspects they are laughing for different reasons from Sai, a tinge of cruelty unique to a man’s joy in emasculating another found in their smiles. Sai’s pure fluttering laughter at Sveta’s air kiss stands in stark contrast to it.
“Didn’t know Hollander was a dyke.” Liliya freezes. Next to her, Hammersmith spits on the ice. “Is that why you haven’t hit that, Rozzy?”
“Don’t call her that,” Liliya snaps.
“Hey! I don’t mean anything bad by it.” He raises his hands in surrender. “I mean, it’s probably a good thing, right? I mean, if she were start fuckin’ another player it would be a whole mess. If she’s a dy– a lesbian, sorry, it means it’s not gonna be a problem.”
That sensation in her stomach gets a little heavier.