Archive of Our Own

Ilya isn’t great at giving up, but he’s always been exceptional at leaving.

A raw talent. It comes more naturally than making any decision; it just makes sense. Just works. No reason not to. His contract is up and he’s getting too attached to the shit that’s supposed to give and not take. Boston’s taken enough. He doesn’t even like living there—middling cold, not biting like home, almost boring. That’s it: he’s bored.

Yes, Tampa is shit, but Boston wasn’t very fucking impressive before he started, either. He likes a challenge. He likes the shape a far away palm tree cuts against a window. It’s paradise. Nobody would turn that down.

And—anyway. A legacy is only a legacy if it keeps growing. If you’re content you might as well be dead. His father used to say that. Andrei says it in his own way: who’s offering more? What idiot says yes to less?

It makes no difference to his brother, Boston or Florida. Different American banks serving the same currency. It makes too much of a difference to Ilya now that he’s searched the route up north so often he could make the drive in his sleep despite never having actually taken it. Straight shot up I-93, easy. Hollander’s front door in under five hours, easy, and Hollander, the easiest. Melt in your palm, down on his knees before Ilya can even get the ask out: easy.

But llya’s never gone. There’s never been a reason to go, and that doesn’t have anything to do with the reason he leaves but it firms something that’s gone loose in his gut: twenty four fucking hours if he tried to drive it. A whole fucking day wedged between them. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He can’t anymore.

He signs a lot of papers. New jersey, same number. New house, same cars. Plus one extra. The interior is plucked off a gluttonous menu of custom options. He spends a week thumbing at different swatches of leather, changes the sound system twice, makes every single part beyond perfect. No part of the process lessens the fever buzz in his skull.

Doesn’t matter. Down here, he’s got a girl in the passenger seat, every night. Tonight it’s slippery thighs in sheer black tights because the air conditioning in every restaurant encourages the old ladies to drag out their vintage furs. This girl is barely wide enough to claim half the cushion. Hollander would be spilling over, so big, so much more than someone might think he’d be for someone so easy to get tender and pliant. Ilya’s dick twitches.

She smiles like she’s very clever and asks if he’s going to name it. Like all girls don’t ask, like all girls don’t sit here, blurred under the steady smear of streetlights and think they’re going to be the first ones to try and know him. Like Ilya’s spent a lifetime just waiting for one person to want to.

Cherry, she’s expecting. Something from a horny old man who needs to own a nice pair of legs to get in between them, a Serena or a Natasha. An expensive, chrome wife. Something you love that will never love you back. She’s angled herself toward him, staring at him wide-eyed. Maybe waiting to hear her name, which Ilya lost before the third Irish Car Bomb at the drinks after dinner if he’d ever had it at all.

“Jane,” Ilya answers.

Her doctored nose scrunches up and he laughs a little, fist squeezing the warm curve of the gear shift. She gives better head than he thought she would.

It’s a funny name, a good joke. It’s not for him. He’s never going to be in Ilya’s house here. Will never sink comfortably into his couch, only leaning up to ask what car Ilya’s taking to the grocery store to get—whatever would fit, with him. More fucking ginger ale. Even in Ilya’s head the vision doesn’t fit. The name wouldn’t make him blush stinging pink, asking the way girls do—wanting to know, wanting to show they want to know him—or make him frown when he hears the answer. Kind of a shame they’ll never have that. Ilya loves to watch Hollander’s mouth grow slack while his jaw hardens. Eyes narrowing, lit up. He goes in two completely opposite directions at the same time, so much it seems he will pry himself open right down the middle. Make a wound wide as a door for Ilya to walk right through.

When he does show up, it doesn’t count. The first game they have together that season.

“Hi, Hollander. I missed you,” Ilya says. Extra loud, swollen sort of mocking because that’s the kind of thing that can go either way. A safe thing to say on the ice and let the lip readers have.

Hollander frowns. Twitches like he’s surprised, as though Ilya was the one to skate right up to him in front of a sold out stadium the second he hit the ice. “Hi. What the fuck?”

“What?” Ilya slumps back into the lazy pigeon he’d been in the middle of.

“What are you doing?”

“Stretch. Is this your first hockey game? Is okay to be nervous, lots of virgins very scared for first time. Don’t listen to what they tell you about me, I’ll go slow. I’ll be so nice.”

Ilya cranes his neck to see over the bulk of a shoulder pad, the sour heat that was simmering in his chest now boiling, bubbling and demanding. It drools down his ribcage watching the back of Hollander’s jersey skate away. The audience can have that whole moment, only they’ll miss this: the slight slump to his spine, everything about him a little lower. Too fucking easy.

They lose. Ilya doesn’t take it personally, the way Hollander always does.

It’s expected. A whole new team; he’s still learning them. Quickly for someone who only started paying attention to most of these faces for the first time this summer. An important two weeks of conditioning, training, learning how everyone moved. Of Ilya moving. What’s the difference, really, between moving on and going away? Those were important days. There isn’t anywhere else in the world he could have been.

Even if Hollander comes to his house it’s not the way Ilya thought about. Hollander with his ass on the couch and one socked foot up on the coffee table, in plain day, close to comfortable for once. At the front door with his hood pulled up tight and the flood lights killed, the gate closed behind him, he’s not really there. It’s barely even him. A mouth, greedy hands. Just a mouth. It’s like anything else: eager heat, stuffed choking full and still, unbelievably, craning his jaw to get more. Ilya fucks him like that, in the throat, in the entryway.

And Shane likes it. Little noises leak out, pretty much lost with his mouth so occupied. Doing that straining tongue thing, choking and still swiping past his bottom lip, licking along Ilya’s shaft, never enough—but it doesn’t matter. What does talking ever get them? Ilya doesn’t need him to say anything; he’s past words. They are.

Shane’s body is loud enough, anyway. Shuddery wet inhale, the stressed tendons in his neck taut down to the begging bend of his spine—every part of him overwhelmed and still asking for more. They don’t need to talk; maybe ever again. There isn’t a word for it, for him, anyway. Ilya’s mind buzzes blank and he watches the struggle in his thick shoulders, so soft like this, his knees digging into the welcome mat. It must hurt, after that game. This must hurt.

Ilya snuggles his heel between Shane’s legs and presses. In Shane’s mouth, he grinds in a little, hips knocking him deeper in. The head of his cock hits soft, wet, too far. No need to tell each other more than this: that scared, quick choke because it’s too much for a second right before the warm splash of exhale, a second tongue on his head after Shane relaxes his jaw, lets him in. They fit.

It always fits. Ilya will let him come on the nice new tile floor of his nice new house. What did the new wags call it? Homewarming.

He doesn’t get the chance to tell him: unzip, Shane. You showed up emptyhanded, you owe me a gift. Hollander is too easy. Too much to fit even in Ilya’s plans. He makes a shredded sound, jerking under the sole of Ilya’s foot, and it’s over. They don’t need a bed for this. It was stupid to do that at all with him. Ilya took that girl out to dinner and fucked her on the springy guestroom mattress after because that’s what you do with girls. They won’t fuck you without a little bit of that pretend-together. It’s fine. Ilya likes to eat. He likes girls. Hollander’s never been one.

But he lingers like the rest of them, anyway. Waiting for fucking Pike to fall asleep, probably; he’s holding his hands at his sides that awkward, heavy way like he had no idea they could weigh this much. Too clumsy to keep on the counter or to put in his pockets, though he keeps trying both. Ilya left the kitchen lights off. Sticky honey glaze from only the one on over the stove. It makes the chrome look old. It makes the new counters seem cheap. He leans half his body over the island to light a cigarette.

“Well,” Hollander says. Like a bathtub drain being yanked up.

“Well,” Ilya says. Full palm planted, pushing it all back down. “What? If you wanted to gloat about game it should have been before I fucked your throat and you came in your pants.”

Hollander swallows. Ilya hears it. “Are you pissy just because you guys lost?”

