Archive of Our Own

If you asked a random person to describe David Hollander, some of the most common adjectives used would probably be: calm, sweet, compassionate, mellow, understanding, patient—you get the vibe. He’s the guy you call when your car breaks down on the highway and you need someone to give you a lift home. He’ll be there for you when you just need someone to listen and a shoulder to cry on, not give you advice on how to solve your situation. 

So sure, David’s that guy now. But what people forget is that before he was David Hollander—husband, father, treasury board employee, he was Hollzy—student of economics at McGill University, hockey lover and captain of the Redbirds ice hockey team. Which is to say, he’s been in enough locker rooms and around enough hockey players to know the culture. And while he never subscribed to some of the sadly still pervasive parts of hockey—the sexism, racism, homophobia, to only name a few—there’s one very specific part he’s always enjoyed immensely. Namely the age-old fine art of chirping.

He enjoys a masterfully crafted chirp, is a chirp aficionado, if you will. So while his wife has always been a Montréal fanatic and his son became the posterboy for the franchise, ever since the young man’s rookie days, David has always kept an eye—and ear—out for Ilya Rozanov. 

Sure, him playing for the Raiders meant David had to hide his glee whenever the Russian managed to level someone with a quick-fire jab, whether on the ice or in an interview. And yes, he had to time his watching of Rozanov’s best-of chirps compilations for when Yuna was physically outside a one-mile radius. But all this did nothing to detract from the sheer delight he felt whenever he actually got to hear the latest creative insult the man had come up with.

Years later, after he’d caught Shane and Rozanov—Ilya, now—at the cottage and ultimately forced them to come out and disclose their relationship, Yuna was worried. About Ilya’s reputation, about his behavior, about him being good for and to their son. And while he understood where she was coming from, there was at least one part David had never been worried about.

Because, you see, in the years he had been following Ilya’s on-screen antics, something stood out to David: Ilya was never cruel. Yes, he was an asshole, funny, snarky and little mean, sarcastic and even caustic at times. But he never punched down, never hit below the belt. And despite being feared on the ice—in equal measure because of his hockey skill and his quick mouth—off of it, he was fairly well-liked.

So, even ignoring the fact that his son had been in some kind of relationship with Ilya for close to a decade at that point and had decided he was his person—obviously knowing the man much better than David—he wasn’t actually worried about Ilya not treating Shane right. And when it was decided Ilya would be moving to Ottawa, he and Yuna made sure to welcome him with open arms, inviting him to spend time with them during the inevitable long stretches between visits with Shane.

1.

It was at one of their family hangouts in fact, that David first said something that led to the situation he was in now. He was reading an article about the annual Repose of Lincoln and Civil War Encampment in Columbus, Ohio, when Ilya joined him at the dining table and asked him about it. 

Being Russian, his history lessons hadn’t really touched upon the American Civil War much, so David tried to explain in not too many words what the event was about and why it was held every year. Ilya seemed to take it in with some level of interest, asked a few follow up questions David was thankfully equipped to answer without having to Google it himself, and when Yuna eventually joined them and waved the topic away for being too dry, seemed to forget about it immediately.

***

A couple of weeks later, David and Yuna were watching Ilya’s interview after the Centaurs took a surprising win in their away game against Columbus. Imagine David’s surprise when, after being asked about what he thought the home team would need to change to prevent a loss like that again, Ilya’s answer was, "You know, for a city that produced three hundred thousand Union soldiers, you think they could find one guy who knows how to defend."

Yuna, sitting next to him on the couch, was about to take a sip of her wine just as Ilya had said it and snorted so violently at the dig that she dribbled a little bit on her shirt. She quickly ran to the bathroom to soak her shirt in cold water to prevent a stain, leaving David on the couch by himself. He kept looking at the screen where Ilya was still answering questions, let out a small chortle, and muttered a quiet, “Neat.”

2.

He thought it was going to be a one-time thing, an accident. So Ilya remembered a little historical tidbit David told him about and applied it to his chirp later. That’s how information works. You receive it, you memorize it and then you present it when the opportunity arises. It’s not like David was feeding him the information with a specific intent. 

