Helter Skelter Through My Mind

Ilya, however, never quite got the hang of it. He knows a lot of his teammates nap whenever and wherever, falling asleep before games in hotel rooms or resting up on the road, snores filling the team bus or plane, but Ilya can't quite get there. It's probably a remnant from childhood, from not feeling safe enough to let his guard down like that. He can't even imagine what the reaction would have been if his father had come home to find him asleep on the couch. He was certainly quick enough to accuse him of laziness without Ilya handing over additional ammunition for free.

But Ilya loves holding Shane when he naps. He loves how quickly his body grows lax, loves the gradual shift in the depth of his breaths, loves the warmth of his body pressed against him, loves his sleepy little sounds and scrunched little face when he wakes up, loves that Shane trusts him enough to be that vulnerable around him. Shane doesn't really know that Ilya doesn't nap, not with how often Ilya's the one to suggest one, not with the way Ilya makes sure to feign coming out of sleep as soon as he feels Shane shift in his arms in that particular way that suggests he's waking up. He doesn't want to risk Shane feeling like Ilya's doing him a favour with holding him through his naps, doesn't know whether he can admit how much he loves their naps even though they never include Ilya falling asleep. He likes the way things are. He doesn't want to risk it changing.

After a while of talking about how Anya acts the trainer says there’s nothing to worry about, Anya likes Shane just fine, it’s just that she sees him as the boss and is acting accordingly

And Ilya is like. But. I’m the one who adopted her? And raised her before Shane got here?? And the trainer is just like yeah well she sees you more like an equal. And Ilya is like WAIT she thinks Shane is in charge of both of us?? And the trainer is just like well do you interact in a way that would make her think that?

Ilya’s life flashes before his eyes as he thinks of all the times Shane has come over with a snack for Ilya and a treat for Anya, or all the times Shane has announced they’re all going for an after dinner walk, or pets Ilya’s hair and tells him he did a good job at practice, or the fact that he uses the same warning tone with Anya when she misbehaves as he does with Ilya when he’s causing problems on purpose

"My supermodel. See how fucking beautiful you look here. You are hockey and sex. Everyone in this city sees this billboard and wants to fuck you. But only I can. Only I get to fuck the sexy billboard man."

He keeps Shane this way for ages, not touching him, bringing him right to the edge, only to stop and talk about another part of Shane's photo he likes like he's talking about a work of art in a gallery. Then he goes right back to fucking him.

When he finally wraps a hand around Shane's cock and tells him that it's okay to let go, that he's done so well and that Ilya wants to see him come for him now, Shane comes so hard he almost blacks out.

It is peak situationship era, Ilya is in some away game and not against Montreal, Boston has booked him the room and he's sharing it with Marlow or something

And Ilya normally would like it, think it's funny, send Hollander a picture of the window with some chirp, get a bit worked up about it when he's alone... But he's not alone, and Cliff thinks this is HILARIOUS

So Cliff takes pictures of this window and this huge billboard, and you can see a bit of the room, the bed, they're actually nice pictures

And he starts to talk about it at the group chat "hey, any of you lucky fellas also have a room facing North? 😏" and no, no one does so what is Cliff on about?

So Cliff sends the picture to the groupchat and it explodes, all sort of comments, they're acting like pigs, shooting the shit, the saner and less dirty ones being things like "didn't know it was that type of hotel" "I think that room must have cost extra" "I bet the sheets get changed much more often in that side of the hotel", and, because they're not in Montreal "do you think Hollander's fans know?"

And Ilya is already trying to keep it together after watching his straight teammates all slobber over a giant half naked Shane Hollander, sure it's all jokes, but some of them really went into detail, some locked in and pointed out specific drops of moisture amplifyed by %10.000. Some of them are making plans to go to Cliff and Ilya's room later to see it in person, for what?? But he keeps it togheter, scowls and just ignores it, even if the team is trying to bring him into their jokes "Something tells me Roz won't be able to sleep"

But Ilya is keeping it together, that is until Cliff says "Oh, Hollander fans MUST know"

