lesbianalumni

The highlight of it all, though, is the poke bowl he gets from a little stand at the end of an aisle. A young boy and his mother compile rice, raw salmon, green onion, mango, and sriracha aioli into a small coconut bowl for him. The salmon melts in his mouth. He didn’t realize fish could be better or worse based on where it’s from or how it’s cut: he figured that fish is just fish. But this convinces him otherwise. He might as well be eating raw butter, with how soft and savory it is. The addition of fresh mango and the slight bite from the sauce, on top of perfectly cooked, fluffy sticky rice, is something from a god damn cooking show. He thinks the chefs from the Food Network, who he’s become very acquainted with as it plays often in his stateroom, would lose their every loving shit over the bowl of food in his palm. 

That night, on cloud nine from his perfect Hawaiian adventures and two or three piña coladas, Ilya decides to message Hollander. Or “Daniel.” He has nothing to lose, now that the man is gone from the cruise. He figures there is enough distance between them — both literally and emotionally — that Ilya will not be so crushed if he never hears back. At least that’s what he tells himself. 

He pulls up their thread on Grindr. There’s a pang of pain when he notices that “Daniel” is online, a green dot lit up next to his name. Ilya tries not to overthink the possibility that Hollander is talking to other men on here, already moved on. 

Ilya: I am sorry for running. I wish I could explain myself and make it up to you. I wish you didn’t leave. 

He closes out of the app immediately after hitting “send,” then makes his way to the front deck where Benny is waiting for him. 

It was Benny’s idea to meet here as they sailed away from Hawaii. He swears the stars are even brighter in this stretch. Benny has an app on his phone that he can hold up to the sky and map the stars onto. He walks around, outstretching his arm in various directions to find the right positioning for lining up the phone’s map with the sky in front of them. 

“Ah!” he says, figuring it out. “There’s the big dipper. And there,” he turns a bit. “Is Venus. You can see her shining tonight with just the naked eye. That’s so cool.” 

He hands the phone over to Ilya to give him a shot at it. Ilya swirls it around like Benny had, seeing the names of constellations light up as he moves. “Wow,” Ilya whispers, looking at the Aries and Taurus constellations and how they map onto the symbols of each sign. He finds the matching ones in the sky and feels proud of himself for being able to clearly make out each of them. 

“Right?” Benny says happily. “Fucking incredible, dude.” 

Ilya nods, still in awe. They both stare up at the sky until their necks hurt, and then realize with a laugh that they can sit back in the recliner seats right in front of them to avoid some of the pain. 

“I could look at it forever,” Benny says. 

Ilya nods. “Me too.” He doesn’t mention the part where too much time alone under the sky always makes him wonder where his mom is, and if she’s up there looking over him. He’s felt closer to her lately and the thought is less grief-filled — it’s actually comforting. 

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun while your boy is away,” the other man tells him. 

Ilya doesn’t understand. “What?” 

Benny looks at him, confused. “What do you mean what?” 

“Who is my ‘boy’ and why is he ‘away’?” Ilya makes quotation marks in the air as he says it. 

“Shane Hollander? Am I just completely making up our conversation from three days ago where we all acknowledged you’re into him?” 

Ilya’s head spins. “No, it happened. But what do you mean, away? He left. He is gone, not away.” 

Benny sits up. “Oh my God, you think he left the cruise for good?” 

Ilya sits up, too. “Yes, Paula says people do. Not made for cruise or something. What? Why?” His breathing is quick and his heart is going as fast as a hummingbird’s. 

“Buddy, he’s coming back,” Benny says, his eyes wide. “Is this why you’ve been extra sad on me lately? God, I didn’t realize, I would have told you days ago. His mom pulled him out for some famous people shit, photoshoots and whatnot, but he’s meeting us at another port. I thought I’d be picking him up today in Honolulu, but he’s delayed until Fiji now.” 

Ilya could fucking pass out. “You are kidding,” he says, accusatory. “You are making prank.” 

“No, I’m not,” Benny laughs and puts his hands up in the air. “Swear to God.” 

Ilya’s brain is running through a million things at once, landing finally on the desperate, embarrassing message he sent to Hollander a mere hour ago.

“Fuck,” he says, placing his hand over his eyes and rubbing his temples with his index finger and thumb. “I just sent him an apology. Said I wished I could explain.” 

“Oh no, you mean you apologized for being weird?” Benny feigns shock. “What ever will Shane do now that he knows you’re a nice, thoughtful, sappy human being? The horrors.”

Maybe this whole “having friends” thing isn’t as great as it’s cracked up to be, Ilya thinks. He glares at Benny. 

—- 

Shane could kill his mother. She is blasting “Mamma Mia” in the car to the airport, trying to cheer him up after her stupid plans made him miss his flight to Hawaii and instead catch a red eye five days late. The fact that this song is now steeped in the memory of Rozanov is only making things a million times worse. 

He presses down on the volume knob to turn off the music entirely. He stares out the window, moping as he watches drops of rainwater race down the glass. Rozanov and all of his favorite belongings are somewhere in the middle of the ocean right now, and he is here in his rainy hometown with an aching knee and low grade headache. 

“You’ve already been to Hawaii. When you were eight,” Yuna says. “And you can go back whenever you want. I’ll take you this summer, if that will help. That way you’ll even be able to do hikes around the island.” 

“It won’t be the same,” he replies, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“You have three more minutes of moping before I need you to shake it off, kid,” she says sternly. “You got to see your teammates and show off your beautiful cottage. You can’t act like a spoiled rich kid, Shane, this isn’t a good habit to form.” 

She’s right, and he knows it. He’s held in the complaining all week, though, putting on his most professional facade for the film crew despite three days of rain and an electrical fire from the camera cords that almost lit up his favorite sugar maple tree in the front yard. It was like he was in a constant race with the clock — the lingering deadline of the Hawaii flight had put massive pressure on him from the second he left the boat in LA and just barely made his flight back east. Every new bump in the road meant new bouts of anxiety until his fears came to fruition and he was forced to miss so many more opportunities to bump into Rozanov on the ship. 

Plus, seeing his teammates wasn’t a walk in the park, either. The amount of angst he’s had over missing the season soared exponentially when he saw their smiling faces, their bond seemingly closer than it was a month ago. At least he got one on one time with Hayden, who came over for dinner after the team photoshoot. 

Shane confessed to Hayden that there was someone he was “into” on the ship, using gender neutral pronouns because he’s never formally come out to his friends. Shane gave an abridged (and PG) recap of their run-ins, ending with the most recent message from Rozanov.

“I think he likes you,” Hayden said. And that was how Hayden acknowledged that Shane wasn’t exactly keeping a secret about this whole sexuality thing, but at the same time made it clear that he didn’t need more of an explanation. Shane could’ve hugged him for that. 

