Chapter Text
Moscow, April 2006
Alexei had bad taste in everything – wallet chains, ringtones, girlfriends – but Ilya was still surprised to learn that apparently this extended even to kittens. The tiny Siamese cowering in the carton had a dull coat the colour of unwashed bedsheets and a protruding tooth. Its mew was low and uncertain.
“You think”, Ilya asked pleasantly, “she’ll stop cheating on you if you give her an ugly kitten?”
Alexei grabbed the carton and pushed it against Ilya’s chest. “You think father will continue to pay your coach extra if he knows you suck his son’s dick?”
It was Day 6 after Ilya’s habitual carelessness in locking his room had spectacularly backfired. Alexei was slow as well as vindictive: Ilya had no doubt it would take him a few more days to work out how to inflict maximum damage when breaking the news to their father.
In the meantime, Alexei used this unexpected leverage to bully Ilya into scurrying around as his errant boy. Over the past week, Ilya had daily picked up Alexei’s awful menthol cigarettes from the kiosk; tracked down the street vendor who sold pirated DVDs featuring Alexei’s favourite Finnish wrestlers (again, terrible taste); and delivered tiny ziplock baggies, no doubt filled with subpar coke, to two of Alexei’s blockhead friends.
Apparently, his next mission involved live cargo.
Alexei reached into his pocket and wrestled a pink collar over the kitten’s grotesquely oversized ears. “Tell Nastya to wait up for me. I’ll come by later tonight.”
Ilya threw the carton away the moment he stepped out on the street. He tucked the kitten under his sweater, feeling its faint, rapid heartbeat against his chest all the way to Lyublino on the crowded metro.
Alexei’s girlfriend lived in a five-story khrushchyovka at the end of a narrow courtyard. Dusk was falling when Ilya got there. The metal balconies were cluttered with drying laundry that flapped in the April breeze.
Ilya had met Nastya only once before and decided then and there that he didn’t like her.
She opened the door on the fifth knock, wearing a tight, white zip-up with rhinestones spelling Enjoy Live. Ilya knew that she was eighteen, three years older than him, but he was taller.
The kitten, confused by the sudden lack of motion, pawed at his belly, claws out. He smiled at Nastya. “Your shirt says it wrong.”
Ilya found that he didn’t want to hand over the kitten. But he could hardly do what he’d come to do with a kitten under his sweater, particularly because there was no good excuse to keep it on once Nastya started pulling on the hem.
He’d never had sex with someone who wasn’t also a friend. When he’d first started hooking up with Sveta and Sasha, they had both been more experienced than he was, which he resented. He wanted to be the best – at this and everything else. He wanted to be the one who invented tricks, not be taught like a clever dog.
This, here, was different: a competition, even if his competitor wasn’t in the room. Ilya thrived at competitions. Bending Nastya over the kitchen table, he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the window. He looked like an adult, powerful and in control, and he got off on that. Incongruously, the kitten – teetering on the narrow back of a kitchen chair – was caught in the reflection, too.
“My friend won’t be back for a while,” Nastya said when it was over. She hadn’t put the zip-up back on. Ilya, who hadn’t much looked at parts of her that weren’t relevant to what they were doing, surprised himself by thinking that her naked arms, raised to twist her hair into a messy bun, looked pretty.
“Stay, if you like. I have a bed, you know.”
“Do you even like cats?” he asked instead.
She shook her head.
Ilya swiped up his sweater, then swiped up the kitten. “Thought so.”
The kitten scratched and wriggled underneath his sweater all the way back. Maybe it didn’t like the way his scent had changed. Ilya responded like he responded to all criticism that he couldn’t instantly invalidate – he made it worse. He achieved this by smoking three Javas in a row.
His stomach felt queasy, mouth bitter, when he turned up at the apartment block of the school secretary. She’d taken him home a few times as a first and second grader after he’d gotten himself a bloody nose by annoying the older kids. Once, his mom had frogmarched him to the secretary’s home to deliver flowers and a clumsily written card to say sorry. He remembered her kindness and the weird smell. Cats.
When the secretary opened the door, she looked older, eyes tired and the skin around her mouth wrinkled up like expensive crepe paper. But she asked, like no time had passed at all, “What have you done now?”
Ilya proffered the kitten.
Whatever she saw on his face made her ask: “Do you want to come in, too?”
Ilya shook his head. He touched his knuckles to the wet nose of the kitten. It bit his finger in return.
Alexei was in the dimly lit corridor when Ilya let the apartment door fall shut. This was still some years before his hockey money changed their address, the knot count of their carpets, the view from the windows. Alexei might have forgiven a lot of these things, but not the view – he’d always been afraid of heights. Ilya made sure the new apartment was a penthouse.
Alexei leaned his back against the doorframe to Ilya’s room. “I hope the little thing scratched you good,” he said.
“No.” Ilya pulled down his collar, exposing the fresh, purplish marks staining the side of his throat. “She bit me.”
That’s how Ilya ended up with a faint ridge on his nose. As a matter of course, journalists always assumed it was a hockey injury. Ilya never contradicted them. “Is what happens when you play dirty in Russia,” he’d say. But in his head who was taking the hit and who was throwing the punch shifted every time he was asked.
*
Regina, International Prospect Cup, December 2008
The scout was an ex-enforcer who’d had the briefest of NHL stints decades ago before getting hurt so badly he never returned to the rink. Even if Ilya hadn’t known, he could have guessed as much from the old injuries that showed in the man’s uneven gait. He worked for the Boston Raiders. Ilya watched him closely: he didn’t ever react to a goal, but he leaned forward during every board battle. Ilya made sure to give him plenty of those.
“Ilya Rozanov,” the scout said when they finally sat down.
“Only two syllables,” Ilya replied.
He could tell from the way the scout’s pale eyebrows drew together in confusion that he’d mispronounced syllables.
“What are you talking about?”
“Ilya,” he said. “Two. Not Il-ee-yah.”
“Right.” The scout nodded once, but he didn’t look up from the notes he was scrawling into his notebook. The pen looked tiny in his blunt hands. Ilya’s gaze lingered on his sunken knuckles.
“If you end up playing this side of the Atlantic,” the scout said after a moment, “people will say it all kinds of ways. They’ll get close enough. Or they won’t. Doesn’t really matter.”
Ilya didn’t answer. He tried to imagine it, his name said differently, over and over. Announced over speakers. Written on the cover of a magazine. Mentioned by sports reporters. Repeated back to him by all these foreigners who stretched his name like the gum they were always chewing.
Close enough.
The scout flipped a page, still not looking at him. “You’re thinking about it?” he asked.
He meant North America: the league, everything that came with it. Fame and money. An ocean between Ilya and his family.
“I’m not thinking about it,” Ilya said. “I know I’ll play here.”
The scout finally looket at him then, just briefly. His eyes were flat, assessing, but not unkind.
“I better remember your name then, Ilya.”
His pronouciation was even worse than the first time around. Ilya didn’t correct him.
*
All the Canadians and Americans mispronounced his name, but the first time Ilya liked the sound of it was when Hollander – having climbed over a snowbank and trudged across the empty parking lot behind the rink, shoulders raised against the cold – said it. Unlike pretty much everyone else, Hollander got the softness of the first syllable right. And while he, too, added something in the middle that didn’t quite belong there, it almost felt like it might, one day.
Ilya had heard plenty about Hollander over the past year. They played the same position, and they were mentioned in the same draft conversations. Ilya had scoured far too many hockey forums, hunting down every highlight clip that featured him. Hollander’s game was fast and clean, precise to the point of calculation but thrilling to watch.