And Cliff tweets the picture of the hotel room and it's window, in all his glory, taken with his very expensive phone with amazing camera, and captions it "For all of you sick fucks out there, if you're going to Buffalo, you might want to stay at the North facing side of the Wyatt hotel... It's got a view"

and ilya is brash and sharp and off-putting sometimes, the same way yuna is (including to shane) so they get lumped together in this shared understanding of being Difficult People With Histories. which is true. but something about david, sweet teddy bear, soft-spoken, earnest david, knowing about ilya’s upbringing and being quietly, incandescently angry about it…

He gets into live-streaming a little but only for charities, like how many dog houses/cat trees he can build for a local shelter as a subathon. He would gather a niche but decent following but he doesn’t really mentions his famous sons, sure he gets some comments that point it out but it doesn’t ever really break containment.

Until someone tweets:

So being boring is... is genetic.

[Spoilers from The Long Game below]

Like Ilya has never experienced kindness or warmth from any older male/father figure in his life, even his older brother was cold and spoke to him with such vitriol. All Ilya has ever known are stoic, cold or cruel men. Then comes boring and socially awkward David Hollander who welcomes him immediately, calls him ‘son’, buys good Russian vodka, cooks chicken Parmesan bc it’s Ilya’s favorite, does puzzles with Ilya and treats him with the tenderness and kindness of a quiet loving father, something that Ilya had NEVER had before. 

This man of few words went to see Ilya the morning of his wedding specifically because he knew Ilya had no family there and he had a full speech rehearsed about how he and Yuna always wanted another child and now they have one, because he wanted to Ilya to know that they both see him as a son and that he has a family now, even though he was worried about over stepping.  

shane kills the bugs in their house without thinking. he doesn’t even hesitate. just a folded paper towel, quick and clean. ilya, who flinches at the sound of loons on the lake, watches from a safe distance, faintly horrified. he has never been an exterminator. he has never needed to be.

ilya offers to hire someone to change a lightbulb. to replace a lock. to fix something small and ordinary. shane just blinks at him, slow and confused, because it costs ten dollars at home depot and then you do it yourself, ilya... that’s the whole point. that’s how it’s always been done.

but ilya knows how to endear himself to the local bakery. he leans on the counter, soft voice, easy smile, and every time they leave there is something extra tucked into the brown paper bag. being a millionaire means nothing here. every grandmother pinches his cheek anyway. every owner insists he take more.

he doesn’t need google maps when they drive through the city. he knows instinctively how streets bend, how neighborhoods breathe. he has every app for taxis, deliveries, reservations, tailoring. he knows how to argue, too -- sharp and precise -- when someone tries to take advantage of shane. no, you are not ripping off my husband. no, you will not get away with it (shane's no idiot, but yuna famously handles all his business, simply taking his interests in mind).

(by the same vein) shane, who barely knows how to negotiate a contract because someone else always did it for him (yuna, an agent, etc), knows the sky instead. he knows the constellations. he learned them standing beside his father, neck bent back, the dark stretching endless above them. (he was a boy scout for exactly 1 year before quitting bc it cut into hockey time). sometimes they lie on the patio furniture now, deep in thought, and shane points them out one by one, voice soft with certainty, and ilya listens like he’s being told a story (it reminds him, at first with a shock, of his mother, of bedtime folk stories told once by the first russian mother to the first russian child. of cannabilism and children being stolen by devils in the middle of the night, but it was still funny & sweet anyway, bc irina swore to always protect him before tucking his little toes in)

ilya fills their kitchen with beautiful, lavish, complicated things. heavy clay pots. expensive japanese knives. a coffee machine that hisses and gleams like something alive. the tv room with state of the art speakers & a remote system that takes shane 3 days to figure out how to use. shane brings the deck pillows inside before the first snowfall. he checks the seals on the windows. he knows which mornings the frost will come early.

they are both, in quiet ways, teaching each other how to live.

(and, more quietly still, carrying small, invisible pieces across that shared space between them. ilya learns to rotate his own tires. shane cooks his first stir fry. and what a beautiful thing that is -- for someone to look inside you and, somewhere in the shape of who you’ve become, recognize the person you love most).

it is strange, sometimes, to see the ghosts of who they were before this. the boy in the woods & the boy in the city. all those instincts, all those small private competencies, surviving into this shared space