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Ilya’s in a hotel in Boston when it happens. He is, admittedly, a little drunk – they’d played the Admirals earlier that day, a respectable 5-2 win for the Raiders, and Sasha had invited him over to their hotel to share a drink after dinner. The widely held belief that every Russian player in the league knew each other was, Ilya would usually attest, pretty much untrue – but he and Sasha had played in the minors together back home and they tried to get together whenever their teams played against one another. Sasha was a good guy. Dumb as rocks, sure, and with the English skills to boot – but a good guy. Anyways, they had gone for dinner but ultimately decided against going out to a bar afterwards, figuring that they were both too beat from the game to spend much time trying to find a place close to the Admiral’s hotel room for them to relax at where Ilya wouldn’t be recognized.
So Ilya’s a little drunk, having shared half a bottle of vodka with Sasha back in the other player’s room, meandering down the hotel’s psychadelically carpeted hallway and wondering who the hell decided to park the elevators so far away, when he stumbles directly into the path of a guy just exiting one of the rooms.
Ilya hears a surprised “Oh!” from the man, but he’s already reared back to avoid a collision, overcorrecting a bit too much in his drunkenness so that he ends up wheeling his arms, going down, ass over teakettle and sprawling onto the ground with a startled squawk. The hallway spins around him. Ilya, blinking up at the ceiling, thinks, Thank God no one saw that.
The guy says, “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry, are you ok?”
Ilya groans. “Leave me to die here.”
“Uh,” the guy says. “What?”
Ilya levers himself into a sitting position, ignoring the way his stomach lurches a little with the motion. In English, this time, he says, “‘S fine. I’m fine.”
The guy doesn’t look convinced. He’s blonde, probably around Ilya’s age, and dressed in a small black shirt and almost indecently tight jeans. A little rumpled, like he just rolled out of bed, but cute. Kind of twinkish, actually. If Ilya was any less tired – or any more drunk, to be honest – he’d probably shoot his shot. As it is he just waves the guy away. He’ll get up when he feels like it.
Blonde Twink opens his mouth to say something, but then the door behind him is swinging open, a messy brown head of hair poking out to say, “Hey, you forgot your–”
The new guy stops. Looks down at Ilya. His face, up until then a little red with the sweaty flush of the well-fucked, all at once rapidly loses colour.
Ilya stares back. He’s – probably gaping. He’s sitting on the hotel carpet like an idiot, mouth open like a fish, and he doesn’t even care – because that’s Scott fucking Hunter. Shirtless. In his hotel room. There's a hickey on his neck, and his hair is sticking up all over the place the same way it does in post-game interviews, like he's been running his hands through it.
Scott fucking Hunter says, emphatically, “Shit.”
Blonde Twink, blissfully unaware of the incredible amount of tension amping up between the two hockey players, plucks his phone from Scott Hunter’s slack grip. “Hey, thanks.” Then, like things couldn’t get any worse, he leans over and smacks a kiss to the man’s cheek. Scott Hunter jerks back and nearly succeeds in braining himself on the doorway, finally breaking eye contact with Ilya for long enough to send a wide-eyed, panicked look at the other man.
Blonde Twink says, “Uh. Ok. Bye?” Then, with one last incredibly confused glance at Ilya, he turns on his heel and walks quickly down the hall, past the bend and out of sight. Smart guy. Getting out while he still could.
Ilya has yet to quit staring at Scott Hunter. His jaw is still dropped. He becomes aware of the fact that he is pointing in the general direction of Scott Hunter’s face when the offending finger is smacked away with a hiss of, “Stop that, Jesus Christ.”
Ilya starts to say, voice embarrassingly high with a mix of bewilderment and unholy glee, “You –”
“Shut up.” Scott Hunter looks around anxiously before grabbing Ilya by the front of his shirt and hauling him into his hotel room. Ilya doesn’t even put up a fight, gamely allowing Hunter to manhandle him into the room and shut the door behind them. He’ll blame it on the alcohol. But then Hunter’s pushing him up against the wall, teeth bared and looking more than a little wild-eyed, and Ilya can’t help but drawl a bit nervously, voice still embarrassingly pitched, “Wow, Scott Hunter, buy me a drink first –”
Hunter lets go of him all at once, stumbling back like Ilya just slapped him. Face even whiter than before, somehow.