Meeting him in person was thrilling in a different way. He was nothing like what Ilya had imagined. Highly strung, a little awkward. Beautiful. None of the clips had zoomed in far enough to show the smattering of freckles on his nose and cheeks.
Ilya wasn’t quite sure what he wanted from Hollander, but after the parking lot, he found new ways to fill the gaps in his schedule: he showed up to Hollander’s games, sitting a few rows up from the glass, the hood of his sweater up like a shield. When the play moved away from him, Ilya’s eyes did not follow the puck but remained on Hollander.
Everything he did seemed relevant even though Ilya couldn’t have explained why or how. He learned Hollander’s timing on the ice until he could anticipate most, though never all, of his moves – Hollander was tricky, never predictable for long. But Ilya came to expect the subtle hitch in his stride after a hard stop. Got so familiar with the way Hollander shook out his left hand between shifts, quick and absentminded, that he felt betrayed whenever he waited in vain for Hollander to do so.
Ilya lingered, too, where he could – by the boards during warm-ups, ostensibly stretching, but watching Hollander’s shots, the economy of his hands. In the corridors between locker rooms, slowing just enough to catch a glimpse of him taping his stick with his head bent.
All the teams were staying at the same hotel, a run-down Holiyday Inn with truly terrible carpet patterns and corridors that perpetually smelled of takeout pasta. After a few days, Ilya knew exactly when Hollander came down for breakfast, which table he chose, and who he liked to sit with. Once or twice, Ilya took a seat nearby, not close enough to invite conversation, but close enough to listen to the rhythm of Hollander’s voice and the way he laughed, rarely and quieter than Ilya would have expected.
They spoke only one more time, when – the night before the finals – they crossed paths under the buzzing fluorescent lights of the 7-Eleven across the road from the hotel. Ilya had gotten into the habit of stopping by most nights. Sleep came badly enough at home, and jetlag had made a mess of what little rhythm he had, leaving him wide awake between 2 and 4 in the morning.
He didn’t like the quiet here, the way people and cars disappeared from all but the main streets of Regina after 9pm. Moscow never really slept, always ready to distract and entice, to swallow you whole – which Ilya found oddly comforting. The kind of silence that these Saskatchewan nights brought left too much room for thoughts he was careful, during the day, to keep buried under noise and people and motion, never letting himself be still unless someone made him.
Ilya stood with a Coke sweating in his hand and listened, incredulous and cranky, to the cashier chatting with the woman buying a fuckload of soda ahead of him. People in this country smiled for no reason, hugged and clapped the shoulders of people who’d been strangers two minutes earlier, and apparently believed a commercial transaction required chirpy smalltalk.
When it was finally Ilya’s turn, he said: “Can I have Camel cigarettes?”
Smiling brightly, the cashier said: “ID?”
“I don’t have –“
“Then,” the cashier, still friendliness incarnated, said, “I can’t sell them.”
Ilya stared at the man. This fucking country.
“Um… hi Marty.” Like a ghost, Hollander stepped up beside Ilya. He looked rumpled, bleary-eyed. Clutched in his hand was a pack of Tylenol and a pair of cheap wired earphones.
If the cashier had been cheerful before, now he was beatific. “Shane!”
It turned out, Hollander had “billeted” with the cashier’s neighbours during some kind of hockey summer camp earlier this year. Ilya had no idea what the word meant, but “billeting” apparently forged close bonds between junior players and local hockey nut families. Given what he’d learned about Canadians and their reflex for unwarranted familiarity, Ilya was only half surprised that it seemed to extend to the people next door as well.
“The Camels are for McRae,” Hollander eventually said. McRae was the star center of the Regina Pats. He’d been doing a meet-and-greet over pizza this evening and disappeared around 10pm, but Hollander made it sound like he was still hanging out with some of the kids and trainers in the hotel lobby, telling stories and keeping everyone up.
Going by the way the cashier was nodding, it didn’t seem too far fetched a scenario for McRae.
“We just…” Hollander shrugged. He looked embarrassed, although probably not for the reason the cashier assumed. “We figured we’d grab him a pack. Say thanks. He’s been talking for six hours straight.”
“That’s McRae for you!” the cashier said with fond disapproval.
After two minutes and the world’s most awkward half-hug over the till, Hollander left the store with Ilya’s Camels. Ilya trailed after him.
Hollander didn’t slow until they were halfway across the hotel parking lot. Fresh snow had started falling again, thin but steady. It muffled their steps. Ilya watched it settle into the ridges of the dirty, crusted berms, softening their outlines.
When Hollander turned to him, he looked sullen. Ilya could tell that lying to earnest, kindly cashier-neighbours was not something that good-boy Hollander did on the regular. But tonight, he’d done it – and Ilya thought he knew why. If Ilya were a better person, he might have felt bad about it. Instead, he felt a quiet, treacherous satisfaction.
The cold had pulled rough blotches of pink into Hollander’s cheeks. He was wearing his beanie beneath the twin hoods of his sweater and jacket, retreating further into them when he met Ilya’s gaze. Cute.
“Getting ready for polar expedition?” Ilya asked.
“Fuck you, it’s minus 20 degrees,” Hollander mumbled. “I’m dressed sensibly. Dressing up for 7-Eleven is way more stupid.”
Ilya wore his Stone Island parka, dark jeans that actually fit, Adidas sneakers. He always dressed expecting people to look at him. 7-Eleven had nothing to do with it.
He let his gaze drop to Hollander’s winter boots. “Your shoelaces are half… not done.”
Hollander huffed, exasperated. “Didn’t realize this is now a competition, too.”
“Everything is competition,” Ilya said.
Hollander stared at him, eyes a little narrowed, like he was trying to figure something out. After a beat, he said: “In that case I won tonight. ‘Cause I’ve got your Camels.”
“Mmm. Can I….” Fuck, what was the word? Not for the first time during this cup, Ilya badly wished he’d paid more attention in his English classes. He hated fumbling with words. Hated the idea of appearing stupid or slow in conversation. “Can I… exchange them back?”
He could tell that what he’d said wasn’t quite right, but Hollander didn’t press that advantage. Instead, he simply said: “You’ve got nothing to trade with. Nothing I want.”
Ilya tilted his head slightly. He gave Hollander a slow, considered look. “Nothing?”
Hollander shrugged, but his voice was tighter this time. “Nothing at all.”
Ilya held his gaze and said, “I’ll let you watch.”
The colour in Hollander’s cheeks deepened. His chapped lips parted minutely before he pressed them firmly shut. He gave a tense little shake of his head, like he didn’t trust himself to give the right answer in words.
Ilya pulled his hand out of his pocket. He wasn’t wearing gloves and the raw cold bit into his skin. He extended his open palm to Hollander and did something he never did: he said, “Please.”
Hollander looked at him for a long moment. Then he ripped open the pack and put a single cigarette into Ilya’s open hand.
“Smoking is bad for you,” he muttered.
“Oh yes. I’m planning to die young.” It was meant as a joke, mostly, but Hollander frowned.
His frown transformed into a frown of concentration when Ilya tucked the cigarette between his lips and fished out his lighter. Hollander remained steadfast for about two seconds, staring into space. Then his gaze dropped to Ilya’s mouth.
“When did you start smoking?” he asked.
“Long time ago,” Ilya said, words edged around the unlit cigarette.
Ilya had smoked his first cigarette the day after his mother died. He’d slept the night on the floor, next to her bed. In the morning, he’d taken her cross and a half-empty pack of Javas from her pocket before they came to collect her. Since then, he’d never gone without smoking for more than a few days. For reasons he didn’t quite understand, he almost enjoyed it when coaches badgered him to quit, explained the health risks in excruciating detail. He took some perverse pleasure in rejecting every carefully developed strategy for quitting they laid out for him.