Ilya waits until his lungs fill, brimming with smoke, then breathes out. A sour thrill slinks down his spine to blink through the cloud now hanging between them. “Not pissy.”

Hollander’s nose wrinkles. Scrunches, the freckles bunching up. Buttony nose. Sort of a girl, especially with the big shiny judgemental you’ll-get-cancer eyes. “Okay. When did you start smoking again?” Ilya looks at him for a while. “I never stopped. Bad at quitting.” The snort doesn’t work for him; kind of like a little piglet grunt. There’s too much velvet in it. “Right. So why are you here?”

“In the kitchen? Because you asked for water.” Ilya reaches over with his free hand, bothering the side of Hollander’s face. Nudging up his cheek with one thumb. “Because I am a good host, did not want you to get lost on the long confusing way to sink after I fucked you so stupid.”

The scrunch goes further, helped with the slumped moon frown. It’s late. Pike is probably finishing his bedtime prayers and tucking himself in. Ilya opens his mouth to make a stupid joke about it and Hollander puts the water glass down carefully, slowly, the intention registering for Ilya the way a full glass of thrown wine would.

“No. I mean why the hell did you move down here?”

The kitchen’s dark except for the warm glow around them, the gnawing glob of red on the end of Ilya’s cigarette. With him it’s always this; dim edges, bright right here.

Ilya closes his eyes. Isn’t careful when he scratches at his nose with one thumb; opens his eyes again just to watch the worry crack on Hollander’s face. It wouldn’t be the first time he lit a little hair on fire but Shane’s probably never smelled that before, burnt hair and that alarm to tell something to stop, don’t do that anymore, leave him alone. Nothing is on fire but Ilya can still feel the buzzing warning in his chest. He translates the language of it better than Hollander could ever hope to.

“What difference does it make to you? You still got your dick sucked.”

Hollander thinks for a second. For another. Considers the question genuinely. Ilya can’t exhale as much as he wants, to blur him behind a full cloud of smoke, not even with him unhappy and far away, on the other side of the island. The marble looks very cheap next to him. He has that effect; makes a cup feel plastic, a legacy tissue paper thin.

But it’s expensive, the kitchen. All very nice things. It makes his place in Boston seem stupid and immature, a temporary in between; this is a nice house. A nice home for someone who wants that sort of thing.

“You’re—something’s off. Something’s different. I remember you being really nice in the hospital, and then—”

“You were high as shit,” Ilya tells him. The memory is flat and gray; stuck firmly behind a concrete wall. He doesn’t think of the light in that room at all. “You don’t remember anything.”

“You ignored me all summer, which. Fine. But I know your cellphone works in Russia and I don’t even get why you went back, since your dad isn’t—”

Because it was too much to be here and not there, knowing the door is open even if he couldn’t step through it. He thought: farther away would help even if it hadn’t ever before. “That’s where I am from.”

“Okay,” Shane says. Ilya sees himself on the edge of a bright hospital bed, weak and wet and open. Blinks and it’s gray blur again. “Well, still. You could have texted me back. I don’t know why you didn’t text me back. And now you’re being way more of an asshole than usual. Than ever, maybe.”

What could that mean? Hollander always almost gets there.

“Mm,” Ilya hums. He left the cabinet hanging open; he’s not used to the order still, where the glasses stand, what’s a wall of snacks. He keeps online ordering high. Tampa’s drug testing is more of something said with a wink than an actual process. The cigarette flags in his hand while he digs around. He puts it out in his own empty drink glass on the counter and does not need to watch to feel Hollander’s lip curl in disgust. When Ilya turns back to him, it’s with one of the snacks packets. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah, for food.” Hollander squints. He’s so easy to redirect, he wants the sore to stop just as bad as Ilya does but neither of them are willing to commit. “Not. What is that? Is that a Dunkaroo?”

Ilya laughs. It comes out like gravel. “I don’t fucking know. I bought them because they look funny.”

Hollander shakes his head a little. “That’s like, from elementary school. I had no idea they still made them.”

“Good,” Ilya says. Peeling the plastic open. There’s hard cream inside but it gives easy enough under the pad of one finger. “Come here.”

“No.” Hollander’s face has more than one expression in it. Screwed up, grossed out, pliant. Pre-slack, Ilya thinks of it. He scrubbed his jeans out in the bathroom but they’re damp, now, hanging up in Ilya’s shower and his legs wrapped in Ilya’s jeans. He’ll go home in them, though, scraping warm-damp and that ugly crunch where the come couldn’t be cleaned completely. It gets everywhere. There’s always something Ilya thinks is gone only to realize later, once it’s permanent and uncomfortable, that he missed it.

“Hollander. Come here. You said so, you are hungry. I am a good host. Let me.”

Ripped in two directions at once but that’s what he likes, anyway, the tug, straining and having to squirm. Shane’s frowning and not blinking, eyes locked right onto Ilya’s offered fingers. “No, you have gross cigarette hands. And I hate—I don’t like sugar. I won’t like it.”

“Let’s try,” Ilya says.

Hollander takes in a quick breath. Another second, his careful consideration process breaking down the current moment into digestible pieces. Measuring risk, jotting down how likely he is to not like it, making a note of how much he likes not to like it, throwing away the whole record. What does he use all this quiet for?

He comes around the counter and stands there for a moment like he’s waiting for an elevator, face blank, shoulders strict, then the ease and exhale. He leans forward, has to bend down a little to fit the tip of Ilya’s finger in without Ilya moving it. He won’t. Doesn’t move it or any other part of himself, just watches Hollander’s lips part, the obedient stoop of his shoulders and the nervous pink tongue. Just the tip to start. He licks glossy wet at the cream. A little scrunch of his nose—he really doesn’t like it. Ilya has to force the exhale out forcibly smooth to keep from laughing.

Hollander’s dark eyes sink closed and he takes Ilya’s whole finger into his mouth, one obedient swallow past the knuckle, hugged in the hollow of his tongue. His bottom teeth graze the palm and Ilya sees, feels, thinks only honey.

Again, after that. Again and again. Ilya’s cock is thick enough to fuck him a second time by the time the little plastic well is empty, Hollander’s cheeks hollow while he sucks. Only then does Ilya pull back.

“What does it matter? Boston is same as Tampa, basically.” It feels excusable to have a voice this watery. It’s so late, the light is syrup smeary. His finger is shiny wet from Hollander’s mouth. “What’s the difference to you?”

“I don’t know,” Hollander says. So honest the kitchen feels bright, suddenly. The lights all on in the house, somebody finally home. “It’s just, different. I don’t get it. I guess I got used to the way it was before.”

Ilya laughs. That’s the problem. That’s always been the problem.

–

Svetlana hates a lot of things about America but none more than Florida.

“I cannot believe you would do this to me.”

“Do what?” Ilya doesn’t take his eyes off the road. Doesn’t actually need to watch this closely but it’s simpler than turning to her. He can feel her looking. “Invite you to my house in paradise?”

“Paradise?” She laughs. They have both been many places with better beaches than the bulging metropolitan beer belly of Tampa Bay. “You should not be driving if you are drunk. I hope you are fucking shitfaced to sound this stupid.”

Almost as fine a tightrope with her as it used to be with Andrei; one minute a giddiness to call him that, the next meaning it. Stupid, you dumb little faggot, you coward. With Svetlana he has mostly outgrown calling her a cunt and he’s pretty sure she no longer has him in her phone as Бархотка, pretty sure, but it’s still there. That too thin tongue between laugh and tooth.

Thinner than ever, now. She hasn’t been talking to him lately. They were fine until the news broke about him leaving Boston. He hadn't had a chance to tell her, then everyone knew. When he called she left him alone in the sound of it, empty ring and ring and ring.