“What tells you that? He pushed me away and then disappeared. I couldn’t even find him to say goodbye,” Shane explained. 

Hayden just shrugged. “Liking someone is terrifying.” 

Ilya seemed too big and brave to ever be afraid of anything, but Shane realized he didn’t know enough about the man to really make that conclusion. 

“I have no idea if he likes me, though. Or what he wants,” Shane replied. 

“Does he know what you want?” his friend asked. Shane shook his head. “Then tell him, bud. Be direct. It’s so much easier that way.” 

The flights from Ottawa to Fiji are so insane that Shane now understands the entire point of taking a cruise ship to these remote destinations. He has to go from Ottawa to Calgary — a four-hour flight over most of Canada — then from Calgary to San Francisco — another three hours — and finally San Francisco to Nadi, Fiji. That last flight is 11.5 hours, longer than Shane has ever been on a plane.

His mother reminds him to keep his compression socks on and stretch hourly on the flights to avoid blood clots, worried that his injury will somehow make him more prone to them (Google disagrees, but he does it anyway.) 

Three blockbuster action films and ten episodes of a food competition show later, plus a smattering of short naps, Shane gets off the plane halfway around the world from where he woke up. 

He’s shuttled to a hotel near the airport to stay in overnight while waiting for the ship to dock, and the waiting feels one hundred times harder now that he’s so close. Shane has no semblance of what time of day it is back home, or what time zone his body is even accustomed to right now, so he finds himself floating in the hotel pool at 1am Fiji time. It’s lit up light blue and surrounded by large fan palms, situated on the hotel’s roof. 

For the first time, he allows himself to imagine what it’ll be like to see Rozanov again. He wants to hear about Hawaii and their stop yesterday at Western Samoa. He wants to know what’s going on inside the man’s head, and what his “explanation” is. He wants to try that kiss again, from the top. 

He tries to plan out what to say. “Hi,” is too casual. “Hey,” is maybe okay but is it also weirdly casual? It is at least better than “Hello.” If the greeting is hard to pin down, the actual content of his first words are impossible. I missed you I missed you I missed you, his brain screams on repeat, but he knows that’s not the right thing to say, either. And would a handshake be too formal?

His concerns only have time to skyrocket the next morning as he boards the ship before most of the passengers are even awake, scanning for Rozanov despite knowing it’s too early to see anyone. The familiar smell of his suite — ocean air mixed with his own piney shampoo — and the same red carpeting on the floors make his re-entry feel weirdly like coming home. He unpacks his carry-on bag (he’d done laundry at home so everything was clean again for the ship) and opens the patio door to let more of the sea breeze in. 

Looking out at the island, he’s struck with the realization that all of the seasons of Survivor are filmed nearby. He’s also struck with the memory that most of the excursions for this port are things he cannot physically do, meaning there’s close to no chance that Rozanov will have selected the same one as him. He grabs the pamphlet and reads through the excursion options, refreshing his memory. Ziplining, strenuous hikes to waterfalls, beach volleyball — Doug would reprimand him for all of those. 

He disembarks the ship three hours later for his boring bus ride around Fiji, cranky that he can’t do anything more exciting. Everyone else has already left for their big adventures, it’s just him and the same elderly groups he’s spent most excursions with already. 

As he walks along the pier connecting the ship to the land, someone calls his name. 

“Shane Hollander!” Paula repeats, waving at him from across the pathway. 

He swerves out of the walking traffic and heads over to her. She’s standing in front of a yellow taxi, the side door open, and she gestures for him to get in. 

“Oh, I’m doing a bus tour, actually,” he corrects her nervously. 

“I know that’s what you’re signed up for,” Paula says, smiling. “But I have a different idea. You okay to trust me on this?” 

Shane barely knows this woman, but he figures he doesn’t have all that much to lose, so he nods and gets into the car. Paula loads into the front seat and tells the driver, “Okay, back toward the beach, please.” 

Ten minutes later, the taxi drops them off at a white sandy beach that’s so idyllic and quiet it could be a painting. Paula leads him closer to the water and toward a patch of tall green coconut palms and rosewoods. The trees open a tiny bit and there’s a picnic blanket. On top of the blanket is Ilya Rozanov seated cross-legged and drinking a glass of juice. 

The shock of seeing him again goes straight through Shane, just like the first day on the ship. He turns to look at Paula for an explanation, but she’s already ducked away. 

“Um... Hi,” Shane says and curses himself for going with that greeting. 

Rozanov looks just as shocked as he is. He plants his cup in the sand and stands up. “I knew nothing about this,” the man says defensively. “She took me here for picnic before I could go to the zipline place, said she was picking up another friend. I promise I did not plan this.” 

Shane is walking closer to the blanket without even realizing his body is moving. “You shouldn’t go ziplining. My PT says it’s more dangerous than people think.” 

Rozanov smiles and lets the tiniest sliver of his guard down. “Maybe she put me here to save me from it, then.” 

“It seems like this is a setup,” Shane says bluntly, not playing into the suggestion. He thinks about what this might mean. He hasn’t exactly been all that afraid of being caught flirting with Rozanov on the ship, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Paula had picked up on something during ABBA night. The idea of a hockey fan sniffing out his sexuality is a bit scary, but she doesn’t seem like the type to sell the story to the press. He’s tired of living with that fear, anyway. 

“Yeah, there is really only food for two,” Rozanov admits. “I looked in the basket.” 

“Good food, though?” Shane asks. They’re much closer to each other now, and he stills a third of a meter from Rozanov. 

“Very good. Fruit, rice, fish curry in a warming thing,” he lists off. 

“Thermos,” Shane corrects. 

Rozanov nods. He looks down, scanning Shane’s body. “You have no cane or crutches.” 

“Yeah, I got approved to leave them back home in Canada. The brace is enough now, I just have to be careful,” he explains. 

“So, no ziplining.” 

“No ziplining.” 

—- 

Shane Hollander is holding his gaze for so long it makes Ilya’s breath catch. When Paula said she had a special plan for the day, he was expecting a fun hike, not one on one time with Hollander in the most romantic setting possible. He’d be angry at her if he wasn’t so happy. 

“We should sit. For your knee,” Ilya finally breaks their silence. He holds his hands out, offering Hollander help with lowering to the ground. He grabs a bottle of cold coconut water and hands it to him. 

“Thank you,” Hollander says, getting comfortable on the thick, checkered blanket beneath them. 

“Did you see my message?” Ilya asks. It takes more bravery than he’s willing to admit to himself. 

Hollander nods but doesn’t say anything. He clearly doesn’t know what to say.

“I thought you left the cruise for good,” Ilya admits. 