Smokers were Ilya’s people. Hollander, very clearly, did not fall into this category. Right now though this made it better: Hollander watched him light up, and when Ilya took the first drag, pleasure and relief pouring through his body, Hollander bit into the fullness of his lower lip.
He tore his eyes away periodically, but just a second later, his gaze drifted back to Ilya’s mouth and lingered. Hollander couldn’t have been aware of the look on his face, or he’d have tried harder to hide it – repulsion warring with something less defensible, starkly exposed. It made Ilya feel like he’d swallowed the burning tip of his cigarette. A slow, glimmering heat spreading in his chest.
They didn’t exchange words, but Ilya felt that by the time it was over, the cigarette stub ground into the fresh snow, Hollander had given something away that couldn’t be taken back. Ilya wondered if he had too.
He held out his hand again, expecting Hollander to give him the Camels before they turned in. Hollander surprised him by laughing brightly, suddenly not self-conscious at all.
“Dream on,” he said. “I want to beat you fair and square tomorrow. Not because you inhaled the equivalent of a working chimney the night before.”
And with that, Hollander turned around and sent the pack of Camels into the yawning dumpster a good distance off, his throw as precise and clean as anything he did on the ice.
He looked back at Ilya, just once, before striding away.
Ilya stared after him, outraged and charmed, not feeling the cold at all, even though the snow was falling more thickly now.
*
Off Nantucket, September 2009
It was Ilya’s first time on a yacht, and he wasn’t convinced it was an upgrade from solid ground. In the glare of the sun, all the polished steel glinted like it was mocking him. He’d never seen sofas and deck chairs so aggressively white, like they were begging to be spilled on.
Judging by the looks his Adidas slides were getting, he clearly registered as the wrong kind of newly rich, so he ditched them under the table and peeled off his tank. It had the intended effect.
Point made, he sauntered to the upper deck and stretched out on a sun lounger. He’d just closed his eyes, when Svetlana’s sun hat landed on his face. She caught his hand before he could push it away. “Put on sunscreen, idiot. Lobster-red is not attractive on you.”
“I’m always attractive,” Ilya declared from under the rim, but he didn’t remove the hat. The shade felt too good.
He hadn’t planned to spend his final pre-season weekend sailing around Nantucket – but then at the club last night, Sveta and he had become a little more than friendly with a very glamorous pair of foodie influencer twins. Ilya still wasn’t sure whether their fame came from the twin shtick (they seemed to hate each other) or the food shtick (which they treated as a purely theoretical concept), but they’d mentioned their 3.2 million followers often enough to justify the rented yacht. And, well, they were hot. Ilya wasn’t about to interrogate the situation.
“So,” Sveta asked, drawing out the syllable. “Have you decided if it’s gonna be Lucien or Elodie?”
“What - is it either or?”
Sveta smacked his thigh with her phone. “Probably not, greedy bastard.” After a moment, she added “The French names are so weird.”
Ilya grunted in the affirmative. “I think someone said they’re from Kentucky?”
“I wish Sasha was here. He’d insult them in French, then bully them to invest in his newest project.”
“What project?” These days Ilya liked Sasha more when he found ways to shut him up. He’d seen him in Moscow last month when Sasha was back from Paris for a weekend, but he wasn’t up to date with his latest exploits.
“I think it’s some kind of lifestyle bullshit about microdosing mushrooms? There’s an app component and … maybe a foraging retreat in Corsica? Sounded mad.”
“Sounds like Sasha.”
“Mmh.” Sveta’s attention returned to her phone. Ilya was about to doze off, when she whooped and smacked him again.
“What now?”
The sun hat was lifted off his face. Sveta dangled the phone in front of him, looking smug. “Shane Hollander’s new Reebok commercial has been released.”
“So fucking what? I don’t care.”
“Ha!” Sveta laughed and drummed her naked feet against the cushion like a delighted toddler. Ilya stole her cocktail and half-emptied it. Raspberry and lime. Too sweet.
“Caring would be fine,” Sveta said, still grinning. “Normal even. But you don’t do normal. You’re obsessed.”
“Bullshit.”
Ilya had been the top pick in the draft. Hollander went first in snapping up every lucrative brand ambassadorship within arm’s reach. Ilya kept track, like he kept track of Hollander’s goals, points, assists, hits, blocks and a dozen other stats he checked every morning on MLH.com during the season – always Hollander’s numbers before his own.
“Watching the video with me now,” Sveta pointed out, “is more dignified than watching it later while hiding in the restroom like a perv.”
She wasn’t wrong. Ilya glared at her, but he didn’t stop her from starting the clip.
Reebok excelled at wrecking high-concept commercials with slogans that sounded absurd even to non-native ears. This time, the tagline was “RBK Instinct. Play faster than cold.” Even Ilya, no friend to English articles, spotted the missing one immediately.
The clip opened on a pair of amber, cat-like eyes emerging from a black background, then cut to the rink: Hollander stood alone on the ice, shot from behind, clad in a sleek, body-hugging outfit that belonged more to a figure skater than a hockey player. A close-up captured his skates biting into the ice before he launched forward, weaving through CGI shadows shaped like prowling big cats in a rapid-fire montage. White-grey snow-leopard spots streaked across his shirt with every turn. The sequence climaxed with Hollander slamming a shot into the goal. Turning, he lifted his head. An overlay traced faint snow-leopard spots across his cheeks, then let them dissolve until only his freckles remained. Cut to the product reveal.
“It’s kinda hot what they did there with his freckles,” Sveta said, voice dreamy.
“No,” Ilya said. “It’s stupid. Close second to the one where he pets the ice bear.”
“Awww, I love the ice bear! Hollander is so cute when he’s terrified.”
Ilya ignored her. There was something about Hollander’s readiness to whore himself out selling gear, sneakers, expensive watches, energy drinks, and vitamins – vitamins! – that made Ilya equal parts impatient and horny.
The thing was, Hollander was unnervingly disciplined. Other players leaked all their emotions and adrenaline into the game. Hollander sealed himself tight and retreated into his weird, brilliant mind: you could tell that he was analysing, strategizing, planning every second of every game. Sometimes, Ilya imagined the entire rink existed in Hollander’s head alone - imagined him moving all the other players around like chess players by sheer force of his will.
Not Ilya, of course. He never moved for anyone, and he lived for the moments when his own stormfront of chaos upset Hollander’s meticulous playbook. He’d rather die than admit it, but after a game against the Metros, what Ilya replayed in his mind weren’t the goals he’d scored but the moments he’d made Hollander flinch, blink first.
On the ice, Hollander had the poise and single-mindedness of someone whose skin fit him perfectly. Off the ice not so much. Ilya thought of Hollander awkwardly reciting banalities about ‘time’ and ‘legacy’ for a Rolex commercial. Deflecting the interviewer’s aggressive flirting at a Reebok red carpet event while doggedly trying to mention his sneakers at least once per sentence. On these occasions, Hollander seemed shy, plainly uncomfortable in the spotlight. And yet he kept putting himself in these situations. He was either easily led or painfully eager to please – qualities which suited Ilya perfectly in bed and irritated him everywhere else.
Watching Hollander’s lucrative misadventures in brand ambassadorship made Ilya want him but not necessarily respect him the way he respected him on the ice. It was an odd cocktail of feelings – too complicated to think about while sprawled on the yacht’s deck with his swim trunks sticking to his thighs.
Ilya tried to nap but instead of settling, his thoughts kept running the same track, again and again, taking him back to the night of the draft. He’d just come back from celebrating at some dumb club with the head scout’s assistant and her very enthusiastic friends, when he’d spotted Hollander shuffling through the hotel lobby. Ilya had ditched the pouting scout’s assistant and followed Hollander to the gym as if drawn there by a chain.