The next morning he stepped directly onto his own ruined jersey, left in a pile at his front door. Sleeves scissored into strips and soiled with a mound from an upturned five gallon jug of whey. It made a little beach, pale sand littered with emptied glass vials and once-fat baggies, some already wandering away from the shred of coast into his grass. He plucked the plastic out of the dead lawn and doubled back to the kitchen for tongs. Picking it up with his bare hands would have meant nine hours late to practice instead of the fifteen minutes he ended up being. All the k and coke had blended into the fucking protein powder but the acid vial was empty too, soaked into the fabric, waiting to stain his palms. He sent her a picture of the mess in the trash and she waited months to respond.

He can tell, though, when they are being funnier, lighter, and when it is too much. She has a question for him but he has one for her, too. And she came, so. It’s not so heavy. Mostly because she doesn’t ask hers. Why the fuck would you move here, Ilya? What did you leave behind? If you really left, how come nothing ever ends?

Instead of any of that, when they get past the gate, she says, “Big ass house.” She can’t whistle. She’s so pretty; they would have stunning children. She doesn’t have freckles, but. They would be stunning. It’s the sort of stuff you could see from space: how beautiful she is, how right for each other they look.

“Do you want to stay forever? Six bedrooms. You could have two for clothes, at least.”

She scoffs, like a wine glass glinting. “Please. I’m leaving for civilization tomorrow.”

“Miami is no better than Tampa.”

He’s the one maneuvering her bags inside but she puts a hand out to stop him, little vice on his bicep. No heat to the squeeze at all. “Who are you? What are you talking about? It is like I do not know you at all.”

Not the right question.

She likes the guestroom. He puts her in the good one, the corner view of the pool close to his, not the dark-curtained one at the end of the hall that the cleaning service has to change the sheets on, contractually, three times a week. Five or six, lately. Even now his dick is sticky and sore; he had a lunch date, still full from it though he’ll go out again with Sveta. It’s been a couple of years since they fucked. He’ll remind her; he’s no different, it’s the same between them. Everything changes but nothing really does.

“Get dressed,” he says, the voice she used to say, a dreamy-mocking Okay Papa, to. Now she just stands looking out the window at the palm-plush backyard. “We have a reservation at eight. Two hours, that should be enough for you to change into something decent, stop looking so hideous in the face.”

That gets her. She turns, edges all lit up. Curls blurry at the edge a little like an angel and cross-armed, judging, exactly like one. “Do you want to borrow some makeup? It would take much more than two hours to fix all your ugly but I’ll do what I can. Maybe a paper bag?”

Ilya laughs. “I’m saving that for sex. Hostage thing, I was thinking. A bag on my head and tie me up, demand some money. I’ll tell you the code to the safe.”

“How creative. Did you think of this all on your own or did Jane help you?” Sveta asks.

Ilya’s eyebrows go up before he can make sure to keep his face flat and empty. Svetlana’s do too, the loft that means: caught you. I caught you. “There is no Jane.”

Even higher. “Oh no? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Ilya says, in Russian. Buzzing blank mind but gnawing this time, not the simple hum of sex or not thinking of a hospital bed. A hungrier gray. “It needed to be over. It’s over.”

She looks at him for a long time. He poured glasses for each of them, ignored now on the empty dresser, but Ilya will get drunk as fast as possible after this. The soft weight in his pocket sits like a thousand pounds; feels like it will give him a limp to walk around much longer this way. He has to change something permanently, sometime, it might as well be this.

His father is dead but the expectations are still alive and well. He left Russia and found them again with the league: always out of reach legacy, unwinnable games, never good enough. Never ending. Everything changes and nothing does. He can’t end it, but he can make it enjoyable. His for a while even if it’s never whole. The hard part is sometimes hope can slip in, a closing clamp in Ilya’s stomach before he notices the maybe growing tight enough to choke. Would you want to be, if we could?

Of course, Hollander does not understand the word. Can’t. He always has. He’s never reached a limit and shied away from it, never met a record he wasn’t intent on breaking, always takes whatever scrap he’s given and makes a whole out of it, a home.

At twelve, thirteen, small but already sure there would be so much to hide, Ilya and Sveta used to practice faces together. Yours shows too much, Ilyushka. Blushing, eyes that tattle. You do a little nose scratch when you lie. She pushed her small soft palm over his cheek, up to his brow, smoothing. You have to practice; otherwise you give too much of yourself away. There won’t be anything left.

Now, the same palm, barely any larger. “Outdoor or indoor, for dinner.”

Ilya’s breath trips over itself. He did practice; the one thing he never got any better at. Probably it’s all given away on his face. “Indoor. It’s cold. Bring a jacket.”

–

Svetlana sleeps in Ilya’s bed but keeps herself on the other side of it. Ilya thinks of trying again: effortful empty face, there is no Jane, it’s over. Even in his head it sounds whiny, even there he can’t keep from itching at his nose, digging his fingernail into the skin and trying to peel the uncomfortable tightness off.

Her flight is late in the afternoon but the day creeps up on them the way hours without practice or pregame do; swilling liquid, no firm at all. Time goes flat and wet instead of sturdy. Sometimes it feels like he’s only ever seen Hollander for less than a single hour of his life. Sometimes it feels like the whole thing, all his life squeezed in. Bad fit. Maybe that’s what he’s in love with. He always likes to be too big for something.

Svetlana had been looking at her phone when he closed his eyes but she doesn’t miss anything. Not Ilya’s hand on his chest, attempting to soothe the inside of his ribcage. She taps at his cheek with two fingers, points to the pair of left-behind nylons leaking out of one drawer.

“Are you a collector now? Serial killers do this, you know.”

Oh, he knows. In the back of the same drawer there’s a tag. Thready silk, frayed at the end, starting to fall apart from the minute it was separated. Ilya had cut it off a collar in a hotel room, in Boston maybe, a long time ago. Years. He had to pull it far away from the fabric, so careful not to snip any of the short dark hair at the nape. He kept rubbing at it, after. So much Ilya had finally asked, exasperated loud enough to drown the worry, Did I cut you? No, no cut. Shane said: It’s weird. I can feel it still, even though it’s not there.

Svetlana has to tap him again on the side of his face for an answer, pretty mouth frowning now. Ilya puts his hand over hers to keep her there. “People leave things. I’m nice, not to throw them away.”

She hums. Sits up a little, straining to see. “You have a whole box of new tights. I saw a nylon toe and thought ugh, trophy room, but what is this, Ilya? A new hobby?”

“The girls here are careless slobs, every last one.”

“And they leave you with a convenience store?”

Ilya mostly ignores her. “They are not like you. Tiny bag, empty, coming and going without a trace. There isn’t anyone like you.”

Svetlana, content that she’d distracted him from an impending meltdown or happy enough that she’d pushed him over the cliff toward one, yawns and goes back to her phone. “It’s true.”

“Really. It’s only you,” Ilya agrees, not finding the right moment so much as running out of them, grabbing the nearest one and strangling it into submission. He rolls off the bed. It takes a second, digging through his pants pocket from yesterday—last night, he had thought, then none of it felt right. Ilya settles at her side of the bed, dropped down onto his knees. “I’m tired of everyone else on earth. I want only you. Will you marry me?”

“Sure.” Svetlana laughs and doesn’t look up. It’s a noise he loves. A head turning from three booths down, leaping right over gut-thrumming base in a club sort of noise. “Tomorrow?”

“I mean it, Svetlana.”

She scowls. Delight falls off her face like it never happened. She looks down. “Stop it. This is a nice morning. No more stupid jokes and serious names.”

“It’s not a fucking joke.”

She leans off the bed, reaches with a soft hand. Then plants her palm, fingers spread, over the bridge of his nose. The shove lands him on his ass, a nice glossy ring box on the ground with him. “It’s not funny. I do not think this is funny.”

All that practice and still this voice. “Neither do I. I love you.”

“No, Ilya.” The sharp cut of his name, unsoftened, any endearment all run out. “Do not lie. You lie to me too many times and I will not recognize you—already there are too many. Soon there won’t be any of you left.”