“What?!” Hollander’s eyes go wide and he laughs. “God, no. My mom had to basically drag me back home. I had a sponsorship thing and this TV filming she booked. Don’t get me wrong, it was worth going home for, I’m not trying to sound like a spoiled asshole. But… It sucked to leave and not know what was going on… here.” Hollander gestures between them.

Ilya’s heart drops a bit at that last sentence. He didn’t want Hollander to suffer from his own mental turmoil. “I’m sorry I left it like that.” 

“I just don’t understand,” Hollander shrugs. “Is it some kind of dom thing? I don’t think I liked it.”

Ilya sighs. He takes a sip of his drink, gathering the words in his brain and forming them into English. “I freaked out. I wanted to be able to be your friend and do adventures together while we’re on this cruise, you know? I was having fun.” 

“I was, too,” Hollander says. 

“I don’t want to be a random hookup,” Ilya admits. “I can’t do that. I have done it over and over and over again. I know how it ends.” 

Hollander looks confused and maybe offended. “You think I’m just a random hookup?” 

“No!” Ilya says, defensive again. “Well, not if we don’t hookup, da? And I let it get too close. I got all dominant again like I always do. It’s too easy. I shouldn’t have made it so sexual.” 

Hollander’s cheeks and ears turn pink. “Oh. You want to be friends.” 

“Yes!” Ilya says, relieved that his message is coming across.

“Just friends,” Hollander says, disappointment painted across his face. Ilya hates that he elicited this emotion and has no idea what he said to make it happen. 

“You do not want this?” Ilya says in a smaller voice. Fear clashes through his ribcage as he waits for Hollander to confirm that he only wanted Ilya for sex, just like he’d originally thought. 

—-- 

Hayden’s advice lingers in Shane’s head, emboldening him. 

“I want you,” Shane says directly into Rozanov’s eyes. “Not as a hookup, not as a friend. Something… in between.” 

The other man’s face softens and a tiny hint of a smile is there with a look of relief. Thank fucking God, Shane thinks.

 “Yeah?” Rozanov asks, lifting his eyebrows and holding Shane’s gaze. 

Shane nods. “We can do excursions and hang out and… do physical things, if you want,” he says shyly and feels his face burn up again. “Dating, I guess. Just for the cruise, of course.” He’s starting to ramble now and can’t stop. “I know you live so far away and the hockey season is so demanding and—” 

Rozanov is smiling more widely as he interrupts him. “I want you, too, Hollander,” he says into the small space between them, his voice no higher than a whisper. 

“You should call me Shane now, Ilya,” he says. Shane leans forward and gently presses his lips against Ilya’s, not needing to be asked. He feels the man’s smile turn into the shape of a kiss. Neither of them move at all, they just let their lips slowly move together, no tongues or needy hands or body parts crashing. Somehow, it’s more charged than those desperate, intense makeouts of the past. It’s even better. 

Paula’s basket for them is, indeed, incredible. Ilya introduces him to many types of tropical fruits, pointing out which ones he already tried in Hawaii and Western Samoa. 

“They eat this on Survivor,” Shane says, taking a bite of raw coconut flesh. 

“On what?” Ilya asks, confused. 

“Oh, we have a lot of TV to watch together next week when we’re at sea.” They both smile, and Shane feels himself redden at the realization that he just indicated they’d hang out in each other’s rooms. 

“I can’t wait,” is all Ilya says, his mouth full of fresh papaya. They watch the ebb and flow of light blue waves against the sand while sitting in a blissful silence. Something inside of Shane loosens the tiniest bit, a clenched fist finally letting its knuckles get their color back. 

“You are so sneaky,” Shane hears Ilya whisper to Paula on the car ride back to the pier. 

“You’re getting burned,” Paula says to him. She’s sitting with a romance novel in her hands, reclined on a chair at the bow of the ship. She holds up the aerosol can of sunscreen. 

Ilya stands up and holds his arms out so she can spray him. 

“Spin,” she commands. He does, and she sprays his back. 

“Thank you,” Ilya replies. “You want some?” 

“Nah, I’m embracing the rays today. I want to be tan for Hawaii. Al and I are going to get our photos taken by this professional photographer our friends recommended,” she explains. “But I’m worried about you. I hope you’re getting those moles checked regularly.” 

“Some people like the moles,” Ilya replies snarkily. 

“I like them!” Benny says, peeling up the brim of his hat and peeking over from the chair next to Paula. Ilya had assumed he was sleeping, so he startles at the interruption.  

“See? Thank you, Benny,” Ilya says. 

“Any occasion for the photos?” Benny asks Paula. 

“Well,” Paula smiles, happy someone asked. “It’s our 20th wedding anniversary.” 

“Awww!” Benny fawns. “That’s adorable.” 

“Wow,” Ilya adds. “Congratulations. When is it?” 

“Technically it’ll be when we’re in Spain, so not for over a month, but the photos are just one part of it. I have a whole plan,” she beams. Seeing the looks of curiosity on both of their faces, she clarifies: “A whole plan that I’m not telling either of you until way closer to the time. I don’t trust anyone to keep this secret.” 

“I am soooo good at secrets,” Ilya says. “Please tell me,” he whines. 

“I’m not, so good call,” Benny quips. 

All three of them laugh. 

“You’ll know soon enough,” Paula reassures. 

“But seriously, congrats on 20 years. I can barely make it 20 days,” Benny says. 

“I cannot make it 20 hours,” Ilya jokes. He can’t hide the hint of sadness underneath it, and of course Paula spots it like a bright pink Easter egg in an open field. 

“How’s your dating life going, Ilya?” she asks. She pronounces his name better than most Americans because she spent over twenty minutes trying to get it right when they were biking in the gym together earlier in the week. 

“It’s not going,” Ilya says. “It maybe was. But now, no.” He’s trying not to mope, but something about this maternal presence prodding at it makes him feel all soft and small. 

“Who messed it up?” Benny asks. 

“Me,” Ilya responds. “Well, I don’t know. Probably me. I thought we were trying to be friends, he thought we were going to fuck, I freaked out, end of story.” 

“Why did you freak out? You didn’t want to be with him?” Paula takes the last sip of her pina colada and sits up, swinging her legs over her chair so she’s facing Ilya directly. 

Ilya thinks on this. Of course part of him wants to be with Hollander, but a far larger part wants to have Hollander in his life in a more stable and reliable way. “If I fuck him, it will become about sex,” Ilya says. “And he is too important for that.” 

“Wait, this is Shane Hollander we’re talking about, right?” Benny asks. He’s also sitting up facing Ilya directly, and his sunglasses are off so he can look directly into Ilya’s face. 

Ilya’s eyes go wide. He would blush, if Russians did that. “How did you know?” 

Paula is trying to hide her smile but Benny starts laughing and she quickly follows, both of them making a whole show about how very not subtle Ilya has been. 