Ilya brushes imaginary dust off his shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles from where Hunter had twisted the material up in his fists, and snickers, burying deep his discomfiture. “You treat all your men friends like this? Or I’m just special?”
Hunter scowls. “Fuck you Rozanov,” he says, seemingly entirely by reflex. Then, shaking his head, lip curling in some ridiculous affectation of anger, “I don’t know what the fuck you think you just saw, but–”
Ilya groans, loudly, and bangs his head back against the wall. Hunter frowns at him, affronted at the interruption. Ilya doesn’t care. He just – he doesn’t want to do this. He’s so fucking tired. “Can we not?” he says. “I am not idiot, Scott Hunter. You have twink in your room, is obvious the situation.”
Hunter says, “I have what–”
Ilya pushes past him and into the hotel room, ignoring the startled protests from behind as he makes a beeline for the mini-fridge in the corner. He rifles through it a second, making a face at the bottle of kombucha and handful of strawberry protein shakes – who the fuck chooses strawberry? – before emerging victorious with a can of Double IPA to match the empty ones littering the tv-cabinet. He was right. Only a man a few drinks deep would bring what was clearly a Grindr hook-up to their team's hotel.
“Hey, what the fuck,” Hunter says, as Ilya cracks open the beer and drains a quarter of it in one long swallow.
“Shit beer,” Ilya answers, burping a little as he comes up for air.
“Fuck.” Hunter sits down heavily onto the hotel mattress, hands in his hair. He’s looking at Ilya like he thinks at any moment he might pull a gun out of his pocket and shoot him in the face, helpless to do anything to stop it. He looks like he’s about to throw up. He looks like a man watching his life crash down around his ears. “Fuck.”
Ilya pauses with the drink halfway to his lips. Possibly, he is going about this the wrong way. A little wondering, he says, “You are freaking out.”
Hunter doesn’t acknowledge the remark in so many words. “Nobody will believe you,” he says, dead-serious, eyes still wild and boring into Ilya. “I’m fucking – I’m Scott Hunter. Nobody would fucking believe you.” It sounds almost like he’s telling it to himself. Reassuring himself.
Ilya scoffs. Scott Hunter. It’s not like he’s such a big deal. He’s no Shane Hollander. “I’m not tell anyone,” he says anyways, because he’s super polite like that. Then, because Hunter really doesn’t look like he believes him, and Ilya is drunk and stupid and not Shane fucking Hollander, he says, “I would be hypocrite. If I tell.”
Hunter – stops. He doesn’t even appear to be blinking, he’s staring at Ilya so intensely. Ilya used to watch clips of the guy, back in Russia, back when Hunter was bright-eyed and mop-headed, slightly scruffy-faced even at 19. Even back then, the guy had had such an intense stare – looked like he was facing down an opponent over the red-line in every single interview, like he was always half mentally on the ice, making plays, fighting for the puck. They’d done a GQ spread on him, when he’d first made captain. Youngest captain in MLH history until Hollander came around. Grinning and boyish, half-dressed in his hockey gear, eyes huge and brown, like a cow. Ilya had cut the photos out and carefully tucked them into the pages of his English textbook, where he knew his father would never go looking. Just to look at, sometimes. For inspiration, he’d tell himself, flushed with shame and something else, something unnameable.
Embarrassing.
Here, now, the old and washed-out Scott Hunter shakes his head in disbelief and says, “You’re kidding. No fucking way.”
English can be such an ugly language, Ilya finds. Especially when talking to hockey players apparently physically incapable of going five words without dropping a curse word.
Freckles and flushed skin. Fuck off, Rozanov.
Ilya takes another drink, and shrugging, leans his back against the hard edge of the tv cabinet. “Is so hard to believe?” He feels – giddy, almost. Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but something is bubbling inside Ilya’s chest, something bright and strange. Scott Hunter. Ilya had had an inkling, of course – he has excellent gaydar – but still. It was one thing to wonder, in theory, to ponder it with Hollander because he liked the colour his cheeks turned when Ilya tried to get him to make guesses about the other guys in the league – it was another thing entirely to know, full-stop, that they were not alone. Here was concrete proof that they were not the only ones, no matter how geriatric and close to retirement that proof had to be.
