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2017 — March
The people in North America ask such strange questions sometimes.
At practice one day, the Raiders’ social media admin asks each player what kind of superpower they would want to have if they existed, recording for a video. Such an inane question. No one can have superpowers, Ilya thinks as he listens from across the locker room. They’re all just part of fiction, meant for flashy American comic books and children’s cartoons. In the real world, no one would ever be able to fly or climb walls or shoot lasers from their eyes, so there was no point in even imagining such a thing.
When they arrive at his locker, Ilya puts on a cheeky smile and answers their silly question anyway.
“I do not need superpowers,” he says. “I am already fastest skater and best player. It would be too greedy, yes? Is better to leave some room for everyone else to catch up to me.”
Marlow barks a laugh, and Connors tells him to fuck off around a playful grin.
He drives home after practice that day with the windows down, letting the wind have its way with his curls. Tucked away in a private neighborhood, his house looms large at the end of the drive, secluded even from his neighbors. It greets him with its massive floor-to-ceiling windows, state-of-the-art kitchen, fancy gas fireplace, and empty halls.
He flicks on lights as he passes through each room to the den, where he flops onto the couch and puts on one of the final games of the regular season. Buffalo versus New Jersey. A shitshow on the ice. Buffalo hasn’t been good in years, and New Jersey has potential but still can’t find their rhythm as a team. Too young, Svetlana said during the last Olympics. Not so young now, but nowhere near where they should be with their level of talent.
His phone buzzes and he drags it out of his pocket, grateful for a reason to look away from this trainwreck of a game.
His heart shouldn’t stutter so forcefully in his chest when he sees the text from “Jane”, but Ilya himself has never been one to subscribe to shoulds and shouldn’ts.
Jane: Are you watching?
Ilya glances at the TV, where Buffalo has just missed another score on goal. It’s the only game on that night. Tomorrow’s matchups promise more action and less abject misery, but tonight they’re stuck with… this.
Ilya: Unfortunately.
Jane: What a waste of airtime.
Jane: Just get on with the playoffs already so Montreal can stomp all over Toronto.
Ilya smirks at his phone. He loves when Shane’s competitiveness breaks containment and leeches out into life off the ice. He loves a lot of things about Shane.
Ilya: Sorry, you must be mistaken. Boston will be stomping on Brooklyn.
Ilya: And then New York.
Ilya: And then everyone else in this league because we are number one.
He can almost feel Shane’s eyeroll from behind the phone screen.
Jane: You fucking wish.
The conversation goes quiet until the start of the third period.
Ilya: Americans ask stupid questions.
Jane: ?
Ilya: Also Canadians, can’t forget them.
Jane: ???
Ilya: Social media team asked about superpowers today for one of their silly videos.
Ilya: I said I don’t need them.
Ilya: Which is obviously true, I am the best.
Ilya: But they don’t exist anyway so very silly.
Jane: Well, yeah of course not, but it’s just for fun.
Ilya: You would wish for power to not be boring all the time 😝
Jane: Fuck off.
Jane: What about you?
Ilya: Nothing.
Ilya: Like I said, stupid question.
Jane: Come on.
Jane: Seriously, there’s gotta be one superpower you’d want to have.
He scoffs at the little text bubble. Apparently the great Shane Hollander is not immune to asking stupid questions like Americans.
Want? Wanting is for children. A dangerous precursor to disappointment and grief.
Ilya Rozanov doesn’t get to want.
His mother’s face springs into his mind’s eye, beautiful and caring and sad. She had the most brilliant smile, the kind that brightened her whole visage until she outshone the sun. The kind reserved only for him. The kind that felt like a reward for both of them.
He remembers near the end, when he would go days, weeks, without seeing that smile he so desperately craved. Until finally, at the last of his hockey games she would ever attend, it emerged from the haze and gleamed bright in the stands when he scored his first hat trick outside of practice. And he remembers thinking that moment should have been etched into the very fabric of time, immortal, immune to the shit stains of the rest of life that surrounded it.
Even the moment he found her on the bathroom floor, cold and stiff and finally free from her torment.
He’s long since forgiven her for leaving him. Now that he’s older, he admires her strength, her resilience in the face of his father’s domineering, iron grip on all of them.
When the Raiders won the Cup in 2014, Ilya knew his father had not watched the game. Had never watched any of his games outside of the Olympics. But his mother had. He was certain of that. So he’d kissed the Cup, lifted it over his head, and screamed for her, hollering until his voice gave out, his soul crying to hers, Look. Look how far I’ve come because of you. This Cup, this moment, is for you. All for you.