A few weeks after the Columbus interview, Ilya was sprawled out on their living room couch one Sunday morning—belly full and happy from the big breakfast David had prepared for the three of them—and lazily filling out the latest New York Times crossword puzzle on his phone. Yuna was in an armchair reading another one of her ‘woman frames her husband for her death because he was being a shitty husband’ psychological thrillers, while David was sitting next to Ilya and watching the mid-morning news.

It was going to be a lazy day for all of them, with Ilya still tired and disappointed from the loss they took against New York the night before, and Yuna and David’s work week not going much better. So they were each in their own little worlds, sipping on tea or coffee and enjoying the comfortable silence of being among family.

David could hear Ilya grumbling a little under his breath and turned his head away from the TV to look at him. “Something giving you a tough time there?” Ilya grumbled some more, then gave up.

“What is small woodland songbird with seven letters? Starts with B-U and ends with T.”

“Bushtit,” David shot out immediately. Ilya looked at him and chuckled, then typed it into his phone and let out a surprised but delighted little sound.

“I thought it was joke,” he said with a sparkle in his eyes. “Such a bad name for cute little bird.”

“You think that’s bad? How about blue-footed booby?” David replied. Ilya’s eyes bugged out even more, before he searched the name and snickered.

“Why do you have such weird names for birds?”

“I don’t really know. But there’s a lot of them.” Ilya looked at him expectantly. “Oh, uh. Let me think. Tufted titmouse, goosander, sapsucker—that’s a kind of woodpecker.”

“Dickcissel,” Yuna supplied, which made Ilya actually laugh out loud.

“Oh yeah, that’s a good one. Oh, stank hen!”

“Enough, enough, please, stop. This is awful.” Ilya was wiping actual tears from his eyes. “Why is English such ridiculous language?”

David looked at Yuna, who simply smiled back at him and shrugged her shoulders, conceding that the man had a point.

***

A few days later, David was browsing Twitter, when an interesting thread popped up on his timeline. 

David clicked like on all the tweets.

3.

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern—David thinks that’s how that saying goes. By the third time, he didn’t have much of an excuse anymore, except for the fact that he genuinely didn’t do it intentionally. Could it be an accidental pattern? Or maybe the pattern was on Ilya? He couldn’t say for sure, he just knew it happened again.

Yuna was supposed to accompany Shane to some promo event Friday evening, and Ilya magically didn’t have a game that weekend, so all three of them shuffled into Yuna’s car and drove the two hours to Montréal, to spend a couple of days at Shane’s apartment together.

The next morning, all four of them were mulling around the kitchen and dining room, Shane making one of his shakes, Ilya giving him grief about it, while David and Yuna were browsing places of interest they might visit on their upcoming Philadelphia trip.

“So, how’s the Philly plan looking? You guys narrowed it down yet?” Shane asked.

“We have, mostly. We’re just having a tug of war about a couple of places,” said Yuna.

“What’s the problem?” Yuna pointedly looked at David and moved one of her hands in a sweeping go ahead gesture.

“There’s this really interesting museum that I’d like to visit, but your mom thinks it’s creepy and doesn’t want to go.”

“Why is it creepy?”

“Well, it’s about weird medical things. Like atypical anatomy, cross-sections of bodies, medical instruments, stuff like that.”

“They have a whole wall of just skulls, for god’s sake!” Yuna exclaimed, horrified. “And livers and tumors and that kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, sorry dad, I’m with mom on this one,” Shane said, making David hang his head dejectedly.

“I don’t know, I think it sounds interesting. Is just bodies right? Is not so creepy,” said Ilya.

“Thank you, favorite family member,” said David, which prompted a little satisfied shimmy from Ilya. “It’s like that bodies exhibition that went global a few years ago. We went to that.”

“Sure, when I was fourteen and I had nightmares for like a week after.” David threw his hands in the air in defeat. Ilya, having moved behind his back, was reaching over his shoulder and looking at the map.