Hunter says, bewildered, “But you’re–”
“So good at hockey?” Ilya quips, grinning around the lip of the beer can. “Ah, Scott Hunter, that is bad stereotype. Homophobic. But I guess makes sense why I am one with cup.”
Hunter rolls his eyes, but at least he doesn’t look like he’s about to throw up all over the place, or possibly murder Ilya in his own hotel room and hide his body in the Boston harbour anymore. He’s still not wearing a shirt, a fact that seems suddenly ridiculous, tanned, muscular chest on full display. Very dramatic guy, Scott Hunter. It’s a wonder more people hadn’t guessed about the whole gay thing. “You know what I mean,” Hunter says. “You’re the most famous womanizer in the league. You seriously want me to believe you’re gay?” His tone is clearly incredulous.
“Bisexual.” Ilya’s pretty sure there’s a word for that, homophobia for bisexuals, but he can’t quite think of it right now and doesn’t feel like embarrassing himself trying to get the chirp out anyways. He almost says, of course I’m queer, are you kidding, just ask – but that’s stupid. He’s not about to out the guy. Especially not to Scott fucking Hunter. Not that it matters much, anyways – not anymore. Not like it means anything. He’s got Rose Landry, now. Beautiful Rose. Actress Rose. Canadian Rose. And Ilya has –
Ilya has–
Ilya swallows down the treacherous wave of bile rising in his throat and affects that practiced old air of cockiness, all of it so familiar, as easy as breathing to drawl, “You are fan, Scott Hunter? You keep up with my personal life, yes? Like Kardashian?”
“Fuck off,” Hunter says. “And stop saying my entire government name, it’s weird. You know what – what the hell are you even doing here, man?” It appears to be the first time the thought has occurred to him – Ilya doesn’t fault him for it. He’d kind of forgot himself, caught up in the revelatory aspect of it all.
Still, he makes a show of widening his eyes, waggling the can in his hand. “Am getting drink with good friend Scott Hunter.”
Hunter rolls his eyes again, the diva, and crosses his arms against his chest. Then, seeming to realize for the first time that he’s still half-dressed, he pinkens slightly and grabs a nearby shirt to pull on in a jerky, angry movement. “You know what I mean, Rozanov.”
Yeah, yeah. Ilya kind of misses the shirtlessness. Taking pity on the man, he says, “Was with Sasha. Getting drink after game.”
Hunter’s entire forehead scrunches up as he thinks. Ilya thinks of Hollander, of the way he looks on the hair’s edge of pleasure, teetering on the precipice, of pressing his thumb to the wrinkle in the man’s brow and smoothing it out with a gentle touch. Of placing his lips to a warm forehead, the salty tang of sweat on his tongue. The smell of him, all generically unscented soap and skin, all those things Ilya had never given a thought to, had never figured as something he could crave.
Ilya finishes his beer in a hasty gulp, tosses the can into the wastebasket under the desk, and fishes around in the fridge for another.
“Don’t drink my beer,” Hunter says, but he doesn’t get up off the bed and the protest sounds more or less only token, so Ilya elects to ignore it. “Sasha – that’s Aleksandr, right? Babkin?”
“Да.”
“I didn’t know you were friends.”
Ilya licks foam off his upper lip. Shrugs.
Hunter says, “I can’t believe you’re queer.”
There’s something about the man’s tone that Ilya can’t quite parse. He narrows his eyes at him, frowning. Should he be offended, or something?
“Don’t give me that look,” Hunter says. “You can’t tell me you’re not caught off guard by this. I mean, Jesus." He lets out a little laugh, half-hysterical, wondering, and gestures between them, like, can you fucking believe this?
Ilya smiles at him, can’t help it, swallowing down a ridiculous giggle. After a second, Hunter smiles back helplessly, like the whole thing is just so absurd. And Ilya – well, Ilya has a suddenly wonderful fucking idea.