He never really cared about hockey, not like the other guys in the league do. He only ever cared about making her proud. And then, when she was gone, he just cared about spending as much time away from his father and brother as he could — and there was hockey.
And hockey brought him Shane.
A cold, overcast day outside a rink in Saskatchewan. An awkward handshake and stilted conversation he just barely understood. A night-sky splash of freckles that left Ilya transfixed, demanding to be counted; he might have obliged if time and circumstance had been on his side.
They met again. And again. On the ice. At the draft. In an echo-haunted locker room where Ilya finally loosened the thread of curiosity and Shane began to unravel him completely.
Seeing all of Shane for the first time — lean lines of muscle always covered by fabric, delicious dimples at the small of his back, stretch marks across that gorgeous ass — short-circuited something in Ilya’s brain. A beautiful body to go with those beautiful freckles. He drank in every detail with the thirst of a man condemned to the desert, even as Shane’s boring genetics took over and he folded his goddamn clothes into a neat goddamn pile.
The first time they had sex, Ilya discovered a new kind of intoxication. The feel of Shane’s body under his, the moans that escaped Shane’s pretty little mouth, the way they connected, that was a high no drug could compete with. Even now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of it to satisfy him.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of Shane — his laugh, his voice, his kindness — to satisfy the ache he feels, has always felt, even if he didn’t recognize it before. He needs Shane in a way that is so visceral, so fucking painful, he doesn’t know what to do with it. How to cope with the love bursting at his heart’s seams with every second he’s away from Shane.
What Ilya wants, more than a stupid superpower, more than anything, is Shane.
Tampa ruined him. That weekend gave him a taste of what he could have with Shane if not for every reason he can’t, and it keeps Ilya up at night, knowing that Shane, too, feels this thing between them.
He wonders if it isn’t better to put an end to the whole thing now, before it becomes even more painful than it already is. Because they can’t be anything other than what they are now without consequences Ilya can barely stand to think about. Because if Ilya lets himself fall, lets himself take that final step over the ledge and fully acknowledge that he loves Shane Hollander — the inevitable loss will hurt so much fucking worse down the line.
Because he is terrified of the possibility of more even as he craves it with everything he has.
He leaves the text unanswered.
June
Playoffs start. Boston makes it to the second round before fossil-come-to-life Scott Hunter and the New York Admirals overtake them and knock them out. Ilya is more pissed about the loss to Hunter, of all people, than the loss itself. With Shane on the IR from his concussion and broken collarbone, Montreal loses to Detroit. Ilya takes perhaps a little too much pleasure in that, seeing Montreal fumble without their captain and his incredibly sexy and gifted ass to lead them.
The Boston players come together to watch each game of the finals, like they do every year they’re not competing for the Cup themselves. By game six, Ilya doesn’t know how much more he can take; how much longer must he be subjected to extinction event survivor Scott Hunter? He complains to Shane over text the whole time. It makes New York’s winning the Cup a bit more bearable.
The final whistle blows. Hunter holds up the Cup. The Admirals bask in the glory of the win. Families begin pouring onto the ice to congratulate them.
And Scott Hunter pulls a man from the audience, brings him to center ice, and kisses him on international television.
Ilya forgets how to breathe. Forgets everything except Shane’s voice, a little lopsided from the hospital drugs, asking Ilya to join him at his cottage that summer. Spend two weeks with him. Alone. Together.
He hadn’t allowed himself to consider it. Because if he went, if he spent two whole weeks alone with Shane, far away from prying eyes, far away from the reality of who they were and the lives they lived, he didn’t think he could handle things going back to the way they were before that. He would never be able to leave the cottage. He would never recover.
He wouldn’t survive loving Shane Hollander from afar after that.
And that absolutely fucking terrifies him.
And yet.
Despite his heart jamming his airway, the tremor racing through his hands, he silently walks away from the television and calls Shane. Every ring lasts an eternity.
Shane picks up, and he barely gets two words out before Ilya tells him, “I’m coming to the cottage.”
July
The cottage is… everything he thought it would be. And more. And better. They spend those first few days just basking in the quiet thrill of complete privacy. After months apart Ilya is so starved for Shane’s touch. He revels in the knowledge that he can hold Shane’s hand whenever he wants, kiss those perfect lips whenever he wants. It’s a luxury he’s been denied until now, and he can’t fathom how he ever went without it.
They make dinner together. Wash the dishes together. Go swimming in the lake until their fingers prune.
The bed gets plenty of use, too.