It’s a beautiful day. Always, now. The sun aches at the back of his bare shoulders, broiling the ring in the box, a ready explanation for the sour simmer made of his chest. His head. He thought: a house, a wife. A good enough reason to stop. It doesn’t work to say I can’t, Hollander, he doesn’t listen—Ilya has to show him. He’s always been so close to understanding, just needs the slightest little shove to finally live in it.

Fine, then. Not her. The ring could work with anyone. He has another date tonight.

–

A sort of shitshow for a season but again, that’s to be expected. New team. Scattered rumors of starting to drug test for real but Ilya is enjoying himself too much to care. The guys like him enough to come over for beers, sit around for stupid couch-sunk nights, smoke from the enormous ostentatious bong Ilya’s very proud of having bought. Fabergé, practically, not that anyone in the room recognizes the reference. Hollander might—not like he knows a lot of lost Czarist artifacts, but he falls asleep to those boring videos online all the time. It’s possible one was about this, that there’s more quiet overlaps in their lives than either of them know. Ilya would rather not know, which means he can make a home here in the in between. In this small way that does not haul up any bigger hope, thinking that maybe it could be true, it could happen.

The cabinets are emptied, filled, emptied. Alone at night he eats frosting from the little plastic packages off a spoon, hard cold metal clacking against his tooth, the unfeeling implant. He stays in the house or sprawls out near-dead lizard with anyone by the pool. Gets sunburned and scaly.

While Hollander is in PyeongChang, Ilya fails a drug test, then fucks a girl he meets on the beach. She works at an alligator encounter place and he says he’d like to work there, too, is she hiring? They do all the drugs in her purse and then she says no to his sloppy offer at four in the morning but takes pictures of the ring on her finger anyway, a slice of Ilya’s calf in the background. His jaw in another.

Hopefully she got a lot of money for selling the story. Ilya doesn’t see how it counts as one. So he wanted something and couldn’t have it—fine. Nothing changes. It’s happened before. That’s always what happens.

Hollander must consider it enough of a story—enough of a push, maybe. No text arrives with a barrage of question marks. No screenshot of an article, no reaching hand stuck out and still trying. The next time they play together in March, less often now that the teams aren’t rivals—even the announcers barely know what they are to each other anymore—he doesn’t look up from the face off with someone else. Doesn’t try to find Ilya in a suit, in the box. Puck, stick, play. That’s the whole game.

It’s better this way. If he had looked up, Ilya would have seen it, then. Shane finally seeing it.

It’s almost a surprise when Hollander shows up the same way as before, buzzing at the gate, hoodie hanging so far over his face you have to dig into the dark to reach him. Almost. The actual surprise arrives after Ilya crushes into him, tries to kiss him immediately only for Hollander to shove Ilya back so hard he stumbles.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

It’s hard not to laugh. His face is all scrunched up, the single direction finally committed to. But he looks sweetest mad, easiest to adore frowning and straining and grabbing for reality with two fists and insisting—no, this should be different. He holds onto the world and turns his pouting mouth to it, demands change. Like that’s how it works. And yet, it’s been eight years and Ilya is still exactly the same.

“Are you going insane? What’s happening?”

Ilya lays a palm over the side of his face, clawing thumb into soft after Hollander tries to swat him off. “You’re at my house and you came here to get fucked. Then you will leave, after. Do you forget more? Your name is Shane Hollander and you pretend to love hockey but your real love is taking it up the ass. You cry, most of the time. But you like crying, too.”

Hollander stares at him. Looks just as good wild as he does angry, but this isn’t either. He can’t commit past the welcome mat. All the warm wingflutter in Ilya’s chest is starting to beat mean, devotion itching at the shell so hard it’s liable to crack off into loathing.

“You are,” Hollander says, confirming something. The wrong thing. That Ilya’s wrong now but was ever right before. He can show him, still. Ilya will be very patient and walk him right through it. “Who was that girl?”

“Come here,” Ilya says once he’s reached the other end of the hallway. Fingers scratching at his bedroom door, cracked only a little open. “I’ll show you. I think you will like it. Leave your clothes at the door.”

Ilya doesn’t wait or watch his face at all. Turns and disappears through his bedroom door. It takes almost a full minute.

But he comes. Listens, follows. Briefs still on, cock soft. Good—that’s fine. Ilya will work him up to it anyway. Play with him, make fun of him, get to see how mean gets him so much thicker. Gray cotton briefs because he’s very modest even if he’s very rich. Perfect for a wet spot, for seeing his cock jump. He doesn’t like to be seen so much as he likes to be found. They haven’t done this before but Ilya’s got a pretty good picture of how it will go. He’s seen Shane’s eyes snagged on them before; fake eyelashes left on the nightstand table, lace slink of a panty left on the floor. Not like he wants them. More that he doesn’t.

He likes everything he doesn’t like, Ilya most of all.

Ilya points to a random spot in front of the bed, tilting his finger a little at the last second as though it’s all been carefully selected, like he has real plans. “Here.”

“I want to talk to you,” Shane says, which must be almost the anniversary of him saying that once before.

“Okay. You’re allowed to talk,” Ilya decides. He says so to the drawer in front of him, an open mouth he’s pulling freely from, stacking things on top of the dresser in plain sight of Shane, the view bouncing off the big mirror behind it. A few thongs, one bikini top, a leftover skirt, some bracelets too frail to fit. Necklaces but Ilya doesn’t want to bother with the tiny clasp. It slows him down nicely, dripping the fake gold down into a row. Then the ring and a pair of nylon tights.

He hears Shane swallow. “Who was that girl? Are you dating someone?”

It catches him off guard, the shape of the question. Ilya laughs. “No.”

Pointlessly shuffling the lineup so that every little thing has space to breathe. Space to be admired. Shane most of all, standing almost naked in the middle of Ilya’s room which he hasn’t decorated at all except for with him, right now. It could work if Ilya thinks about it like this: no devotion for a decoration. He’s pretty, but that could be it. Through the window, looking out at the pool, the lights outside are on, cutting everything near jagged and black. Crude palms press up against the glass, the plants a scatter of fingers reaching right for him.

“Well, what the fuck? Was that real? I thought—I mean, Hayden thought she was engaged to someone else and happened to hook up with you. That it was all fake.”

He can feel it; all the practice of not giving himself away, always worthless. Ilya’s face stays blank when he turns over one shoulder but his voice comes out obvious. “You talk to Hayden Pike about me?”

Shane looks startled, caught. He doesn’t look young but he can, sometimes a soft kid with his little hand stuffed into a cookie jar, though Ilya can’t believe he was ever that way. Sneaking around, stealing something sweet, closing his fingers around anything he wants. With Ilya, it always seems like this is his first time being caught. “No. Just, everyone was talking about it. Most guys tend to notice when someone’s suspended for drugs one week,” his voice stumbles, “then engaged the next.”

“She said no.” Ilya waves a hand. “And barely a suspension. Twenty games. Back for the playoffs.”

“It’s not barely. It’s serious.”

It’s been too long with him standing here, cock soft. It’s serious. What if we could. Air comes to Ilya’s lungs through mesh, irritation or pure, molten-tongued anger, he can’t tell which. It lathes the inhale, licks up the exhale. He doesn’t open the box but he thumbs the top of it, glancing back at Shane for only the brief relief of that face. “Well, big surprise, Pike is wrong. It’s true. This is the ring.”

Shane takes a long time to decide. “Who was she?”

“I think maybe we are done talking, now.”

For this, he doesn’t take so long. Quiet immediately. Chosen a long time ago. The concentration, crystallized consideration that always leads to the same thing. He could go, should—knows this, certainly. Ilya lines insults up for him so neatly on a shelf and Shane watches him do it. He stays.