“Your chemistry is like a firework show, of course we picked up on it,” Benny says. Paula just nods, unable to talk through her smile. It’s clear they’ve been conferring behind his back. It’d be cute if it wasn’t humiliating. 

“Fuck,” Ilya puts his head in his hands. “Well, at least it’s no secret.” 

“And that man does not just want you for sex,” Benny tells him. “Trust.” 

Benny stands and pats them both on the shoulders. “I’ve gotta go clock in. The over-40 singles mixer is happening in the piano lounge in twenty. Goodbye, Mr. Future Shane Hollander.” 

Ilya’s head is spinning too fast to correct him. There is no future with Hollander. There are just two chapters of a sad story, both of which end with thousands of kilometers between them and Ilya pining over someone he can’t help but push away.

“You look like you need more ice cream,” Paula announces. Ilya nods and they retreat to the bar. 

The next day, the ship docks in Kauai. Paula comes to his room before he’s ready to leave, catching him by surprise. 

“I have something to cheer you up more than ice cream,” she says. “To bring your color back, like we talked about.” 

“Should I be nervous?” Ilya asks. 

“No. You should be excited. Wear some form fitting clothing and meet me at breakfast in ten,” she declares. “Don’t forget your face sunscreen!” she yells from further down the hall, already running away. 

Over omelets and toast and their usual coffee orders (espresso for Ilya, caramel iced frappe for Paula), she announces the surprise. 

“This port has one of those premium excursions where you can pay extra for something really cool. Al and I get a few opportunities to use them, and we love this one. So, we’re taking you with us on…” she builds the suspense dramatically and mimes doing a drumroll. “A helicopter ride around the coast!” 

Ilya smiles at her, his eyes scanning her face to see if it’s some kind of prank. “You are serious?” 

She nods. “Yep. Fifty minutes in a little helicopter, with views of cliffs and volcanic rock and… ugh it’s all so cool. I wish I could be experiencing it for the first time all over again. But seeing you see it for the first time will be enough.” 

Ilya doesn’t know whether he wants to cry or jump up with glee. How did he get so lucky? But there’s also a pang in his chest with growing concern at accepting too much from the woman. “I do not know how I could repay you.” 

“Being my friend is enough,” Paula shrugs and takes another bite of bacon. He can tell that she’s being genuine. 

“I will not be crashing your anniversary celebration?” 

“Oh God, no. The photos are tomorrow in Honolulu and we have our own celebration every night in the captain’s quarters,” she winks at him. 

“And this is not just because I am so depressed?” Ilya asks, raising a brow. 

“No, this is not a pity invite. I promise.” Paula slurps the rest of her frappe and Ilya, again, believes her. 

After breakfast, Ilya, Paula, and Al board into a small white car that drives them to the helicopter business. It’s his first time around Al since the first day of the cruise. 

“Thanks for keeping my wife company lately,” Al says to him from the front seat of the car.

“She is the one keeping me company,” Ilya shrugs.

“I always hate that I have to be working so much on these things. It can get boring for her when there isn’t the right crowd,” Al tells him. 

“Yeah, last year the only people who seemed remotely interesting ended up being a swinger couple trying to sleep with us,” Paula adds. “If someone has a pineapple on their door, do NOT assume they just want to be friends.” 

“Noted,” Ilya says. 

The helicopter seats four people: the pilot and Ilya up front with Paula and Al behind them. The windows are so large that Ilya can see everything around them, like he’s in the eye of a massive bug. The pilot hands them all large headsets with ear muffs and little microphones that curve in front of the mouth. When he turns the helicopter on to take off, it’s so much louder than Ilya ever expected. And that is all the more thrilling. 

Within a few minutes, they are already high enough in the air to make out an entire section of the coast. Large cliffs and mountains poke up directly out of the sea with a jarring juxtaposition that takes Ilya’s breath away. The jagged features have more shades of green than Ilya has ever seen in his life. It contrasts the bright blue sea so perfectly that he wishes he could capture these colors and remember them forever. Photographs would never be vibrant enough to do proper justice. 

The pilot announces various landmarks as they go by. “Waimea Canyon,” he says, pointing in front of them. Wavy edges of the coast hug the sea. The land is black from the volcanic activity, with green trees sprouting up before a beach even has room to form. Up the coast, the cliffs turn into a light red type of rock that looks like it could be in the Grand Canyon, if Ilya remembers his geography books correctly. 

The helicopter gets close to these features, moving seamlessly around them. Ilya wishes he could know the names of all of the trees and plants he can see clearly through his window: there must be a thousand different varieties. 

“There’s the Na Pali Coast,” the pilot announces a while later, pointing to Ilya’s right. The mountains are so jagged and thin that they look like knives stacked together, still covered in green with the black volcanic layers underneath. Ilya understands why people like rock climbing and hiking. The idea of being on top of those things seems so exhilarating. 

“We’re heading to my favorite part!” Paula says into the microphone so all of them can hear. 

“It’s true, she loves this,” Al confirms. 

The helicopter makes a swift turn, heading closer to the land than they’ve been yet. It flies through a wide passageway in between two mountains that opens into a large enclave. In the center is a flowing waterfall so tall it could swallow the aircraft whole. The pilot hovers them so close that Ilya can hear the falling water over the sounds of the engine. 

Paula points to it just before Ilya can spot it: a rainbow, made from the way the sunlight hits the loose drops of water from the edge of the fall. 

“Color,” she says, squeezing his arm gently. 

Ilya doesn’t even try to hold in the tears. The sight is too beautiful for being coy about emotions. At this moment, he feels closer to magic than he ever has. This must be how people start believing in God, he thinks. He is overcome by it. 

Something about the confirmation that Hollander is “Daniel” hit him between the ribs roughly. It meant Hollander only wants to have sexy conversations and get dominated whenever he’s bored at sea. It meant Hollander had already been seeing him as a sexual object, someone to get off to. It meant Hollander might view Ilya the same way everyone else seemed to: worthless other than for his body. 

The despair growing inside of him is worse than it’s felt in a long time. His dark, tiny room feels suffocating, but the idea of being around other people is even more terrible. 

I can’t do this, he thinks to himself, a refrain he’s repeated every time some obstacle has thrown itself into his path for the last four years. I can’t do this he thought as he told the Boston coach and managers that he was resigning from the league due to an emergency. I can’t do this he thought as he figured out what kind of funeral to have for his father, and where to bury the body, and how life insurance even fucking works. I can’t do this he thought as Svetlana, his very last friend in the world, got a big American job and American boyfriend and started calling him weekly and then monthly instead of daily. 

Life is always too much and not enough at the same time. It’s overwhelming and buzzy and scary and then a deep numbness, paralysis. He is either drowning or in a coma, washed up on a deserted island. Feeling those exact things back to back in the span of the last ten minutes is sending him too far down. 

His phone buzzes. 