Being alone with him in the quiet, windowless room had felt unreal. The hard glare of the ceiling lights had been too intense for the hour, flattening everything into a pale, sleepless brightness. Ilya remembered the way his burning palms, curled like claws around the handlebars for too long, had throbbed along with his pulse. The metallic taste in his mouth as he’d stumbled off the exercise bike.
The chase is over. The words had looped nonsensically in Ilya’s brain as he’d dropped to the dusty floor. Because that’s what it had felt like: a chase. He just hadn’t been able to tell exactly what it was that he was chasing. Looking at Hollander, folded down onto the floor, breath roughened from more than exertion, Ilya wanted to push him, beat him, show off for him. Crack him like a chestnut in the palm of his hand – splitting that smooth, glossy shell to see what would spill out.
Hollander had looked like he wanted to bite Ilya’s hand offering the water bottle, but he’d parted his lips and drunk from it the moment Ilya told him so. That second, what had started out as a stupid bit of posturing had shifted into something else entirely.
Ilya knew that he liked to hold the reins, liked to be in control. He’d played around with power dynamics with a couple of his previous partners, but had felt oddly disappointed each time – like he was an actor in an empty, graceless charade of dominance and submission. He wasn’t interested in tying people up or learning his way around floggers, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be called by anything than his own name in the bedroom.
He didn’t want the theatrics, he wanted something true.
Staring into Hollander’s wary, lust-blown eyes, Ilya had felt like he’d suddenly stumbled on an unmarked door hidden somewhere in the most private, most carefully guarded part of his own being. The door swung open the moment Hollander – pissed off and helplessly turned on – bent his will to Ilya’s pleasure, and Ilya was knocked on his ass by the realness of the emotions that poured out: what Hollander gave him made him feel powerful, greedy, possessive as fuck – but it also flooded him with this raw, unbidden tenderness that had no place, here on in the rest of Ilya’s life.
“Maybe…” Sveta said, sounding innocent in a way that Ilya had learned to associate with impending disaster, “you should do a commercial with Hollander.”
Ilya cracked his eyes open and was instantly punished by the sun. “Never.”
Sveta shrugged one slim shoulder. “Give it time.”
*
Joint Commercial Shoot, June 2010
Ilya was about to press a random button on the elevator display to parachute the hell out of this insanity when the doors slid open and Hollander’s mother appeared on the other side.
For the briefest instant, her features tensed, then smoothed themselves out into practiced politeness. She was about to stoop to offer her hand to her son’s greatest rival when the doors closed again.
Ilya let out a tightly held breath. Hollander had a mother who was crazy about hockey, micro-managed his career with ferocious competence, and – small detail – was still alive. His own manager was an asshole his father had picked: Ilya was fairly sure the guy skimmed off his earnings, and he had no idea what to do about it or who he could ask to help. Running into Yuna on his way to Hollander neatly solved the riddle he’d been worrying at since the showers: why he was so desperate to do something this catastrophically stupid.
Maybe the answer was simple and familiar. Spite. If you listened to Alexei, Ilya did a lot of things out of spite. Surely this was one of them. He’d knock on Hollander’s door and whatever followed would do a pretty spectacular job ruining Hollander’s piece of mind. He’d still have his perfect stats, perfect manners, perfect family – but whenever Ilya bristled at Hollander’s air of holier-than-thou superiority in the future, he’d know the cracks that ran beneath.
The problem was that boy who opened the door and hustled Ilya inside was not aloof, professional Shane Hollander of the glassy composure. Instead, Ilya was staring at Hollander in a soft grey hoodie, vibrating with nerves. His lips were bitten red and his hair tousled, like he’d been pulling on it.
Hollander was both intellectually very opposed to things progressing on their intended course and physically so easy for Ilya, Ilya would have laughed if his own surge of arousal, sharp and dizzying, hadn’t pulled him off balance.
Ilya knew he was hot. It was the second-best thing about him, right after his skill at swinging a hockey stick. He liked it when people commented on his looks, and he liked it when they wanted him – and they always did. But somehow, no compliment he’d ever received, no desiring look thrown his way, came close to having Hollander like this: frantic and half-angry, clearly running through a list of 101 reasons this was a bad idea in his mind, and still reaching out first to unbutton Ilya’s jeans.
He dropped to his knees at the mere suggestion of Ilya’s thumb sliding between his lips. Ilya brushed his fingers over the freckles on Hollander’s cheek, felt the skin move and tighten as Hollander took him in his mouth. His inexperience was as obviousness as the pleasure he took in exploring Ilya’s cock with his lips, his tongue.
When Ilya ran his fingers over Hollander’s chin, it was wet with spit. He slicked the tip of his thumb with it, then hooked it into the corner of Hollander’s mouth, tracing the ridge of his teeth and forcing him to open wider. Hollander moaned, hips jerking upward.
Glancing up at Ilya, he looked lost – a little bit shamed and a little bit trusting. Ilya felt himself grow even harder in Hollander’s mouth. It was a heady rush seeing him on his knees and yes, the power trip was very real, but so were the other feelings: a kind of awe that Hollander was brave enough to make himself so vulnerable. That inside this room, he was willing to step outside the roles they’d lived for the past years – archrivals, competitors, adversaries – and deliver himself into Ilya’s hand like a gift.
More than anything else, it made Ilya want to be worthy of Hollander’s trust. Instinct told him that maybe for Hollander, shame and pleasure were braided together like two strands of the same rope. He never wanted to push him where it might hurt.
Ilya took charge, steered them to what he had a feeling Hollander might like. But Hollander kept blindsiding him. He was so beautiful, so odd, so fucking earnest, folding his clothes before climbing into bed, blowing Ilya with his white tennis socks still on – and somehow all of this just made it better. Ilya couldn’t explain it.
When it was over and Ilya got ready to leave, Hollander sat on the bed, arms crossed. Ilya had a lot of practice pulling his clothes back on under the watchful eyes of not-quite-strangers. He knew how to make it look good and he did a bit of that for Hollander’s benefit now – not that Hollander seemed to appreciate it, looking like the alarm sirens in his head were screaming louder by the second.
Ilya fought the strangest impulse to go back to him. He wasn’t sure what he’d do once he got there – there was no way he could kiss Hollander now that they’d already had sex, and he couldn’t think of a form of touch that would be appropriate. Maybe a bro-like slap to the shoulder? Should he squeeze his thigh in a mock-insulting way? None of that came even remotely close to how he wanted to touch him.
Ilya felt a single hard thud of his heart, unwelcome and out of step with the rest. There was nothing to say. He left.
Boston, October 2011 (4 months after the Vegas rooftop fight)
Ilya frowned at his phone. He would have preferred to see Hollander later in the season. Right now, he felt off, like a compass needle that wouldn’t settle. He’d only returned to Boston in mid-September, and it always took a few weeks for Moscow to wear off. On the nights he managed to sleep, he still dreamed in Russian.
English felt more cumbersome than usual, and stuff that he normally found amusing about Boston in the fall – pumpkins everywhere, people driving for hours to look at boring leaves, general hysteria about Halloween – did nothing but annoy him. He thought of his father daily. Felt homesick for the place he’d been keen to escape all summer.
And that wasn’t all: the season had started wrong. The team wasn’t gelling. The lines were the same they’d talked about all through camp, but as soon as they got on the ice, nothing worked. Someone was always turning the wrong way or drifting into Ilya’s lane when he needed space. Ilya hadn’t had a single good game since the season started and it messed with him. The ribs didn’t help either – and he’d earned that himself, the very first game of the season. He’d mouthed off at a defenseman from the Admirals who had this irritating habit of smiling whenever things got rough. The guy had waited for him the next shift. He’d smiled - and driven Ilya into the glass, hard.