Ilya makes a show of choosing between a few pairs of leftover panties. Hums, holds a gauzy black thong up in front of himself, stretched across the hard-on hugged in his sweatpants. Tries it against Shane’s. Tuts and looks up. “I do not think it will fit. You have such wider hips than me, Hollander.”

Shane frowns. He left his hand at the bottom of his belly, just above the waistband. Waiting. “I’m not fucking wearing that.”

“No,” Ilya agrees. “It would never fit.”

“Where did you get this stuff?” and when Ilya doesn’t answer, “You’re so gross.”

Ilya ignores it. An exhale, at this point, nothing but air. He’ll listen if he ever means it.

It’s the skirt, next. Ilya kneels to pin the slinky red over Hollander’s hips, sighs again like he’s surprised when it doesn’t come close to covering the skin. Pale smooth warmth where side meets belly, showing past each of Ilya’s hands. He flattens his palms and holds it up there anyway, shifts and hums, slumps shoulders so the view to the mirror is only half blocked. Shane doesn’t say anything but Ilya can feel him looking, the same haze of attention that always glows off him is simmering now, sharpened with the little arch to his spine.

“I wish I had heels. Not as pretty without heels.”

“Knock it off.” Shane moves like he’ll push Ilya’s hand but just ends up holding it. It takes all the strength in the world for Ilya not to sink his forehead into the top of his wide thigh, breathe in the certain scent of him. Dissolve into this and be nothing else maybe ever again.

But he’s stronger than that. Ilya hums, bounds up and takes the skirt with him. Shane’s cock looks fuller, not straining the fabric or smearing it with wet yet, just a little filled out. But still, the briefs. Bad listening.

“I said to strip.”

He doesn’t wait, this time. When Ilya turns back with a pair of sheer black nylons, Shane is naked, shifting his weight from one bare heel to the other. Thicker than Ilya thought. Ilya lets the legs of the tights stream down to show him, crumpled waist bundled in one fist.

Shane’s brows pinch together, making a sweet little divot in the middle. “I can’t fit in those, either.”

“Hm. Let’s try.”

Shane gives most of it away on his face, too. Eager like a polish, the slack from his wet mouth leaking into his jaw, inexplicable soft shock after almost ten years of Ilya being as unsurprising as possible around him. Acting like he never sees it coming from Ilya or himself when he goes down on the bed from the slightest tap at the place his thigh fastens to his hip. One more tap til to get his ass at the edge of the mattress, legs splayed out.

Ilya has to bend to get to him, bent prince charming back, folded down on one knee. Ilya bundles up one sheer leg and begins with the sock of it catching on one foot, careful to stretch it up the calf where it starts to resist, slower to stretch. Just above the knee, half of Shane’s leg swallowed in slippery black, Ilya pauses. Pretends to decide something and starts over a second time with the second foot. Sloppier this time; Shane twitches a little when Ilya’s fingers brush the bottom of his foot, only settles back into softness when Ilya gets them up halfway.

“I didn’t know you had, like, a fetish for this.”

Ilya hums. Wraps a hand around each ankle, grip soothed in the smooth fabric. Coating like a candy shell and just that slippery sweet under his palms. Up and down; it doesn’t take long. He shifts so Shane can’t miss the effect he has, how hard Ilya is from just this and bites back the smile at his sharp inhale.

“I don’t.”

“Really? You just—wait, are these all someone else’s? Is this from the girl you had sex with?” Shane’s shoulders get granite right away, cracking statue, but his cock twitches. Ilya’s eyebrows stay perfectly even. He does not comment on the the.

“What if they are?”

“Then I don’t want to do this. I’m not—I know you do that, fine, that’s fine, whatever. But that has nothing to do with me.”

That. I know you do that. That’s fine.

He can’t say it. Ilya tries to remember the face of the girl on the guest room bed. Can only get the smoke stagnant around them, the expensive ring bright between them, her generous smear of freckles.

“Fine. I bought brand new, special present just for you.” Ilya says.

No more pauses. Choice made. Shane rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

But there isn’t a single muscle twitch toward leaving or even pulling the tights off. Ilya drags his nails up the still naked stretch of one thigh. He wants to cup his balls a little, hold him, get him heavy and hard with only the curl of his palm. See how little it takes. This is just seeing—what is he, what will he be for Ilya. What does Shane see when he looks down and nods his chin once. It will be nicer anyway to get him hard after the nylons are on him, to watch the fat head of his dick drooling into the fabric. Fucking stupid that Ilya bought black ones.

The rest of it is more difficult than Ilya pictured. Thighs take a while, then Shane goes up on his back, plush ass pushed off the bed so Ilya can slip the rest over it. There’s no slipping. They’re not even over the roundest curve and one leg rips. The split is thicker than two of Ilya’s fingers; they both hear the loud slap of noise. Shane sits up a little to see.

“I told you it wouldn’t work.” Proud. Even flat on his back he can sound so proud. The elastic waistband is easy to maneuver, barely a hitch of Ilya’s fingers and it’s snapping at his thighs, just under his balls. Shane gasps.

It takes Ilya’s shoulders, effort, a blunt lurch forward and both hands clawing, but he gets them on. Up and over his ass, squeezing the soft of his thighs, his cock. Ilya lets out a stupid, big noise and Shane spreads his legs. Another rip rushes from his hip to his ankle, the front of one leg this time.

“Fuck,” Shane says. Up on his elbows to look down at himself. “This looks so stupid. You can’t like this, I look so stupid.”

Ilya puts his hand flat, runs up one half-ruined thigh until his thumb nudges at Shane’s balls. A little under but it’s kind of impossible to reach without force. He doesn’t use any, just skims up and down. Flat palm, pressing.

What is this? Nothing. Something Ilya wanted and can’t explain, for the millionth time can’t believe he gets. He rubs his hand in a circle, focused and lazy. Pushes down then eases up like a languid pulse.

“You always look stupid.” Ilya settles his chin into one thigh, slipping down to his cheek. “And now I think you look pretty.”

Shane snorts.

“I mean it. Don’t you think you’re pretty, Shane?” Push, push, push. “Spread your legs, pretty girl.”

No answer except for the snaggy little breath and the hitch in his hips, spine starting to arch. Ilya grinds his palm down, gets faster. Another too quick shift and so much splits that there’s a naked pillar of rounded pink skin now between the black. He immediately needs to feel it, hand wandering down to pick at the run, making it worse. Shane shivers under his fingers and Ilya keeps ruining.

Stroking down his legs, over his knees, up the back to his ass. Slipping between, over to the bulge. His thumb over the wet spot his cock made for only a second before he sinks forward. Nosing at him, huffing out a hot breath and then pulling back to watch. A desperate little hiccup to Shane’s hips rolls light over the damp, a sticky pool of shine over the vulgar and absurdly detailed outline of his cock. There’s bulge in the fabric where the swollen head sits, the jutty lip when the crown flares and dips and gives in to the length. Ilya can almost see the vein that curls from the left side underneath, the way he’s so blatant and shy. He can entirely see the steady twitch of it through the mesh, blood pulsing in his dick. The next time he goes down he does so mouth open.

Just the head. No seal to his lips, not enough tongue. Breath, mostly. One slow kiss. Salt seeps toward the back of his throat; Shane’s cock kicks and Ilya laughs. What is it? Different, the same. The question leaves a gaping hole in the shape of a dim waiting answer. He’s already said it once. Worse, more rooted—more impossible to rip out of the earth in Russian. Ilya buries his face in his crotch and couldn’t love him more.

“I’m—god. Fuck, I’m close,” Shane says.

It’s not that much, compared to other things. They’ve had a lot of sex a lot of different ways. This is Ilya nosing around his dick, Shane’s cock trapped in the tights. Ilya allows himself the heel of one hand and has to pull back just as fast—his chest clenches. Announcers don’t know what to do with them, but they’re the same, sometimes. They want the same things.