Little by little, Ilya begins to open up. He tells Shane about his mother and her battle. He shares his idea to go for a Canadian team when he reaches free agency. Get Canadian citizenship so he doesn’t have to use his Russian passport. He could go anywhere — any team would love to have him — but Toronto or even Winnipeg would be closer to Shane. Everything comes back to Shane. He might never have Shane the way Ilya wants him, but he’ll take anything he can get.
The sun has long gone to bed and they’re sprawled out on opposite ends of the couch when Ilya broaches the subject of citizenship again and suggests marrying Svetlana. Shane freezes. Ilya recognizes the fear in his eyes, a fear Shane vocalizes — that Ilya will find a woman he could marry for love, not just citizenship.
As if there isn’t a Shane Hollander-shaped problem standing in the way. As if Ilya could ever love anyone other than this man and his beautiful freckles he can finally count as many times as he wants.
He won’t marry Svetlana. Because Shane asks him not to. Because Shane all but begs him with such quiet desperation in his voice, and Ilya will do anything to make sure Shane never sounds like that again.
Hours later, Shane wakes him from a deep sleep and lays out a different plan — a transfer to Ottawa, a charity for a cause they both support, a push to begin changing the conversation surrounding their “rivalry” narrative.
A way for them to be together.
Together.
Ilya stares at Shane in awe, stunned.
“You really think that far ahead, Hollander?” he asks.
“I do,” he answers, so earnestly. “About this.”
“And… is that what you want?” Ilya presses. “To be together?”
Dread floods his stomach in the space between the question and Shane’s answer, but he dares to hope, dares to want in a way he hasn’t in over a decade.
Shane looks him dead in the eye, his fingers tracing lazy patterns across Ilya’s cheek, and says, “So much. So much it scares me.”
Ilya turns his head as his throat tightens and a tear falls unbidden.
Because fuck, he’s used to people wanting him for the things he can provide — money, hockey, interviews, sex — but Shane wants him. He’s put such obvious careful thought into this plan because he wants Ilya. Just Ilya. No one has wanted just Ilya since his mother died.
“Hey,” Shane says softly, tilting Ilya’s chin back toward him with a gentle hand.
He leans down and their lips meet. Ilya swings himself over Shane’s body and trails kisses across his chest, his neck, his lips, whispering into his skin. Ya tebya lyublyu. Ya tebya lyublyu. Ya tebya lyublyu.
“I love you,” he confesses, his voice scraping his throat raw.
It’s so exhilarating and so terrifying and such a fucking relief to finally say it after all these years.
Shane freezes. “Holy shit.”
And the terror overwhelms him because he’s fucked up everything—
“I love you, too,” Shane says.
And the dam breaks. “Fuck, Hollander.”
He buries his face into Shane’s chest, right above his heart, and lets the tears run freely down his cheeks. Shane holds him steady, his fingers tangling in the curls at the back of his neck.
“Oh, my god, I love you so much,” Shane tells him, and Ilya cannot believe this is happening. He lets out a shuddering breath; Shane tightens his hold on him. “Does it…” Shane starts, pausing to swallow the enormity of it all. “Does it fucking kill you too?”
“Not anymore,” Ilya says.
He lifts his head again to meet Shane’s gaze. He sees the love in Shane’s eyes, plain as day, the adoration and the fear and the love. They kiss, and Ilya settles back into his place against Shane’s chest, listening to the beat of Shane’s heart, and he lets himself cry, waves of relief dragging him under their swells. Because Shane Hollander loves him. Because this secret that he’s carried for so many years has finally been taken from his soul, laid bare in the stark face of reality, and picked up by the most gentle, protective hands Ilya has ever known. He cries for the younger versions of himself who tried so hard to fight against the inevitable. He wishes they could know what this feels like. He wishes they could know this love.
Worry lies underneath the relief, about how they’ll make this work and what will happen if anyone finds out, about facing a league dominated by toxic masculinity and deeply rooted homophobia, but it’s so unimportant compared to hearing Shane say the words Ilya has held in his heart probably since the day they met.
In the morning, they watch the sun rise over the lake as the day begins anew.
Later, as they lie in bed, Shane asks about his mother, suggests for their charity a hockey school christened with her name that would support mental health organizations, and Ilya feels his adoration for this thoughtful, incredible man crash over him all over again.
“She would have loved you,” he whispers, and he knows it in his heart. In his soul. “Like I love you.”
And as he holds Shane in his arms, thinking about his mother, he realizes his answer to that silly social media question from so many months ago.
His mother’s smile. His Cup win. Meeting Shane. Their firsts. The cottage. The night before. And this moment, right here.
Ilya wishes he could stop time.
He’ll settle for spending the rest of his life with the man he loves, however that may look.