The last time he’d run into Hollander – at the rookie-of-the-year awards, right before heading back to Russia – Ilya hadn’t been at his best either. Kind of the opposite: that day, he’d felt like someone had taken a pry bar to all the things he worked hard to keep shut. An American journalist – really more of a stalker with a website to justify her shit – had tracked down Polina and sweet-talked childhood photos and the family-doctored story of Irina’s death out of her. His agent had heard of it early enough that Ilya could still bury it, which meant throwing an obscene amount of money at this fucking vulture.
There was no point in explaining anything to Polina. All he could do was give her a very clear warning – and more money. Alexei hadn’t understood either. He’d called Ilya a whiny faggot, said the sob story would be good for his image, and then – without missing a beat – asked him to wire $30.000. Ilya had complied because it meant no texts, no calls, for at least five weeks. It had made him feel weak and wrong and helpless – and he’d lashed out at Hollander, who’d dedicated his award to his parents and spent half of his acceptance speech thanking them for his perfect childhood and their tireless support.
That night on the rooftop in Vegas, watching Hollander’s angry stride carry him away, Ilya had been sure they wouldn’t see each other again outside of hockey. It had almost felt good. He preferred dealing with wounds he chose. Hollander, he could already tell, would not give him that luxury if he kept him close.
But then they’d exchanged some brief texts over the summer and now the Metros were coming to Boston.
Ilya read Hollander’s text again. “Good luck tonight.” As he looked at it, the attachment came through: a picture of a sunken-in pumpkin with the Raiders’ logo carved into it.
Ilya laughed – and stopped immediately because his ribs did not approve. If seeing Hollander was a bad idea, not seeing him was still worse.
He texted him an address that wasn’t his.
*
Ilya hadn’t bothered to take off his shoes. Hollander – predictably well-mannered – slipped off his the moment the heavy steel door to the loft closed behind him.
He wasn’t particularly good at reading Ilya, probably not very good at reading people in general. But tonight he was clearly trying, gaze roaming over Ilya’s features as if searching for some clue about where they stood after the Metros had thoroughly trounced the Raiders in their own stadium – a result that had been, in no small part, Hollander’s doing.
Ilya made sure his face was a shut door.
When staring at each other in silence got awkward, Hollander half-turned and looked around. He froze. “Did you buy… flowers?”
Ilya followed his gaze to the enormous bouquet – dusty-pink roses and a bunch of other showy flowers he didn’t recognize – overflowing a thick glass vase on the sideboard.
“Oh yes, is included in service. For everyone I fuck the first time.”
Hollander’s lips parted in shock.
Ilya barked out a laugh, and – this time – did nothing to rein it in. It hurt, but it was worth it.
“The real estate agent bought them,” he said after a beat. “Do they do this in Canada too - put flowers in every room of apartment they’re trying to sell? Maybe idea is fumes will make you stupid, so you agree to any price.”
Hollander nodded slowly, but he still looked confused, taking in the exposed brick walls and huge windows opening on expensive Boston skyline. “You’re selling this place?”
Ilya shook his head. “No. I might buy it. The realtor left me keys to this and another place for the weekend. She’s very desperate for me to take one of them.”
“Right.” Hollander took a few steps, hands in his pockets. He peered at the open-plan loft, trying and failing to disguise his curiosity. Ilya noticed him pause at the radiator covers, frowning, as if he was trying to work out how heat might – or might rather not – reach the twelve-foot ceilings.
“Do you like it?” Hollander asked.
“Don’t know.”
Ilya really didn’t, which was a problem. He knew he’d made a mistake buying his first apartment. It had seemed a smart investment when he’d moved to Boston: a top-floor unit in a converted warehouse with a balcony that looked straight out over the harbour. The first time Ilya had seen it, it had gleamed like something out of a magazine with sleek, ultra-modern furniture not so different from what he’d glimpsed in other players’ IG stories. Still, he’d been undecided until he’d passed the tiny bakery across the street and smelled a sharp, yeasty tang that reminded him of Borodinsky bread.
He always made sure the place looked perfect when he video-called someone, but he’d soon discovered it had walls so thin he could hear the neighbour’s microwave. Sealed like a space-station, the floor-to-ceiling windows let in no air at all, which meant he’d twice had to have contractors in to get rid of mould in the corner of his living room. And the building management seemed to exist solely to collect fees: Ilya could never get them to fix the permanently malfunctioning blinds in his bedroom, which didn’t exactly help with his insomnia.
Buying another place, he didn’t want to screw up again. But he was fucking clueless about real estate and the property inspector he’d hired last month seemed more interested in padding his fee than in spotting anything wrong.
Hollander opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. Closed it. He’d arrived at the kitchen island and traced the edge of the counter with his thumb.
“What?” Ilya asked.
“Um… No, it’s just that I’m also looking into real estate investment at the moment. It’s…” Hollander’s gaze flicked to Ilya. “There’s a lot to learn, right? It’s really interesting but also confusing as hell. I’d be lost without my dad. He can walk into a place and tell you immediately if it’s going to suck living there. Like, he’ll run the tap for ten seconds and go, yeah, this building’s got old pipes. That kind of thing.”
Wasn’t that nice.
Ilya took a few steps until he was right in Hollander’s personal space, close enough to hear his nervous intake of breath. He walked him back until Hollander’s shoulders hit the exposed bricks. This close, Ilya could see that dust had gathered in the crevices.
He tipped Hollander’s chin up. The kiss was rough and suggestive, a little mean. Hollander gasped and pressed closer. His hands were everywhere, skimming over Ilya’s shoulders and chest, up the back of his neck and into his curls, like he couldn’t decide where and how he wanted to touch him first.
Ilya kissed down the side of his throat, scraped his teeth over the vulnerable jut of Hollander’s Adam’s apple. Hollander moaned, jerked his head backward – and knocked it straight against the rough bricks behind him.
“Ouch!”
“Shit.” Ilya cupped the back of Hollander’s head in his palm. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hollander’s entire face was tight with pain, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s nothing.” His hand fluttered awkwardly up and down.
“You should sit down.” There was no sofa, so Ilya deposited Hollander in one of the conspicuously expensive, conspicuously ugly black leather armchairs by the window.
He tilted Hollander’s head: someone should check for a bump or, worse, split skin, and Hollander could hardly do that himself. With his usual quick understanding, Hollander scooted forward – and then he simply leaned his forehead against Ilya’s stomach.
Ilya stared down at him, startled.
Undeniably, this posture made it easier for Ilya to feel along the back of Hollander’s head. But it also made what should have been a mere practical necessity feel strangely intimate.
It wasn’t sexy, in fact there was something oddly childlike to the way Hollander kept up a monologue, muffled by Ilya’s shirt, on how okay he was, head no longer hurting at all. But it was… it was definitely something. Ilya could feel the faint warmth of Hollander’s breath through the thin fabric of the shirt. The short strands of Hollander’s hair stuck up in stubborn, silky tufts under his touch. Ilya’s fingers brushed through them, looking for damage. Just to be sure, he checked a final time – and then didn’t quite stop when the check was done.
After a moment, Hollander rubbed his nose against Ilya’s shirt and sighed. “S’nice,” he murmured.
Ilya snatched back his hands. What were they doing? They didn’t touch like this – or at all – outside of hooking up. He stepped back. “Good news,” he announced briskly. “No new defects.”
“Great… um…” Hollander’s gaze found Ilya’s briefly, then skittered away. He steadied himself with one hand. His cheeks were burning. “That’s great.”