Daniel: Please, Rozanov?

Ilya would chuck the device into the sea if he had the money to replace it at the next port. 

— 

Shane doesn’t see Rozanov at the Puerto Vallarta port the next day when he’s loading into the bus to the beach. He doesn’t see Rozanov at the beach bar where Shane orders a vodka soda just so he can remember the man’s taste on his tongue. He doesn’t see Rozanov bobbing in the light blue waves of the beach or trying to stand on a surfboard in one of the lessons along the shore. He doesn’t see Rozanov along the shopping area that lines the boardwalk, offering hair braiding and fancy jewelry and tacky pastel sweatshirts with “Mexico” in various fonts. 

In a haze of sadness and frustration, Shane buys himself a fancy gold chain necklace that costs more than his monthly mortgages. He gets a black hoodie with a white sun drawn on the top left of the chest. It says “Viva Mexico” across the back and has a giant pink lizard under the writing, which he doesn’t realize until after he’s swiped his card. Oh fucking well, he thinks. Maybe he will radically change his style just to have something to pay attention to instead of the embarrassment that’s slowly making itself known. 

Two more days go by on the ship, and Rozanov is still nowhere to be seen. Shane actually leaves his room more, just in the hopes of finding him. He soaks in the hot tub and treads water in the pool. He plays (and wins) three rounds of Blackjack, making up for some of the money he wasted on souvenirs the day before. He lingers awkwardly at the bar in the piano lounge while the performer plays through Taylor Swift’s discography. He even goes to god damn Bingo, of all things. He’s sure he’s made eye contact with every single person on this ship other than Ilya Rozanov. 

The morning the ship is meant to dock in Los Angeles, Shane gets a FaceTime call from Yuna. It doesn’t seem out of the ordinary until he clicks into the call and sees that her brow is wrinkled, a look of concern or frustration or maybe both. 

“Shaney,” she says, “sorry to bother you.” 

“It’s not bothering me, mom,” Shane replies. He’s sitting on his patio reading the same paragraph of a book over and over again because memories of Rozanov keep pulling his brain out of the words. 

“Well, this news will,” she frowns. “I need you to come home for a little while.” 

Shane’s heart drops. The cruise that she had convinced him to go on is suddenly slipping from his fingers. He thought he had months left with Rozanov to figure this out, and now he might never see the man again. He’s about to explode in anger when she interrupts his train of thought. 

“— You’ll go back to the ship within a week or so, don’t worry,” she clarifies. 

She should have led with that, Shane thinks but doesn’t say. 

“You’ll leave most of your stuff on the ship and fly here from LAX when you guys dock later today. Then we’ll fly you to whatever the next port is when we’re done and you'll continue the cruise as normal,” Yuna explains. 

Shane looks around the room, imagining leaving his belongings on board while they sail around the world. It feels weird, but not weirder than imagining Rozanov here with them, floating away from Shane’s grasp. “... We can do that?” he asks, as though there is anything Yuna can’t do. 

“Yes,” she reassures. “This part you’re really not going to like, though,” Yuna continues. “... It’s Reebok. Well, that’s part of it. They’re starting their Sochi Olympics campaign early and need to shoot with you and some of the other guys from the team. And, right after that, HGTV wants to film a special about your cottage. They’re launching a new show about celebrity second homes and reached out about it. The compensation is enough to pay for the cottage’s property taxes for a whole year at least. Plus, this will help you stay relevant even while you’re off.” 

Shane zones out at the details, simply calculating in his head how long it will be until he can come back here. He wants to run to Rozanov’s floor and kiss him again just to make up for their lost days. He wants to figure out what the hell is happening so he doesn’t have to live inside of a question mark while he's a world away from the man again. 

Instead, he grabs the itinerary from his desk. Los Angeles is a one-day stop, followed by five days at sea and then two days in Hawaii. Then five more days at sea before they get to Western Samoa and Fiji. 

“Five days,” Shane says. “Can we make it in five days?” 

“We can certainly try, honey,” Yuna says. “I am still in talks with the producers about how long they’ll need for filming. It’ll depend a little on the weather and a few other factors, but if all goes well, I can fly you back in time for the Hawaii ports. I’ve already spoken with the cruise director, Benny. He sounds like a very nice guy, by the way.” 

Shane knows what she’s getting at with that. Yuna had picked up on the fact that he was into men a while ago, without him even needing to say it. One night, she’d arrived at his hotel to deliver a late-night treat just as his hookup was leaving. She had blushed and handed over the chocolate cupcake he wouldn’t eat, and they never talked about it again. 

That is, not until she had decided he needed to start dating, and then she’d casually mention gay boys she could set him up with. She had an unfortunately impeccable gaydar and never shut up about it. Shane always ignored the comments, not willing to fight with her or even plainly acknowledge his sexuality. So, as usual, he lets this comment drop. 

“Okay. Please just try to get it to go quickly,” he begs. 

“I’m glad you’re liking the cruise so much, honey. I knew it would be good for you!” she says cheerily. She has no idea. “I’ll forward you the flight confirmation. There will be a car at the LA port for you.” 

— 

It turns out that a cruise ship is the perfect place for a depressive episode. Instead of his typical sad meals of microwaved chips with plasticky cheese or slices of cold cuts eaten directly from the package, Ilya can order whatever food he desires for no extra cost. He gets pizza for breakfast and sushi at 4pm. Time doesn’t matter. 

He can work out at 10pm when he finally has enough energy to leave bed. He can sit in the hot tub at 2am when he’s sure no one else will be there, and look up at the bright stars. The sky is more littered with constellations than he’s ever seen it, thanks to the absolute lack of light pollution nearby. He admires them for a few minutes until he starts thinking about whether his mother is on the other side of the stars, and that thought shoves him back into the familiar, aching numbness. 

The TV in his room has a lot of cable channels, too. He watches enough episodes of Friends to be able to consider himself fluent in English now. 

After an indistinguishable amount of time, there’s a knock on his door. He figures it must be a room service item he’d forgotten he ordered, but on the other side is Paula, looking concerned. 

“I don’t usually abuse my powers as the captain’s wife, but I looked up your room number because I was so worried about you. I figured one or two days of missing our workout was fine, but four in a row feels concerning,” she says, launching right on into it. 

Ilya is glad she doesn’t comment on his disheveled hair or the body odor emanating from his pajamas. 

“Sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what to say. He’s never had someone worry about him like this before. It’s discomforting and heartwarming all at once. 

“It’s okay, honey,” Paula assures him. She finally looks behind him and into his room. “Oh god, it’s so dark and tiny in there!” 

He smiles awkwardly. “Yeah. I would invite you in, but…” 

Paula laughs. “How about we meet at the ice cream machine?” She checks her watch. “It’s 11am, that’s a perfectly fine time for our first cone of the day, yeah?” 