And Ilya has more than he can fit, now, with the texture of this shit on him, the shine and the grope of it, the way his cock is so vivid like this, trapped. Separated from him, vulgar and bulging and big. The way he gets so wet for it, leaking through the fabric, pearl pooling close enough to lick. Ilya does and Shane’s hand goes for his hair. With him pulling, groaning, it’s not enough. All at once, it’s right then, not enough.

“Get up,” Ilya says, too much hungry buzz in his ears to catch if it comes out a plea or an order. His hands fumble for Shane’s ass, shoving when he gets a palm planted on each cheek. “On your back, up. I need to fuck you.”

More ripping while he goes. A strip of naked skin in a honey ribbon all down the inside of one thigh, the long line of it folded while Shane tries to steady himself, heels scrambling at the edge of the bed. Ilya crashes down on top of him, knocks the breath out in a gasp below the sound of the fabric shredding further. Shane squirms under him but Ilya’s fingers snag at the first hole, he convinces him still with another tear. A matching sound falls out of Ilya’s chest when he claws open the straining stretch over his ass.

He looks so much more indecent like this than he does naked, lewd stripes of skin bright through the big holes and hanging on nylon choking his thigh, squeezing the tough muscle to tender right under Ilya’s fingers. A shudder runs him, open mouth to trapped toe from just the ugly noise of the lube squirting.

No considering. No more wait or delay or wet fabric between them; Ilya shoves into the knuckle, curling the tip of his finger so Shane’s legs spread wider. Another rip. Two fingers, down to the root, soaking wet. There’ll be a big stain tomorrow. He hasn’t ever had sex with anyone else in this room. Sometimes it feels like—

“Fuck, fuck,” Shane pants. He pushes down, tries, fails to. Tries again anyway, whine wrestling out of him. What a fucking mouth. He can’t get there, keeps straining and grinding and trying anyway. It breaks your heart, that endless, go-nowhere effort. “Fuck, Ilya.”

It’s not that much time. Not enough. It’s been a long time and Ilya only stretches him a few moments, curls his fingers and rasps at the tight little spot that makes Shane kick one leg out, squeeze his shoulders up to his jaw and grab anything of Ilya he can reach. Hair, this time, one sweaty palm slapping at the back of his neck.

He’s not careful, there’s no plan. Ilya wants him to feel this and needs him to understand, finally. When it’s just the head of his cock pushed inside he stays right there, not enough. A tiny knock of his hips, dipping further in then back out just as ungenerous. Stays there, stretching. He’s so hot inside, Ilya’s arms shake to hold himself up—an insane thing, having built himself so sturdy for so long.

“Don’t you? You never said.”

Shane’s eyes crack open. Glassy, dazed and dark. “What?”

“Do you think you’re pretty?”

Shane sighs, too much heat in it. Almost a gasp. “Shut up.”

Ilya pulls out, adds his thumb to the tip of his dick when he pushes back in and Shane’s whole body jolts. He rubs at the rim, careless about the nail until Shane makes a broken noise. Ilya tells him, “I fuck a lot of nice girls with big tits but you’re—”

“Stop.”

“My favorite, maybe. Prettiest.” He doesn’t have the self control to take his hand away and get at Shane’s poor cock but knows already what he’d find. Soaked through, dripping. “Such a nice pussy, too.”

Shane groans but the tendons in his neck are stark, his face is so pink and he’s trapped right here, kept and close and staring damp-eyed up at Ilya. “Knock it off.”

“I’m serious.” Ilya fumbles, graceless with his cock, catching at the hole while he fucks clumsily at the crease. He must feel it, slick leaking between his cheeks, the smear already spread between his thighs. Into the nylon, caught in a net and pressing back at him, too. “So wet. Hungry for it. Feels like you’re sucking on me from the inside.”

“Stop,” Shane says again, different this time. Angling himself up, trying to get more when he says he wants less. His mouth isn’t closing. Sound leaking out then left hung open, glossy wet like he feels down here. The next time the head of his dick slips against the rim he fucks in a little. A little. Barely halfway, but Shane bucks up, gasping.

“See? Do you feel it? That’s your cunt. Wet and hungry.”

Always wanting to be full, never enough. Ilya’s so big and it isn’t enough. Shane whines. The hand at the back of Ilya’s neck becomes a bite, nails digging in.

“Say. You’re so pretty.” Whether they fit or not. Ilya fucks in inch by inch, eyes rolling into the back of his head with his cock so swallowed in this heat.

“‘I’m pretty,” Shane says.

“What?”

“I said I’m pretty,” he pants, and Ilya groans, gives in. Melting completely into the kiss.

You like it? Getting fucked, having this fat cock buried in your tight little cunt? You like when I grab your tits? When I play with your big clit? Ilya means to say it, meant to keep going, can’t really remember how to get his voice past whatever’s in his throat is so hard to breathe around. Shane’s eyes are dark, a permanence to the color, something you find on the back of your own eyelids anytime you try to stop looking. Something that lives in you always. He is—so pretty.

What is he doing? Wanting at one point to humiliate him—maybe this works better, even. He is pretty. He should know. He’s Ilya’s best girl, better than—maybe it’s worse because it’s better. That feels like it’s always been true.

Shane’s legs tighten around his waist, velvet slick with the fucking tights. He should have added a security camera in this room. He should have taken pictures of him every single time—he could die actually happy with no more legacy than that. A monument to his mouth. But instead there’s ten years and nothing but this to show for it, Shane under him, arching, eyes closed, clenching like he means to squeeze forever out of Ilya. Ilya fucks him the same as ever but it’s different this time.

The thing about Shane is he doesn’t roll over and let you do things. He likes to fight. He fights in weird ways, not like Ilya’s brother calling him a faggot, not like Sveta, not like anyone else in the world. He scrapes Ilya down through sheer shining effort. Changes the shape too slow to notice. Keeps trying until any surface previously serviceable as a shield is ground down to dust. Until there’s nothing left but exposure, eager wriggling want. Ilya loves him and can’t figure out how to stop. Can’t get anything in the way, no protection built back up, just this: raw need, devotion, drooling, loose hope. Home.

Ilya bites the inside of his cheek to keep from coming, and fucks Hollander hard, bodies slapping with messy noise until he does. Comes on Ilya’s dick, all over the inside of the nylon. Ilya only means to pull off enough to see it but the angle sinks him in deeper; both of them make matching noises. A second one from Shane when Ilya pulls out, fucks his fingers in without letting him have a single breath. Shane arches, cries, fists the sheets. His cock is still trapped, softening in the sticky glaze. Some of it seeped through, bright on straining black, then blotted out with Ilya’s pawing palm. Ilya strips his own cock with the other hand, starts to shake and come, sucking on Shane’s swollen bottom lip. Shane’s thighs shivering, straining wider, all of him split open and spilled the way he does to Ilya every single day.

It’s a mess. It’s such a fucking mess.

–

It takes a while to get him upright. The first time Hollander tries, Ilya holds him down by the shoulder. Barks at him when he goes for it a second time. Once he stays there, slack, breath steadying, Ilya goes back and forth between the edge of the bed and the bathroom, the sink. He gasps like Ilya’s pressing inside of him again when he peels the ruined nylon only down to his knees. Cleaning him takes twice as long as usual and then Ilya insists they shower after, scrubs him thoroughly. Curls his chest up to his back for every little unhappy noise Hollander makes no matter how careful Ilya is, trying to be tender with the raw open mess of him.

It doesn’t matter what they want or how much they try, it’s too much, it doesn’t work.

“Are you hungry?” Ilya asks, after. Both of their heads soaking wet, Hollander’s black hair blacker, stuck to his forehead. Combed too quickly; very cute. Pretty.

Hollander winces. He’s squinting a little, tired-looking. “Yeah. But I should go, it’s late.”

“True. It’s already late. Too late already. So we will stop you being hungry and then you will go.”