Ilya nodded sharply and marched off to fetch Hollander a glass of water. The loft had been styled to lure a buyer, not to offer any real comfort: Ilya found that the cabinet held two champagne flutes and a bottle of Dom Pérignon – nothing so pedestrian as a water glass. Irritated, Ilya grabbed one of the flutes. When he turned on the tap, it gurgled faintly. Was that the kind of thing Hollander’s father would ask questions about?
Hollander took the glass with an awkwardly mumbled “Thank you”. Ilya wondered if he should go sit down in one of the other chairs. Decided against it.
What the hell happened now? They should probably wait for a few minutes to make sure that Hollander’s head was 100% fine. But what did they do in the meantime? Check their phones? Make small talk about the season?
“How… how are your ribs?” Hollander asked.
“Fine.”
“I could tell they were bothering you during the game today. Is it --”
“It’s nothing.” Last thing Ilya needed from Hollander was a reminder of today’s game.
Hollander nodded, unconvinced. Ilya could see him work up the nerve to ask again, grow uncertain, then discard the question. Hollander never let reporters see him crack, he was always all smooth and polished. But with Ilya, whatever he felt seemed to show before he could stop it. Ilya wondered why that was.
There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Hollander blurted out, “I bought condoms.”
“Good for you, but no need,” Ilya said. “I always have condom in my wallet.”
“That’s not safe!” Hollander’s lower lip jutted out, appalled. “You carry your wallet in your back pocket, so you literally sit on it sometimes! The friction can cause microtears even if the wrapper looks fine.”
Ilya looked at him with raised eyebrows. “You should teach sex ed in school, Hollander. Would be very effective. No one would ever want to have sex ever again.”
“I’m right,” Hollander said. “And you’re an asshole.”
Ilya didn’t reply. Hollander had a very particular way of appearing mortified and sulky at once, which always went straight to Ilya’s cock. He watched him stalk through the room and return with his backpack. Hollander pulled out lube and condoms and placed them on the coffee table at exactly the same angle.
“I tried to guess your… um… size.” He still sounded annoyed.
Ilya was pleased to discover that he’d guessed correctly.
“I mean we don’t have to. Obviously,” Hollander continued. “I’m eas… I mean I don’t mind what we do. I just thought I’d bring stuff along in case…”
Hollander was such a bad actor. Ilya pushed down the impulse to pinch his peeved, scrunched up nose. Instead, he said “Same. We can do whatever.”
He flapped his hand dismissively, like he didn’t care, which was far from the truth. Since they’d first talked about it, Ilya had thought about this embarrassingly often. Fantasized about it late at night when he couldn’t sleep.
“Right.” Hollander rubbed two knuckles along his chin.
Ilya hated the deflated look on his face. It wasn’t like they’d exchanged more than a dozen sentences since Hollander had arrived, and yet they’d managed to get thoroughly lost in this thicket of banalities and deflection. Maybe it was time to stop talking.
“How’s your head?”
“Great. Stop motherhenning me.”
Ilya didn’t know that word, but it sounded supremely unattractive. He crooked his finger. “Come here.”
Hollander stood up and shuffled closer, hands in his pocket. Ilya would have bet a lot of money that they weren’t entirely steady.
When Hollander stood right before him, Ilya nudged his chin up. “I think I know what you want. And how you want it.”
Hollander’s lips parted. He swayed the tiniest bit forward.
“But you’ll have to earn it,” Ilya said.
Hollander swallowed visibly. A lovely flush spread on his cheeks, down his throat. He nodded.
“Take off your clothes.”
Hollander did as instructed. His fingers fumbled the button on his wrinkled chinos the first two tries.
When he stood before Ilya, naked and gorgeous and already half-hard, just from this, he asked, “What… what about you?”
Ilya shrugged. “Maybe later. Get on your knees.”
The two times they’d done this before, Ilya had mostly let Hollander set the pace even if he had had to clench his teeth with the effort of holding back so that Hollander could do whatever he liked, whatever felt good.
This time, Hollander dropped to his knees but didn’t otherwise move. He gazed up at Ilya, eyes dark and hooded, as if waiting for permission. Ilya reached out and cupped Hollander’s jaw in his hand, brushed his thumb over his lips.
When he took his hand away, Hollander pushed forward and touched his cheek to Ilya’s thigh. It made Ilya fiercely regret his whole stay-dressed policy. Right now, he would have given his right hand to feel the smooth, quickly warming skin of Hollander’s cheek, the stutter of his breath, against his own, rougher skin.
Ilya opened his belt. Filed away Hollander’s sharp intake of breath at the tiny click of the buckle, the whisper of the leather.
“Hands behind your back,” Ilya said. He used his foot, still clad in his scuffed sneakers, to push Hollander’s knees further apart. Hollander’s cock twitched. Ilya made a mental note of that, too.
He pushed his jeans and briefs down. Then he cradled Hollander’s cheek in his palm. Hollander’s gaze had been locked on Ilya’s quickly hardening cock, but now he lifted his eyes to Ilya’s.
“Please,” he whispered. Ilya felt the words, Hollander’s warm breath, against his fingers and couldn’t quite suppress the shiver that ran down his shoulders.
“You… trust me.” Ilya wanted the words to land confidently, an easy assertion. But they came out like a question, sounding like he cared far too much about the answer. Hollander was the one without clothes, but in that moment Ilya felt naked.
Hollander turned his head slightly so that more of his cheek rested in Ilya’s palm. “I trust you,” he said and for the first time since he’d stepped foot into the loft, he sounded calm, sure.
Ilya didn’t know what to do with the surge of feeling inside his chest. He stroked Hollander’s cheek and found that the touch grounded him, as did Hollander’s steady, patient gaze. He said, “Open. Flatten your tongue. Tap my leg if it’s too much.”
It was… Ilya gave up on English straight away. He ran through a few Russian words, but none of them got remotely close to how it felt to thrust into Hollander’s mouth, holding him firmly in place with Ilya’s hands buried in his short hair.
Hollander, who was always so eloquent, so assured in two languages, made all these clumsy, eager sounds – muffled moans and whimpers, spluttering when Ilya pushed in too far. Ilya drew back every time, gave him time to gasp and draw breath through unobstructed airways. But almost immediately Hollander leaned in again, mostly before he was fully ready. Which, Ilya understood, was part of his pleasure: Hollander liked to feel overwhelmed, liked when it was too much.
Ilya glanced down at him – snotty and wet-eyed and brave, so keen to be good at this. He spoke to him in Russian. Filthy, porny things, but also stuff he’d be far too embarrassed to say out loud in English: that he couldn’t believe he got to have him like this. That he was gorgeous and perfect and that he made Ilya feel good, so good.
Hollander’s neglected cock was rock-hard, balls tightly drawn up. Ilya, too, was hurtling toward his orgasm, pleasure and pain ratcheting up in lockstep because deep breaths angered his ribs, and he was panting. All he could do to drag himself back from the brink was to pull back abruptly, one hand on Hollander’s jaw.
“Stop,” he ground out. “Or you will have bought all these condoms for nothing.”
“Can we…” Hollander’s poor abused throat made him hoarse in a way that Ilya already knew would haunt him for weeks. “Isn’t there time for both?”
Two rounds meant more time together, including hanging out in between. Right now, Ilya couldn’t remember why that was a bad idea.
Quietly, Hollander gazed up at Ilya. Then he leaned in and licked the head of Ilya’s cock. It was completely artless, just a simple caress – which somehow made it even hotter. Like Hollander simply wanted to be close, wanted to touch him, and since Ilya had forbidden the use of his hands, this came naturally.