Ilya takes a last hasty sip of his beer, then places it down behind him without looking away from Hunter still seated on the bed. He thinks about the guy exiting Hunter’s hotel room; blonde, about Ilya’s age and height – smaller than him, obviously, but that can’t be helped. Ilya can make himself small. He thinks about the photos of Hunter when he was fourteen, pressed carefully between the pages of conjugated verbs and proper nouns. Hockey: Playing, to play, played. That stupid GQ article. His eyes, big and brown and always so intense. He thinks about Hollander fucking Rose Landry, gentle and sweet in his giant empty house, and he thinks about Hunter fucking some nameless blonde twink into the hotel mattress, big hands on his hips, trying to be quiet.
Vowels crisp and clear, making sure not to slur even a bit, Ilya says, “I liked when your shirt was off.”
Hunter’s brow creases, his mouth quirking like he’s trying to figure out the joke. He’s leaned back a little, weight on his palms, his posture in stark contrast to the stiff fear of even five minutes ago.
Ilya thinks, wildly, I could make myself small – and takes two long strides forwards, until he’s standing over Hunter on the bed, hips bracketed by the man’s legs, his own thighs nudging Hunter’s knees apart.
Hunter says, “What –”
And then Ilya is kissing him, the word swallowed up before it can become something more. Hunter makes a small sound of surprise in the back of his throat, Ilya’s hands cradling his face. For a long moment, he’s completely still as Ilya kisses him, hard and unyielding as stone – and Ilya feels something desperate rising in him, something hungry and wild, thinks Please. Please – and then Hunter’s mouth is opening and he’s kissing Ilya back, the way Ilya knew he would, because Ilya’s a great kisser and he’s hot and young and people want him. And Hunter’s mouth is warm and he’s kissing Ilya softly and slowly, too gentle, no urgency at all, but it’s fine, Ilya can take it, he’ll take it anyways because Hunter’s big hands are landing on his waist, strong thumbs digging slightly into the divot of his hipbones, and Ilya’s making a helpless noise into his mouth, pushing closer, prepared to crawl into his lap, wanting to devour him, 19 years old and the youngest captain in MLH history and big brown eyes and Ilya wants –
Hunter pushes Ilya away by the hips, breaking the kiss. “Rozanov,” he says quietly. His eyes are a little glazed, his breaths stuttering. Not entirely unaffected, thank god. “What are you doing?”
Ilya takes a shuddering inhale. He feels – crazy. “I want you to fuck me.”
Hunter closes his eyes, briefly. Breathes. Then he says, flatly, “You’re drunk.”
“I’m not,” Ilya says, automatic. Then, after a moment of thought and very earnestly, “Only little bit. I’m still good for it.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Ilya demands, well-aware that he sounds like he’s whining now, like a petulant little kid, drunk and stupid, but not quite able to bring himself to care. Why should he care? Hunter knows his secret, now – he knows. Who cares if Hunter sees him desperate? Someone ought to know who Ilya is. “I can suck your dick. I'm make it good, swear, I'm –”
“Rozanov,” Hunter says, voice incredibly level in comparison to Ilya’s unhinged, heated rambling. “Sit down.”
Ilya drops to his knees.
Hunter directs his gaze to the ceiling. “Jesus Christ," he mutters, almost to himself. Then, “No, not – Jesus Christ." He stands up, inches a little awkwardly around Ilya on the carpet, like he thinks he might just lunge at him again with open mouth. Ilya can admit the fear is not entirely unfounded. He thinks about crawling, hands and knees on the scratchy beige carpet – but that’s a little too far, even for him, so he just stands up, sits on the edge of the bed and watches Hunter fetch a bottle of water from the mini fridge before walking back over.
Ilya looks up at him, makes his eyes big and round, tongue flicking out to lick nervously at his bottom lip. He knows what he looks like, like this. He knows what men want. Hunter gazes back at him impassively, expression tight and eyebrows furrowed, and holds the water out for Ilya to take.
“Rozanov,” he says, and his voice drops suddenly so low and gentle it makes Ilya want to punch him, wishes he had dropped the gloves hours ago and knocked Scott Hunter’s stupid fake teeth out of his stupid handsome face so even that stupid blonde Grindr twink wouldn’t want him, “We’re not doing that.”