He must be tired. There isn’t any divot between his brows or stopping to consider; Hollander simply follows him into the kitchen, falls right into the chair Ilya pulls out at the table he’s never sat at before. Everything Ilya eats has been out some place, over the counter or on the couch, greasy wrappers left in the car.

Ilya gets a slew of options from the cabinets and spills the bounty between them on the table. Hollander doesn’t look impressed. It takes a full few seconds for him to even reach forward to sift through the options; neon candy already melting in Ilya’s mouth when he weighs one of the stout, half-portion protein drinks. He’s starting to feel sugar sick by the time Hollander takes his first sip.

“God,” Hollander says. “I can’t believe you have these. They’re are so bad.”

Ilya’s eyebrows go up, shoulders sinking low in his chair. The drape makes his legs long. Easy to push the sole of his foot against Hollander’s calf, freak him out by tapping at it once with his curled toes. “Sorry. You have a private chef to make yours? Michelin star protein shake?”

“No,” Hollander says. Wincing. He kicked Ilya’s foot away then left his there against Ilya’s leg, cotton soft weight. “I drink this shit sometimes, too. It just never gets better.”

Ha. No, it doesn’t. Ilya swallows. “What do you put in it? To make it better. You must have tricks. You have all your special little tricks.”

Half Hollander’s mouth curls up, rounds his cheek. Makes his face all sweet. Ilya digs into the empty candy bag, nails scraping plastic, scratching at nothing. “Why do you think that?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yeah. Or, I mean. It’s not special. A lot of people use maple syrup.”

Ilya gasps. A huge noise in the dim kitchen, and Hollander is still smiling. “Hollander! So much sugar! What about your perfect machine body?”

“Shut up. I’m a robot? How original.”

“You are. Robot.” Ilya leans forward to sweep his thumb over Hollander’s chest, hitting the nipple on the first try. Wrenches the gasp right out of him. “You have all these buttons to press. Turns on so easy.”

Hollander laughs. “This is a big night for me. First a girl then a robot.”

Ilya’s whole face feels bright. He needs something to do with his hands, picks up the bottle cap Hollander left on the table and starts to pull idly at the perforation around the ring. “Yes. You’re—many things, hm? Who would have guessed.”

“Not you,” Hollander says. The laugh that comes out of Ilya is so loud it shocks him.

He really is a lot. Too much. Hollander’s very bad about staying in his allotted boxes. He’s idolized, lauded, a mountain of a man. He’s sitting here in Ilya’s kitchen, not twenty minutes after Ilya put him in nylons, purred about his pussy and made him come. He’s boring and yet Ilya’s never been bored with him.

Hollander finishes the drink. Chalky vanilla; he’s gonna kiss so sticky. He’s so—

“Some things do get better, though,” Hollander says. Swishing the empty bottle in the air. “It can get better than this shit, anyway.”

Ilya smiles. Still, bright weighing down his face. He feels a little numb, dull buzz stretching to the ends of his fingers. Turning the little piece of plastic in his hands, around and around before he finally finds where it’s meant to fit.

No thought. Bright, dull buzz. He doesn’t move quickly but it’s not a series of motions Hollander’s expecting, so he’s slow to react. No reaction at all when Ilya takes his hand in his, smirks, holds him by the palm so his fingers stretch out, a little slack. Easy to slips the ring on.

The way it ripped off the cap gives it teeth, there must be a bite even if it doesn’t fit. Hangs and scrapes its way to the bottom of the proper finger. Hollander really—he isn’t moving very much. Frozen like a rabbit in tall grass, Ilya so quiet and always the gun going off. He’s in too far not to make it big, make it clownish and loud. He sinks down on one knee. Only then does Hollander react.

Bang. A gun when he wants to be, too. The chair crashes behind him after he shoots up, so fast he fumbles back against the counter, has to catch himself. “What the fuck?”

Ilya forces himself not to lurch upright immediately, the smirk carved unflinching into his face. Finally not so bad at lying with it. “You kept asking about her. Looking at that ring. What’s wrong?” He grabs for the plastic trash on the table, holding it out in a palm. “You want the diamond? You’re high maintenance, after all?”

“I—” Shane can be robotic. It’s not very hard to fry his system. He’s also so sensitive it’s surprising he has any skin at all. The way his voice sounds—raw, flayed—makes Ilya immediately wish for anything else—metal or his own skin stripped off with the dullest thing in the kitchen, so sorry there’s no more room in his chest even for air. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What?” Ilya asks.

He sounds young, he sounds the way Ilya’s heart tastes, all the time. “You—are you fucking kidding me? You don’t—You wouldn’t come see me for one stupid week in the summer, you moved away—you’re fucking with me. You’re just fucking with me. Was this it? You were just fucking with me? The whole time?”

For all the rigid stillness before while Ilya slowly slipped a fake future over his finger, he’s like a storm breaking, now. The air is electric, thick and unbreathable. Cruel, struck, bright eyes. Then, gone. No chance for Ilya to grovel or change his mind or explain—he’s serious, actually, this is the one thing he means. No chance. A single roll of thunder when he slams for the front door, throws it closed behind him.

–

Passing interest, he used to tell himself. Curiosity. Ilya’s always liked to know things. How much was that drink, Sveta? The eight ball? How long is the flight from Moscow to Paris? It never meant he wanted to go. If someone else had something Ilya liked to have it too, even if the had-thing was a flimsy, useless, simple fact. How long is the drive from Florida to Canada? Less than a day, technically. Twenty-one hours.

He only stops to piss. The tights and the ring aside, the closest he can imagine Hollander coming to permanently ending it would be if he saw plastic bottles of piss under the passenger seat. He doesn't want Shane to see anything he doesn't like, anymore.

He’s tried to show Shane what he wants, where it doesn’t work, and that failed completely. It worked too well—Ilya found out how well they could fit, do. He leaves and doesn't go. Ilya can feel him in every inch of his house, Shane not yet home, nowhere close to calling Ilya a home, and already taking up every possible space in his life.

Not even possible, but it hasn’t seemed to help. Ilya’s so good at leaving but he’s always coming back. He has to go back. He left too many important things with all the rushing forward, away. One week in the summer—fine. However many more years of this and never being able to keep him in his kitchen, laughing in his bed, long day seeping out of his spine on the couch—okay. Fine. It isn’t enough. It won’t work.

But it never worked before, and already it didn’t matter. Always it was forever.

It ends up being closer to twenty seven hours. He gets to the gate at Hollander’s house and only remembers squinting into the sullen sun that it’s a regular morning, the middle of his week. Hollander wouldn’t be home yet. At an early practice, a man-of-the-people hot yoga studio, or—on the plane, still. He didn’t ask what time the flight was. There are so many things he’s been too afraid to ask. In his car, heat roaring, Ilya studies the Metros calendar with his sunglasses slipping down his nose, getting his greasy face greasier after the drive-thru breakfast.

Shane will be home soon and not now. Not long enough to sleep but he climbs into the back of his car anyway, not much more comfortable than the front, and tries her.

No answer on the first ring, but it’s early. And she’s angry, still, probably. Angry isn’t the right word but it’s the blunted one Ilya feels capable of closing his hand around, this early, this raw.

“Hi, my girl.”

“Hi, you cunt.” Then a muffled noise, palm over the phone while she says something to someone else. She comes back after the sound of a shut door. “What do you want?”

“Who are you with? Is this why you would not marry me, you’ve been in love with someone else all along?”

For a second he thinks that’s it, too far. The thin tongue between laugh and tooth’s finally worn out between them. No air left, only bite. Then, she snorts, an unattractive noise that he would eat if he could. “I hope I’m the only one you are this crazy with.”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “That’s actually true. You’re the only one for this.”

“You cannot be this crazy to Jane and expect ever to get him back.”

“Ha,” Ilya says. His head is swimming, his vision starting to sink under the same current. “I’m here for this right now, actually.”