And then Hollander said, “I want you to come in my mouth.”
Ilya nearly came then and there. Hollander had never offered before, and Ilya hadn’t brought it up, sensing that it was an inner barrier Hollander wasn’t ready to push himself over yet.
“Will you?” Hollander asked.
Ilya drew a deep breath. “Yes.” He stroked Hollander’s temple, the soft skin underneath his ear. “How are your knees?”
The corner of Hollander’s mouth tipped upward. “Hurting. My throat, too. And my neck.”
Before Ilya could get a word in, Hollander added “I like it. I think I like… to hurt a little for you. If you reward me later.”
In that moment, Ilya wanted to give him the moon. Instead – less romantically – he gave him his cock, slid it back into Hollander’s mouth, his throat. He kept his hands in his hair, pulled sharply as his rhythm faltered. Hollander’s eyes never strayed from him. His strong fingers dug into Ilya’s thighs, holding on to him, or maybe steadying him as he started to tremble.
Ilya pulled back just in time so that he came on Hollander’s tongue - and Hollander, eyes wide and glassy, looking a little stunned, swallowed. Before he was done swiping the back of his hand over his mouth, Ilya was already dropping to his knees so that he could kiss him. Hollander trembled and hissed the moment his cock rubbed against Ilya’s shirt.
“Did you like it?” Ilya asked after a moment.
Hollander scratched the back of his neck. A little thrown, Ilya realized that he had no doubt that Hollander would give him the truth. Hollander was shy in some ways, reluctant to share too much of himself, but he didn’t lie, not to Ilya at least.
“I think…” Hollander said. “I think I’m not sure I like it and somehow that really does it for me? Does that sound stupid?”
Ilya shook his head, pressed another kiss to Hollander’s swollen lips.
Hollander started moving against him, rubbed his cock against Ilya’s hip, panting in no time. “If you touch me,” he whispered, “I’ll come. Like, instantly.”
“Oh.” Ilya sat down more comfortably and pulled Hollander fully into his lap. He stroked his hands down Hollander’s naked back until he could close them around his ass.
“That’s awkward,” he told Hollander. “Because I won’t touch your cock. And you won’t come for a while.”
“What?” Hollander, who had just nestled close, pushed back and stared at Ilya, too shocked even to fend him off when Ilya kissed his affronted mouth. “I let you come in my mouth and in thanks I don’t get to come at all?”
Ilya raised his eyebrows. “You’ll come. When I fuck you.”
“I hate you! And I’m … I’m …” Hollander started moving against Ilya again. He was so hard, cock darkly flushed with blood, wet at the tip. “I’m nearly there,” Hollander bit out. “I think I might come without your help.”
Ilya brought his lips to Hollander’s ear, gently bit the lobe before murmuring, “Oh, but you won’t. Because if you do, this is over. And you’ve been waiting for so long, haven’t you? You’ve imagined it…” Ilya let his palms glide over Hollander’s flanks, where he was sensitive, then let his hands wander lower.
Hollander moaned. It sounded wrecked, nearly like a sob.
“Shhhhh.” Ilya pulled him more tightly into his arms, gentled the back of his neck. “You need it and you’ll get it. All you have to do is wait a little longer. Can you do that?”
Hollander raised his head from where he’d pressed his forehead against Ilya’s shoulder. He blinked at Ilya. His lashes seemed a little wet, but maybe Ilya was imagining things.
“For you?” Hollander asked, voice husky, and Ilya somehow felt the words inside him, like Hollander had slipped underneath his skin.
Ilya swallowed. Nodded. “For me.”
Hollander leaned his forehead against Ilya’s. He was breathing roughly, groaning and trembling against Ilya, fighting to bring his body to heel. Technically this wasn’t sex. And yet getting to see Hollander like this – the strain in him, his acute frustration, his desire to please, nothing held back – felt even more intimate than what they’d done before.
This is wrong, Ilya thought. Wrong wrong wrong. But he was seduced by it nonetheless: by the closeness, by the fact that Hollander wanted this, wanted Ilya, so much that he was willing to put everything aside - pride and ego, all of his inhibitions. Stopped protecting himself and put that trust, blindly, in Ilya’s hands.
Ilya touched him carefully, his back and shoulders. Kissed him, not to rile him up further, but to soothe him.
Slowly, slowly the tension bled out of Hollander’s body. His breath steadied.
Ilya’s own heartbeat was still far more intrusive than sitting quietly on the floor should have justified. He wondered if Hollander, putting his hand on Ilya’s chest over his shirt, could feel it.
Hollander laughed, shakily. “This is…”
“Mmh?”
Hollander’s gaze met his. His eyes were hazy, cheeks dappled red. “Actually so fucking hot”, he murmured.
He tilted his head, like he wanted to ask for another kiss but wasn’t sure if that was acceptable now that they were officially on intermission. Ilya scraped his teeth over Hollander’s lower lip, then kissed him thoroughly.
When they broke from each other, Hollander looked at him from underneath his lashes. His eyes were gleaming. “Given that you owe me an orgasm, I think it’s only fair I get to look at the rest of the loft?”
Ilya wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he nodded. “Okay.”
Hollander put his clothes back on and Ilya, still floating on his post-orgasmic high, only got a little bit annoyed when Hollander crouched to inspect the tiny gaps between baseboard and hardwood floor. Next, he ventured into the bathroom and, looking at the impressive walk-in shower, asked discerning questions about water pressure.
“Are you a shower or tub person?” Hollander wanted to know.
Ilya stared at him. “I don’t take baths. I’m not a child.”
Hollender took that in. His mouth did that thing where the left corner dipped in disappointment, just for a second, before rising into a reserved smile. “That’s good,” he said. “Less wear on the fixtures. Good for resale value.”
Ilya wondered where that weird little hesitation had come from. He asked, flatly, “Do you like baths, Hollander?”
“Uh…” Hollander’s shoulders rose nearly to his ears. “Yeah. I mean… I don’t know about Russia but here it’s not like… unusual… For adults. To take baths. Like, once in a while.”
Ilya couldn’t resist messing with him. He nodded, all seriousness. “Oh, you mean for sex. Like whirlpool tub. Is great.”
Hollander’s mouth fell open. “No! Not like that! That’s not what I meant. I meant –“ He finally registered Ilya’s smirk and stopped. “Asshole,” he grumbled. “It doesn’t have to be seedy. Or childish.”
“Mmh.” Ilya shrugged. “If you say so.”
His mind provided an unhelpful flash of Hollander lazing around in a nice, freestanding tub, skin flushed and slick with heat, all the tension he usually carried in his body softened by the water. It was stupid - not something he’d ever get to see, nor should he want to see it. Still, Ilya couldn’t quite shake off the image until they made it back to the kitchen.
He had wisely hidden the estate agent’s glossy folder, but of course it only took a moment before Hollander began rooting through cupboards and drawers.
“They always leave the marketing pack in the kitchen. It’s gotta be here somewhere… Hey… um… What’s it like in Russia?” Hollander asked without looking at Ilya, still hunting for the folder. “Do people buy or rent?”
“Same as everywhere. They buy when they can.”
“Do you own a flat there?”
Ilya tried to figure out if there was a subtext to the question. In his mind, Hollander and Russia were planets that ran on separate orbits, never touching. Hollander asking questions about Russia made something in him pull taut.
But Hollander was still waiting for an answer, looking up from where he was crouching on the floor to check out the oven.
“Yes,” Ilya said briskly.
“Cool. What’s it like?”
Ilya thought of the heavy, tessellated curtains that shut out the light in the penthouse. The carpets that swallowed his steps. He owned a second flat that he mainly stayed in when he went home. It had the basics – a bed, a table, a huge TV set - but he’d never bothered to finish the rest.