Ilya nods. “I can be there in ten.” 

There is something nice about showering and getting dressed in real clothes again. He even puts some gel in his curls to bring them back to life before slipping into his Adidas slides and leaving his small cave for the first time in hours. 

Everything on the ship is right as he left it, but somehow much brighter than he remembered. The sun hitting the windows next to the ice cream machine feels blinding. His newfound nocturnal lifestyle makes the daytime actually hurt, a sign that maybe he’s let himself slip too far away from the land of the living. He is thankful that Paula is here to escort him back. 

“You missed Taylor Swift night. It was so fun. Everyone was dancing, even young people this time,” Paula starts in on her recap. 

“Taylor Swift? Who is this?” 

Paula’s mouth drops, her hazel eyes as wide as saucers. “You don’t know —” 

“Kidding,” Ilya smiles. 

Visible relief washes over her, likely more about the fact that Ilya is back in a joking mood. “I know Russia’s far away, but it can’t possibly be that far, ya know?” she says. 

“Yes. We have Taylor Swift and Beyonce and blah blah blah,” Ilya says. 

“Good,” Paula affirms. She dives into more recaps of the various performances and meals he's missed, not skipping a single detail. The steady drum of her accented voice is comforting and Ilya thinks she should be a podcaster or read audiobooks. He'd be happy listening to her for hours. “I figure you’re not doing anything in LA today?” she finally says, turning the conversation back to him.

Ilya looks around, realizing for the first time that the boat isn’t actually moving. “Shit.” 

“Oh no. You had an excursion?” 

Ilya nods. “Tour of celebrity houses, or something.” 

Paula laughs, “You really want to see that?” 

Ilya shrugs. “You are the Mrs. Taylor Swift over here,” he jokes. “Is cool! Famous people are interesting.” 

“Well, that one might not start until later anyway. Some of the excursions got pushed back because we docked late. I heard someone even missed their flight.” 

Ilya furrows his brow. “Flight?” 

“Yeah, sometimes people get off at ports and fly home. Not everyone is cut out for the whole cruise, you know?”

For some reason, this sends ice down Ilya’s spine. The idea that Hollander might have a way to leave the ship, when he’d previously assumed they’d have weeks together, makes him a little sick. 

“Yep, says here the tour is pushed back until 12:30pm. You can still make it!” Paula announces, looking at her phone screen through her reading glasses. 

Within the hour, Ilya is in a heavily air conditioned bus that takes him through the crowded and winding streets of Los Angeles. He sees more cars out the window than he’s probably ever seen in his life: the highways are ten lanes wide at some points and somehow there's still traffic. Every famous person seems to ignore the earthquake risk in the area and opt for large homes carved into the hillsides. 

The bus climbs up roads lined with palm trees and huge, colorful flowering plants, and the tour guide announces names of celebrities Ilya doesn’t recognize. For each celebrity, he can see a sliver of their white, modern house from beneath the hedges. It is the biggest waste of money he can imagine – thank God the excursion costs are built into his room and board. He pledges to get lobster for dinner tonight to make up for the waste. 

That night, after buttery lobster and New York style cheesecake, Ilya retreats to his room. He’s exhausted from exerting so much energy after a long stretch of doing nothing. Still, his curiosity gets the better of him and he pulls up his chat with Daniel to see if Hollander is online tonight. Maybe it's time to finally answer the man's sad plea. 

Benny nods, not prodding further, and Ilya is grateful for this. They each nurse their drinks and bop around the tub, even as a jolt from the ship spills some of the water out of the side and onto the deck. 

“You know what is even better than drinking frozen drink in warm tub?” Ilya asks. 

Benny raises an eyebrow in response. Instead of words, Ilya simply sets his drink down and pulls himself out of the water. He then walks over to the small diving board above the swimming pool and does a cannonball. When he surfaces, Benny is laughing at him. 

“That looks painfully cold,” Benny calls over. 

“Like ice pricks, even though pool is heated,” Ilya says, smiling. He runs back over and sinks into the hot tub, giving out an exaggerated “ahhh” as the water feels so hot it’s almost cold against his skin. 

— 

Shane is on his way to his nighttime PT appointment when he spots Rozanov floating in the hot tub, laughing with the only other hot guy on Grindr. Of fucking course, he thinks. He ignores the pang of jealousy. 

Instead of walking across the pool deck and passing them on the way, Shane opts for a longer, safer route. He takes the elevator he just came from down one level, crutches over to the other end of the ship, and slowly climbs up the staircase that lets out at the gym’s other entrance. The pain in his knee is a small price to pay for avoiding the scene. It’s his third time weaving around Rozanov in as many days, and he knows the behavior will have to stop eventually, but he wants more time to decide what to do. 

“Colombia tomorrow,” Doug says excitedly as he moves his hands around Shane’s knee, stretching it softly in a few directions. “What’s the plan, sport?” 

Shane squeezes his eyes shut. He’s lying back on the table and trapped into the conversation, which feels unfair. It’s as though Yuna had hired a “fun police” just to make sure Shane had to be as adventurous as possible. Wasn’t it enough that he was here, instead of watching the Metros play against the Centaurs tonight from the sidelines? 

“I think I’m doing some kind of tour? But in a vehicle, not walking, obviously,” Shane replies. 

“Ahh, maybe the rickshaw tour of Getsemani?” Doug supplies. 

“That sounds familiar,” Shane nods. 

“I like that one. Good choice. A lot of people go for the mud bath volcano, but it sounds cooler than it actually is. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who wants to be covered in mud for the entire bus ride back to the boat,” Doug laughs gently. 

“Absolutely not,” Shane shudders at the thought. 

“Me neither,” the man says. “I just wish you could do some of the biking and walking tours, too. You’ll probably be good to go on those by the time we reach Western Samoa.” 

Shane just nods, wondering what Western Samoa even is, or where it would be on the globe.

Doug continues to fill the silence. “Luckily, after Colombia, we have a long stretch of touristy beach towns instead of bustling cities. And sitting on the beach or swimming in the ocean are perfect things for you. There’s even scuba in Honolulu!” 

Shane can’t imagine he’d like scuba all that much, considering what snorkeling took out of him, but maybe he wouldn’t hate it. Especially not if Rozanov did it, too. He flinches at that thought, pushing it away. 

“Something hurt?” Doug asks, picking up on the shift. 

“Nope, all good, just… adjusting,” Shane reassures him. 

— 

Ilya and Benny are eating breakfast together when the ship docks in Cartagena, Colombia. The captain comes on the loudspeaker to lay out the customs process, since this is a foreign country. They’ll each have to carry a passport at all times and wait in line as they disembark, so they should allow for an extra twenty minutes to their travel time between the ship and their excursion. 

“You doing the mud bath?” Benny asks between bites of his salmon and lox bagel. 