“Well, what if you split up for couple of hours? David goes to his creepy museum and Yuna you go shopping.” He pointed at the map a few blocks east of the museum. “Museum is close to a couple of department stores.” Yuna and David looked at one another.

“We separate and meet for lunch after?” David suggested and put out a hand.

“Sounds good to me,” Yuna shrugged her shoulders and shook his hand in agreement, then pulled him in close for a quick peck on the lips.

***

Some time later, David and Yuna were at Shane’s place in Montréal yet again, all three of them watching Ottawa’s game against Dallas and listening to mic’d up Ilya banter with teammates and opponents. Crowell had been pushing for players to wear microphones more often during games, which Shane had been complaining about for weeks, but Ilya enjoyed the boost to his socials he always got if something he said was clipped and went viral.

Ilya was standing at center ice, bent over and readying himself for the puck drop, when he started speaking.

“Hey Donaldson, you’re from Philadelphia, no?” The opposing center stared at Ilya menacingly, but didn’t answer.

“I heard the Mütter Museum there is pretty good. You been?” The man shook his head no.

“Oh really, I thought you might’ve been the model for some of those statues.”

Donaldson’s mouth moved a few millimeters into an approximation of a smile. “Maybe.”

“The tiny *beep* ones.” Donaldson’s eyes shot up, the puck dropped and Ilya won the faceoff.

4.

Ok, so, it definitely wasn’t a fluke or a coincidence. David just wasn’t sure whether Ilya was actually fishing for information from him specifically or if he just happened to come across facts that later proved useful when Ilya was chirping his opponents. What he was sure about though, was that while Ilya might be inspired by David, he must do some heavy research on his own later. Because the detail he sometimes included in his insults was too in-depth and too specific to come from just a cursory Google search.

David decided to put this to the test one mid-week evening while he and Yuna were having dinner with Ilya at his place. The meal started off normal enough, they talked about Shane and Ilya’s recent games, some of David’s office gossip that both Ilya and Yuna were way too invested in, what weird Canadian thing Ilya recently discovered, the usual. 

But when they started veering off into some of the more random topics, David decided to take the chance.

“Did you guys know about this giant statue beneath the Aurora Bridge in Seattle?” Yuna and Ilya looked at him, not at all perplexed by the random drop of knowledge he was about to bestow upon them. It was something he did regularly, anyways. He was a curious guy, sue him. 

“I was reading about it online today. They call it the Fremont Troll. It’s this 20 feet statue of, well, a troll under the bridge, holding an actual Beetle, like the car. Seems so random, but I thought it looked pretty cool. Like something out of a Spider-Man movie.” Yuna only hummed in acknowledgement, but Ilya immediately pulled out his phone.

“I want to see, what did you say is called?”

“The Fremont Troll.” Ilya grunted as he started searching. Got him, David thought, quietly pleased.

***

This one took a lot longer to surface than he expected. A few months, actually. David had almost forgotten about it entirely. He had sown a few other seeds in the meantime, and saw them grow into delectable chirps, so it’s not like Ilya completely stopped taking his ideas. But oh, the ultimate payoff from this one had him grinning for days.

Shane and Ilya had both been chosen to attend the MLH All-Stars, naturally. They were also playing for the same team, so everyone but their opponents was in a good mood—the boys especially, since it meant they got to spend an entire weekend playing and being together.

There was of course a lot of coverage of the official events, as well as interviews, little games the players competed in for social media and a large number of general behind-the-scenes snippets. 

David was having lunch in his office, the door locked, the blinds drawn, enjoying a peameal bacon sandwich—that neither Yuna nor Shane would let him eat at home anymore because of the sodium alone—while watching clips from All-Stars uploaded to YouTube by various sports channels. As the video he had been watching ended, an interesting recommendation popped up in the side bar.

ILYA ROZANOV’S MOST ROUNDABOUT CHIRP EVER

The thumbnail made it clear it was something shot at All-Stars. David had a feeling he might enjoy this one.