“Here? Where’s here?” Though, she knows. Caught you, I caught you—he can almost feel the look on her face.

“Mm,” Ilya says. He folds his knees up to his chest and still doesn’t fit. Closes his eyes. Makes it sound light, like he’s still being very funny and crazy. “I do not know if it will work. I’m feeling nervous.”

“Oh,” Svetlana says. “Well. It will work or it won’t, but at least you will know.”

“That’s true.” He keeps his eyes closed. His body is exhausted but the sun is relentless through the windshield, pouring day all over the backseat. Insisting that yes, there is a next moment, after all. “Only, then, if it doesn't, I don’t know. I don’t think I would know who I am, without this. I do not think there would be enough of me left. I want this, very badly. And I can’t have it.”

“Maybe you can have it even if it’s not what you want.”

Ilya laughs. “Wow. What a bunch of bullshit.”

“Then it fits perfect for you. Bullshit boy.”

His cheeks ache, a little. Smiling so stupid wide. They talk about her guy in Miami and the sometimes one in New York, the things she likes about him, the infinite impossible intolerable things she hates. The New York one has a country house.

Ilya rubs at his forehead. “Where’s Vermont?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Well, you should look it up. That’s your future, probably, waiting in the woods for you under big puffy white clouds. Cute little country wife. I will mail you an apron.”

“Mm? And remind me again what you are doing, right now? It’s called pussy-whipped, Ilyushka.”

Ilya laughs. It feels like the first breath in a full day. “Do you think you’ll get married?”

“God, I hope not. But I would love to be divorced.”

“You would be an amazing ex-wife. He’ll be so lucky.”

“You want to get married?” She doesn’t let him answer. Perfect, perfect woman. “This is your problem, always. You wasted life in Russia because you were only waiting to live in America, you waste the early season games too eager for the playoffs. You waste the summers waiting for the year to start again. You waste all the things you have now thinking how you want them in the future.”

“I do want to get married,” Ilya can’t keep from saying. “Bad.”

“No,” Svetlana says. “You love someone. You’re in love with someone. This is not the same thing.”

“How?”

She makes an annoyed sound. “You’re ahead of yourself again, stupid. Have you even told him?”

He goes to laugh and doesn’t find enough air there. Suddenly, it’s the middle of the day, the split open center of his life. They don’t talk for much longer. He starts his car up and pushes all the dumb adoration in his chest into the little map on the console, hopeful to very soon be home.

–

It’s not surprising—Ilya really can’t imagine he’s truly surprised. But there Shane stands, shocked. Mouth a little open, pretty eyes wide, scanning up Ilya ill-fitting up against the Montreal weather: basketball shorts, flipflops, shitty rumpled shirt he hasn’t slept in. Still wearing what he was when he held Shane to his chest, Shane’s cheek against the same pattern, only last night. It feels a million years further. He does, only a foot away.

“Can I come in?”

Shane shakes his head, frowning. Says, “Yeah, come in,” even while he doesn’t look like he quite knows what he’s looking at. Ilya takes an extra few seconds to close the door. He should have thought of something to say.

“I have a new car. But still I, parked a walk away. I walked here. It should be fine.”

His eyebrows haven’t come down. “Your legs are all red.”

“Yes. It’s winter.” He looks down; calves pinched and pink all over. His feet, even. Toes. “I love you.”

It comes out in Russian. He’s said it so many times by then it’s easier than air. He mistakes one for the other, sometimes. Russia was first, but Shane is, too. Just a rough translation. Shane is his first home. That’s how it feels, standing in his house he’s only vaguely welcome in, across from his stiff shoulders and tight mouth. I love you. I’m home.

“What?” Shane asks. It’s very hard not to kiss his mouth. He keeps looking along the edges of Ilya, not right at him. At how he does not quite fit here, maybe.

“Can we sit down? I’m very strong, but I think right now I’m not. I could fall asleep standing, I think.”

“You want to sit down to sleep?” But he is already leading Ilya into the hall, toward his big clean comfortable couch.

“No. To talk.” Ilya goes down further than he means to when his ass hits the cushion, the top half of him collapsing into the back of the couch. He didn’t feel so tired, really, when he was still moving. Even laying in the back of his parked car felt like momentum, heading toward him. But he’s here now. It’s hard to adjust.

“What do you want to talk about?” Familiar voice. For press, the steely shiny shield. Glinting and cold, very firm. Ilya’s not used to hearing it without the hum that comes out of the speaker on his phone, blue light from the screen seeping out into the sheets when he’s up very late trying to have any scrap of Shane he can.

“I should not have done that.”

Shane’s jaw twitches. If he asks, done what? then Ilya will answer, and then it will sit in the air between them, almost solid. Almost there again; Shane’s face warm, eyes hazy, stretched nylon streaked with striking white globs of come, Ilya at the kitchen table making a joke out of everything they can’t have. Insanely, in a very small way, he thought Shane might laugh. He hoped he would laugh and finally stop Ilya’s heart so that it couldn’t keep trying to beat in these wet shredded separate pieces, everyday.

Instead, Shane says, “That’s not really an apology.”

“I did not come here to apologize,” Ilya says, and at Shane’s eyebrows, Ilya gets hasty, gets true. “What is the use of sorry? You know I am sorry, and you can’t know. I can show you. But saying it is nothing.”

“Okay.” Shane frowns. “Great. So, you drove a thousand miles to say you aren’t sorry?”

“No. To show.”

Shane waits. Watches. Ilya has to restrain himself from shifting around and digging into his pockets, but he doesn’t have anything to show but this: yesterday’s forever, his dull, devotional body.

“I love you,” he says. Very calm. Almost no shake to it. It’s the middle of the day, the start of his life. He doesn’t want to keep waiting, rotting while he expects something to arrive next and make him whole. “A lot. Too much, where—I don’t know how to love you less, because I want everything. I don’t know how to want only one part.” The smile cracked on his face. He does pause, ends up digging a little in his pocket. The plastic ring goes down on the coffee table between them without a sound. “See? I love you too much, so it doesn’t fit. It’s too big.”

It takes Shane a long time to respond. To consider. He does this; looks around at things from every angle. Not like Ilya, too blinded by the bright smothering future of something to see any other side of it. To see how much is already right in front of him.

“I thought saying it meant nothing.”

“I—” Ilya swallows, embarrassed by how loud. “You care about words. So, I’ll show you by saying it. I should have said it before. I was feeling nervous.” He can’t quite get the rest out. Nervous isn’t the right word—he was terrified. Terrified to have him and any sense of himself shredded not to.

It gets one tight corner of his mouth tilted up, though. “It’s kind of hard to believe.”

“What?”

“Nervous,” Shane says. “You being nervous.”

“Not being in love with you?”

“No,” Shane settles back into the couch, one leg stretching out. His foot ends up on Ilya’s bare calf, the scratchy hair and soft skin still red and singed by winter, slowly getting warmer. He’s getting warmer. “That makes sense. You either really loved me or you hated me. It had to be one or the other.”

“Wow,” Ilya says. Bright, bright face. Showing everything. “And you, what? Think I’m a nice coworker?”

No hesitation at all. Shane says, "I love you, too." 

There. Words, and what does it change? Nothing gets any better, even if the mess in Ilya’s chest gets deftly sown together, one shred woven into another until there’s a scrubby, small nest. A place to rest, finally. Fine. Well. Now they love each other.

He doesn’t have time to worry about what’s on his face because Shane is there, soon, catching Ilya’s mouth in his own. Doesn’t have to wonder; he can taste the awe dripping off his own tongue, the bright sudden crash where waiting dissolves and the want cracks open ripe and real and right in front of him.

They have sex on the couch, in the daylight, and Ilya can’t stop it from still dripping out. Spit and skinless wet joy, all the words with it. I love you, I’m sorry, god, I love you so much, I’m so fucking sorry.

Sometimes, just his name. One breath and everything kept inside it, all that love, a whole home.