Ilya scowls, ripping the water bottle from his hand. “What,” he sneers meanly, flushed with the first curdling hints of embarrassment, “Is because of refractory period? Too old to get it up again in one night?”
“I’m 31, you little shit.” He doesn’t even sound annoyed, is the thing – like Ilya’s chirps don’t bother him at all, suddenly, just ‘cause now he knows what Ilya looks on his knees and gagging for it. He’s still looking at him, that same intense look, except now there’s something soft in it, something disgustingly like concern.
Ilya scoffs and looks away, muttering something rude in Russian under his breath. Rejected, now, his drunkenness is catching up to him again, the heat of arousal seeping away to leave him cold and shaky. He tastes bile at the back of his throat and gives serious thought to whether he’d feel better or worse if he threw up all over Hunter’s socked feet. Probably worse. He cracks the seal on the water bottle, takes a few hasty gulps to circumvent the possibility. “What?” he demands, when Hunter just keeps looking at him. Isn’t it high time the guy threw him out? Was he seriously so pathetic he’d let any random drunk guy camp out in his room and drink his beer and insult him, just for an inch of companionship?
Hunter says, “You’re crying.”
Oh. Ilya reaches up to touch his face. His fingers come away wet and he uses the sleeve of his shirt to swipe angrily at his eyes, sniffing violently, face heating. Fuck. Shit.
“Rozanov.” Hunter sounds uncertain. Good, Ilya thinks viciously, refusing to feel more ashamed than he already is. Maybe if he’d just fucked him like they both knew he wanted to he wouldn’t have to deal with the discomfort.
Hunter says, “Are you ok?”
“Fuck you,” Ilya says, voice cracking around the words. He’s crying pretty much in earnest now, helpless to stop it, tears running down his cheeks and dripping into his mouth. He probably looks ridiculous. Ilya’s always been an ugly crier. His whole face scrunches up with it, every time, red and blotchy. His mother used to say – he was so pretty. Like a doll, porcelain and sweet. And then he cried and he turned into a tomato. Мой маленький помидор, she’d say, and she’d kiss him on the forehead and nudge her fingers under his armpits until he was shrieking with laughter, tear-tracks drying tacky on his face, unable to ever remember why he’d even been crying in the first place.
A hesitant palm lands on Ilya’s shoulder, tentative and warm. Ilya shrugs Hunter off, standing up and taking three quick steps across the room, facing away from him and rubbing furiously at his face. Wrestling himself forcefully back under control.
“Rozanov–”
“Shut up,” Ilya says harshly. “Just – shut up.”
There’s silence in the room for a minute, Ilya’s hitched breathing slowly petering out into slow, even exhales. Then Ilya turns back around, hands tucked under his armpits, and mutters to the wall, “Sorry.”
Scott Hunter says, “It’s ok, kid.” He sounds tired. It must be nearing 2am, now. Probably he’d been planning on going to bed a while ago, before Ilya barged in and fucked up his evening. Old men needed their sleep.
The plastic water bottle crinkles where it’s pressed up against Ilya’s ribcage, cold seeping through his shirt. “I should go.”
“I’ll call you a cab.”
Looking at the ground, Ilya nods. “Okay.”
“Rozanov." Hunter waits a beat, then says, "Ilya.”
Ilya forces himself to look over at him, to meet Hunter’s warm brown eyes. Hunter says, “It’s really ok.”
Ilya swallows, and looks away again. “Okay.”
Hunter sighs, sounding every bit as old as Ilya chirps him for. “Drink your water.”
Tomorrow, Ilya will wake up in bed with a raging hangover, a pounding headache, and two new texts staring up at him from an unknown number, reading, Got ur number from Babkin. Don’t abuse it. and then, five minutes later, I’m here if you want to talk, and will save it under “Asshole (Old)” after staring at the phone for a good while contemplating blocking him – but for now Scott Hunter puts one large palm against the nape of Ilya’s neck, squeezing gently, and sends him home in a taxi, to a big empty house with too many windows and not enough warmth, where he will crawl into bed and curl around the empty space beneath his covers that in some universe out there, where they were different people, where the game was changed, the heat of another person’s body might press against his own.