Ilya shakes his head and finishes swallowing a mouthful of thick, perfectly cooked bacon. “Biking thing.” 

“Would have pegged you as a mud bath guy,” Benny shrugs. “It’s fun. And apparently shrinks your pores. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had any,” he jokes. 

“Yes. And I love to be dirty,” Ilya quips. “But it was full when I booked. Only thing left was… I forget word. Some bike taxi thing.” 

Benny shrugs. “I didn’t pay much attention to this stop’s list. Sometimes we get to go on excursions with the passengers, but usually the staff just spends time relaxing on the ship with you all gone. Or meeting up with our booty calls from each port.” 

“Ah, you have, how do Americans say… a roster?” Ilya smiles at him. “Good for you.” He elbows the guy in a friendly way. 

“I get around,” Benny says smoothly as he takes a sip of his espresso. Ilya likes that he drinks espresso in the shot form, it’s so un-American. 

Since his tour doesn’t start until later in the morning, he waits for the earlier groups to get off the ship before he joins the line. The staff working at the Colombian customs stand seem perplexed by his Russian passport, and Ilya feels a prickle at his neck over the small reminder that he doesn’t really belong here. That he’s an other. 

The moment quickly fades when he spots the back of Hollander’s head a few dozen meters away. He is sure it’s Hollander the same way he’d be sure it had just rained: like he can smell it in the air. He remembers a fact he read on the internet recently that humans can smell rain better than sharks can smell blood in the water. Ilya likes to think he’d be able to have both of these skills to an even higher degree, but would most of all be good at reading Hollander from far away. His first instinct of knowing it was Hollander from those few words he overheard at the beginning of the cruise was proof, Ilya just had to stop doubting himself. 

Now, judging by his quick pace on the crutches, Ilya can tell that Hollander is feeling anxious about making the excursion on time. So cute, moving fast like a scared, injured kitten. 

He realizes a few minutes into the walk that Hollander is heading directly toward the sign Ilya needs to be at: Raul’s Rickshaws. That was the word he forgot. And, using his keen senses again, he sees that the line of rickshaws is being divided into pairs, since the colorful booth latched to the back of each bicycle seats only two people. 

Hollander joins the line and ten or so people fall into place behind him, meaning there’d be no shot for Ilya to get paired with him. His mind moves quickly over the puzzle at hand: he wants to not be overbearing, but he also thinks the rickshaw will be the perfect opportunity to expand their budding friendship. Plus, everyone else in the line is old and boring. Even more boring than Hollander. That’s how dire the situation is. 

Ilya runs faster and slithers up to the front of the line, entering from the opposite side so Hollander cannot see him. A few people groan or shout “hey!” as he cuts them off. He figures he can pretend not to speak English or understand what’s going on anyway. 

Once he’s at the front of the line, Ilya kneels to pretend to tie his shoes. In his periphery vision, he can see the line moving. All he can catch of each person is a small window from their shoes to their knees, but this doesn’t matter, considering Hollander is the only one on crutches. The crowd is large and chaotic, bottlenecking at this one man who’s waving them into each rickshaw in a seemingly endless line of vehicles, then the bike pulls away to begin the tour. It’s like a big conveyor belt, and the chaos means that Ilya can actually get what he wants. 

He catches a shiny glimmer from the metal crutches and stands, his back facing where he knows Hollander is. Before the hockey player can even recognize who’s next to him, they are both waved off to their own colorful excursion vehicle. 

Ilya has to swallow a smile and pretend to be caught off guard when Hollander finally clocks him. 

“You’re kidding me,” Hollander says with a surprised laugh. 

“Uh oh,” Ilya replies, shrugging and looking around as if to say how did this possibly happen? What are the odds? 

Hollander isn’t angry, but he doesn’t exactly look pleased. He might even be… nervous? 

They both sit down in the shell-shaped booth that is attached to the plain bicycle. 

“Hola, chicos guapos,” an older man says from the bike seat. He has a well-groomed mustache and wears one of the Rickshaw company’s bright pink polos with a matching baseball cap. “Soy Martin. I am your tour guide of the beautiful Cartagena. We will be having a lot of fun today!” 

Ilya smiles widely at Shane, who gives an awkward smile in return. 

“You have been to South America before?” Martin asks. 

They both shake their heads. “No,” Ilya says, at the same time that Shane says “Never.” 

“Ahhh, que divertido! What a perfect place to welcome you to the continent,” Martin chimes back, excitedly. 

— 

Shane can concentrate on nothing but the side of Rozanov’s leg, which is ever so slightly touching the side of his own (non-injured) leg. The touch feels akin to the dry needling machine Doug uses on him in PT. It’s like a pointy static, and if electricity were visible the way it is in cartoons, he’s sure there would be large greenish-yellow lines of lightning running up and down the place where their thighs meet. 

Suffice it to say, he cannot breathe in all the way. 

He has no idea what Rozanov is doing. The man went from a cold, hard Russian player, slamming him into the wall during their pre-rookie season game, to a professional-level dom, to this weirdly friendly person. 

Shane finds himself revisiting the same wish he’s had his entire life, since he first started socializing with peers. More than anything in the whole world, he wants some kind of phone app or camera that will read other people’s moods and expressions and explain them to him. Even if the device couldn’t tell him specific emotions, he’d at least settle for knowing what the other person wants. 

In hockey, it’s easy to know what others want. His team wants to win; they want him to be fast on the ice and to take every open shot on the goal and give them pep talks when they’re losing. The press wants him to explain a little bit of strategy, but not too much. The fans want him to assure them that this is the Metros’ year for the cup, and to say that he’s grateful they love the team. 

His parents want him to be happy. The people working the register at the grocery store want him to smile silently and put his rewards number in the keypad quickly to get the transaction over with. Hayden wants him to listen and nod and then laugh at his jokes, and show up for all of the necessary “friend” milestones. 

But Rozanov…. Shane has no fucking idea what Rozanov wants. 

The rickshaw is bobbing along the Colombian roads, going faster than Shane had expected. He looks to his left, away from Rozanov, and sees colorful graffiti painted alongside the shell of the seating area that's holding them. It looks artful and intentional, and he admires the thick lettering. 

“Vale, okay,” Martin announces. “We are coming up to Callejón Angosto. Listos?” 

Shane’s fluent French gives him enough of an understanding of Spanish, and he chimes back, “Si.” 

Rozanov looks at him with surprise, but Shane only registers this in his peripheral vision, not looking the man in the eyes. He’s too anxious to do that. 

“Bueno,” Martin replies. As he turns into the alleyway, Shane is hit with a blast of color. Rows and rows of colorful flags bridge the gap between the buildings, which themselves are painted in an array of primary colors. It feels like entering the tunnel in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: an entirely new world that does not fit into the typical image of a city. 