“Expensive.”
“Okay, but – ha! Here it is!” Hollander wrestled the folder out of the bottom drawer and brandished it like he expected praise and adulation. “Have you looked at this stuff?”
“Course not,” Ilya deadpanned.
Hollander seemed to accept that without question. It rankled.
“Do you mind if I take a quick look?”
Ilya did mind, but he didn’t know how to express that without sounding churlish.
Hollander flipped through the folder. He didn’t even glance at the pages that had interested Ilya – pics and a description of the neighbourhood, wide-angle shots of the living spaces, tables listing the premium details. Instead, Hollander went straight to the maintenance fees and energy efficiency rating.
Ilya remembered zoning out ten seconds into the property inspector’s longwinded monologue about the difference between HERS and something called a DOE score. Lazy, he heard his father’s voice. Irresponsible. Likes expensive toys but can’t be trusted not to break them.
Hollander’s eyes were still glued to the maintenance fees. When he began tracing some of the lines with his finger and muttering under his breath, Ilya stepped up behind him. He dragged the collar of Hollander’s shirt down with his thumb so that he could brush his lips over the back of his neck.
“Mmmh.” Hollander sounded pleased. He leaned back a little. “You know,” he said, eyes fixed on the chart, “maintenance for this place could probably fund a small embassy. It’s weird, because – Oh.”
Ilya kissed his neck, the side of his throat. He slipped his hand underneath Hollander’s shirt. His fingers moved in soft circles, tracing warm, arabesque patterns on the taut skin of Hollander’s lower belly.
Hollander sighed and pressed closer. “There’s also no line item here for snow removal. In Boston! I kinda want to know if – hngh…” Ilya pushed two fingers between his lips, just the tips, but that was enough.
Hollander’s tongue met them eagerly. Licked and curled around them. Ilya withdrew them, ignoring Hollander’s whimper of protest, and used his spit-slicked fingers to work one of Hollander’s tight, pebbled nipples.
It was an experiment because there hadn’t been much time to stop and explore on their previous hookups. The effect on Hollander was undeniable though: he dropped the folder and tipped his head back, cheek brushing against Ilya’s. When Ilya scratched a blunt nail over the aureola, then pinched the hard little nub between thumb and forefinger, Hollander moaned. When he did it again, Hollander arched his spine and fit his ass against Ilya’s erection. “Yes,” he murmured. “Fuck.”
It was hardly anything, just Ilya lazily caressing Hollander’s nipple and allowing him to grind his ass against Ilya’s crotch, four layers of clothing between them. But he could tell from the soft, shocked sounds that Hollander made, from the involuntary jerks of his hips, that the suggestiveness of it was all that Hollander needed. In Hollander’s imagination, there was not a scrap of fabric between them, and Hollander was so eager for this, so needy, he could barely keep it together.
Ilya was glad he’d already come once: it made it possible, though not easy, not easy at all, to step back and spin Hollander around.
Hollander blinked rapidly. His eyes were dark, amber nearly swallowed by his black pupils, mouth gleaming wetly because he’d been tonguing his lips. “Wha – Don’t stop, please.” The words tumbled out of his mouth. “Please don’t stop.”
“Don’t you want to study utility bills some more? You haven’t even looked at neighbourhood stats!”
Hollander drew in a laboured breath. “You’re cruel.”
Ilya cast a pointed look at the bulge in Hollander’s trousers. “You like it.”
“I –” Hollander’s pocket started buzzing. When he fished his phone out, the screen showed a picture of a black cat. It looked ancient, face dusted with uneven white at the muzzle and brows, one eye cloudy. “Can I---” Hollander looked up. His gaze had cleared, grown sober. “Is it okay if I take this? I’ll be quick.”
“Sure.” Ilya wandered over to the window. It was nearly midnight. With the summer’s haze gone, Boston’s skyline looked austere, sharply drawn. The lines of the lit-up glass towers stood out against the slate black night sky, not a star in sight.
Ilya put his palm against the cold glass of the windowpane. His tiredness caught up with him all at once, settling in his body like lead.
After a few minutes, Hollander’s reflection appeared next to Ilya’s in the window.
“Sorry about this. My dad had some medical tests today – I just…”
Ilya looked over, sharply. “Is he okay?”
“That’s what they say.” Hollander stared out of the window. The toes of his left foot curled and uncurled against the floor. Ilya noticed the small hole in his sock. He couldn’t tell if Hollander wanted to be asked or not, so he just looked at him, waiting.
Hollander turned his head to glance at Ilya. “They wouldn’t tell me during the season. If it was bad.” His voice was carefully inflectionless. “They want the best for me, you know. Want me to concentrate on the game.”
Ilya nodded.
“I just know that one day,” Hollander continued, “I’ll find out that my dad had open heart surgery, like, five weeks ago. Or my mom got a bad diagnosis and started some super rough treatment - but nobody told me because I’m a child and I’ve got games to win and so I can’t be burdened with any real shit.”
Ilya had the distinct sense this was personal territory you didn’t share with your hockey nemesis. Then again, they were having this conversation while he was edging said nemesis, which made the principle hard to defend.
“Your parents care about you a lot,” he said stiffly. “Maybe they would listen if you told them what you think about it.”
“I did,” Hollander said. “I told them. They said they’d be better. Next thing I hear is that they had to put down our cat the day before Conference Finals. I found out three days later.”
Ilya pinched the bridge of his nose. He had not signed up for discussing euthanized pets. “It’s not like you could have gone back home for that.”
“I still would have wanted to know!”
Outside of sex, this was the most animated Ilya had ever heard Hollander’s voice. He didn’t want to be a dick, but this was nowhere near how his hookups usually went, and he didn’t have a clue how to navigate it.
“So…” he said after a moment. “You have dead cat on lockscreen?”
Hollander’s glare was as defensive as it was heartbroken. Ilya would have expected to find it ridiculous. Instead, it made him want to kiss Hollander – which was absurd because they’d veered as far away from sex as two people who’d met up for the express purpose could possibly manage.
What on earth was there to say? Ilya hit on: “She looks like very old cat.” Surely this was a good thing?
“Yeah. She would have been nineteen this summer. I…” Hollander pulled once at the hem of his shirt, shook his head. “I’m sorry. Do you… um… maybe I should leave? I know you’re tired and –”
“I’m never tired.”
“Okay. I realize this is… I shouldn’t have… You don’t want to hear about my cat.”
“Do you want to leave?” Ilya asked
Hollander shook his head.
“Then stay.”
Hollander looked at him. They were not standing that far apart from each other, but Ilya felt the space between them like a weight pressing against his body. He wondered who’d reach out first.
It was Hollander, but he didn’t move closer, didn’t touch Ilya. Instead, he said: “I haven’t seen the bedroom.”
“Is special. Only for special guests.”
Hollander nodded. After a moment, he asked, voice low and painfully earnest: “Am I? You know… special?”
Ilya stepped closer until barely any space remained between them. He lifted a hand and touched the corner of Hollander’s mouth, traced the curve of his small, wary smile – the one he wore whenever he was trying to hide from Ilya.
He was special. Ilya wanted Hollander to know it even while every instinct in him resisted saying the words aloud. Another contradiction to join all the other contradictions about himself he could never reconcile. The things he did and didn't want.
Ilya said nothing. He turned instead, giving a brief tilt of his head for Hollander to follow, and walked deeper into the loft. Behind him, Hollander moved in socks and with his easy, thoughtless grace. He was nearly silent against the floorboards, but Ilya could feel him there all the same: close enough to touch and somehow impossibly far away.