At the start of the video the camera was looking at the ground, someone’s dirty shoes blurry and out of focus. The cameraman must’ve still been setting up his shot, when he pressed record. The sound being picked up was crystal clear though, two men’s voices, one of them unmistakably Ilya’s.

“Hey Gallard, how old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Hm, so you were born in 1990?”

“Yeah?”

The camera was finally lifted and put up on its stand, the picture still a blurry shot of a hockey rink.

“Interesting. And you’ve been living under George Washington Memorial Bridge ever since, huh?”

“I—what? The George—what?”

“Got any riddles for me?”

“Riddles? What are you talking about?”

The camera moved around a little bit wildly, until it suddenly stopped and finally focused on two men wearing different-colored jerseys. Ilya was leaning lazily against the boards while Gallard—who grew up in Seattle, if David recalled correctly—was stretching on the ice.

“What SPF do you normally use to walk around in the sun? Gotta be a problem when you play in Florida, huh?”

“Did I get a concussion and forget? What is happening?” The man was looking around, trying to find anyone else who might be listening and could explain to him what was going on. The bench doors Ilya was standing next to opened and Shane stepped onto the ice, leisurely skating past Gallard on his way to take a lap around the rink.

“He’s calling you a troll.”

Ilya made finger guns at Gallard, then quickly followed after Shane.

Gallard shouted, “Fuck you, Rozanov!” before the video ended. 

5.

David locked his phone, put it in his pocket and smiled to himself.

“Good news?” asked Yuna, sitting beside him on the couch.

“Just happy about the Centaurs win today.”

+1.

”An angle for what?” said Shane. David didn’t react, unaware it was him Shane was addressing.

“Dad, angle for what? Why are you sending me facts about Tampa?” David froze, then instinctively looked toward Ilya, who didn’t so much as flinch at the question.

“I, uh—” His mind was completely blank. He wasn’t really used to lying, didn’t have much need for it in his everyday life, so when he was faced with coming up with a reasonable explanation for why he would be randomly sending Tampa facts to his son, he just drew a complete blank. “I, uh …” 

Shane looked at him like he was afraid David was having a stroke, then followed his gaze toward Ilya and narrowed his eyes, catching on immediately.

“We’re playing Tampa in a couple of weeks.” He looked at David, then back to Ilya, both staunchly avoiding eye contact.

“Ilya, has my dad been feeding you chirping material?” Shane asked, incredulous.

Ilya made a prolonged ehhhhh sound, before trying to explain, “I mean, not like that. He just finds such interesting articles all the time. And then I read some more and learn and just make connection to some player. Is not like he comes up with what I say.”

“David Hollander, were you helping your son-in-law do research so he could better chirp his opponents?” asked Yuna, the shock evident in her tone of voice. David nodded silently and gripped the cup of coffee in his hands a little tighter, keeping his eyes trained on the coffee grounds at the bottom.

Shane muttered a disapproving, “Unbelievable,” as an uneasy silence fell between the four of them, only broken when Yuna moved to David’s side and clutched one of his forearms tightly with her hand. He raised his head and finally dared to look her in the eyes, which were dark and intense and … not disappointed? 

Maybe kind of the opposite? 

Oh.

OH!

“You boys should leave,” Yuna said, without looking away from David, who kept staring at her in turn.

“What, why?”

“Lyubimyy, I think, ah …” David could see through the periphery of his vision Ilya gesticulating with his hands, but couldn’t make out the specific gestures. He was pretty sure some of them were quite lewd, though.

“Oh my god! Ok, good visit, we’re gonna go.” Shane pulled Ilya from his seat and they made their way toward the foyer. David could hear the rustling of coats and keys, a couple of shouted goodbyes and the front door slamming shut.

The moment it did, Yuna was reaching her arms around his shoulders and they started kissing like they were in their twenties again. David stood up and started moving them toward the staircase, to their bedroom a floor above, not daring to break the kiss for even a breath.

God, he really loved a good chirp.