There are street carts along the side of the road, and Shane can smell the grilled meat and corn thick in the air as they drive by. 

“Wow,” Rozanov lets out. 

For multiple blocks, they are silent, simply taking it all in. At one point, Shane spots an elaborate mural, a large painting of a Black woman laughing. The art is so skillful that she looks completely real: there are white highlights on her face to accentuate natural-looking wrinkles in her smile and around her eyes. It takes his breath away. He pokes Rozanov in the arm to direct his attention to it.

“So beautiful,” Rozanov says. 

“It looks so real,” Shane replies in awe before he becomes aware that he’s interacting with Rozanov like they’re two friends on an adventure together. 

Rozanov does not want to be friends, Shane thinks. He must be up to something or mocking Shane or maybe he got a concussion when the ship hit some particularly rough water a few days ago. 

Plus, the seat assignment was a random snafu. They only have an hour or two of forced proximity and then they’ll go back to ignoring each other for the rest of the cruise. 

Before much else can happen, the rickshaw lurks forward and comes to an abrupt stop. Shane winces from the way it slams weight onto his knee. Rozanov’s hand shoots out in front of him, as if to hold him back from falling out. 

“Ah, no,” Martin gasps. “Dios mio.” 

“I do not think that is good,” Rozanov whispers. 

— 

Martin kindly asks the two of them to get out of the rickshaw so that he can check the back wheel, which has apparently “explotó.” Ilya doesn’t need a translation app to know what that means. 

He and Hollander go over to the side of the street, where a yellow awning provides a length of shade. The bike conveniently broke down right in front of a small store, so Ilya walks in and buys two small bottles of blackberry juice. The ship’s presentation on Colombia last night mentioned that blackberries are a popular fruit in the country, and that the juice is sold just about everywhere, a local favorite. 

He returns to find Hollander resting against the side of the bright blue building, his crutches holding his shoulders up all the way to his ears. 

“You should sit,” Ilya says. 

“I wouldn’t be able to get up again,” Hollander replies. It’s clear he’d already thought this through. 

“Not without help, no,” Ilya replies. He sets the bottles down and offers his hands out. Hollander reluctantly accepts them, and Ilya lowers him to the ground, trying to ignore how intimate it feels to help him in this way. Ilya sits down, too, and uses his teeth to open the first bottle. He hands it to Hollander, who eyes it like he’s never seen juice before.  

“Are you poisoning me?” the man says, lifting a brow at him but accepting the bottle nevertheless.

Ilya laughs. “Yes. Will do me so much good to commit murder in foreign country.” 

Hollander laughs. He takes a sip of the juice.

Ilya tries his own drink and savors the sweet, earthy taste of the berries. The coolness of the liquid feels nice against his lips. He can tell Hollander enjoys it, too, from how quickly he’s getting it down. They both watch Martin fiddle with the wheel, removing the large black tube that wraps around the metal and examining it. 

“What do you…. Want?” Hollander asks gently, breaking the silence. Ilya can tell by the intonation of the question that it took some bravery for Hollander to get it out. 

“Want?” Ilya asks, not sure what’s being alluded to. 

“Yeah. From me?” 

“Ah,” Ilya says. “I guess I thought we could be friends. Or something.” He feels silly for saying it so plainly, but something in him tells him that being sarcastic or coy would only muddle things. 

He sees Hollander nod, taking this information in. 

“... Is that what you want?” Ilya asks. 

“I hadn’t thought about it. I’m still getting used to seeing you in person,” Hollander admits. 

“I know. It’s… a lot.” 

Hollander laughs lightly. “Yeah.” 

“It is okay, if you do not want to be friends. I would get it,” Ilya tells him, even though he’s unprepared for any answer that confirms that. 

“No, I… I want. To be friends. Or something,” Hollander admits. 

Ilya smiles. The two of them return to a comfortable silence as Martin fiddles with a bike pump and two more giant tubes that go in the wheels. 

“What happened?” Hollander asks after a while. 

“What?” Ilya is genuinely confused again. He tries to read Hollander’s face, but the other man is still looking away. 

“You left. I tried to figure out where you went, but none of the news outlets said anything substantial about it. I thought you were set with Boston.” 

Ilya’s heart drops in his chest. The allusion to hockey, and the fact that Hollander was looking for him is almost too much to handle at once. He has to take a few large sips of juice to try to stabilize himself before responding. 

“My brother died,” he says simply. “The day of the draft.” 

Hollander lets out a breath and puts his head down, as if Ilya had just told him terrible news about his own family member dying or something. Ilya doesn’t understand what’s happening. 

“I’m so sorry,” Hollander practically whispers, it’s so soft. “Fuck, that’s so terrible.” He’s talking more toward the sidewalk under them instead of to Ilya. 

And yet, Ilya receives this offering of sympathy in a deeper way than any of the words his family and friends in Russia had expressed after the incident. There is something about how Hollander says it that tells Ilya he understands the full gravity of the tragedy. And, honestly, Hollander is probably one of the only people in the world who could understand. Hollander knows what it’s like to pursue the NHL, to get a high ranking, and then to get drafted to a top-notch team. So, Hollander would also be able to imagine just how miserable it would be to have all that taken away before it even gets to begin. 

Ilya feels tears prickle at his eyes at the pure wave of validation he’s receiving. He takes another long sip, trying to think of anything other than the immense grief that Hollander has lassoed up, pulling it from the depths of Ilya’s chest and into the air between them. 

“Lista!” Martin yells from the street, pointing at the bicycle. “She is fixed!” 

Ilya can’t look at Hollander but knows he needs to face him to hoist the man back up and onto his crutches. He takes one last gulp of his beverage and pretends to choke on it to explain away the wetness in his eyes. 

“You okay?” Hollander asks with concern. Ilya nods and holds his hands out for the man to grasp onto, then pulls him up to standing and hands him the crutches. 

“There’s an idea,” Shane shrugs, then smiles deviously: “Not one that’s likely to happen, but an idea.” 

Ilya accepts the challenge and moves toward Shane, taking his whole chin in his hand and kissing him roughly. Shane’s body responds immediately, his hands moving against Ilya’s bare arms to pull him closer. 

Ilya’s fingers find the bottom of Shane’s shirt and lift it over his head, their mouths only pulling apart for a moment in the familiar dance. He guides Shane to the couch, away from where raindrops paint streaks on the floor-to-ceiling windows, threatening the strange joy of fucking in a visible place. 

Before he knows it, Shane is underneath his boyfriend, cock swelling in his shorts. Ilya pulls those off, too, and moves his mouth down Shane’s chest. He makes a line of kisses, small hickeys, and gentle bites, creating goosebumps beneath his lips wherever he goes. Meanwhile, he uses his thumb to rub a gentle circle around Shane’s nipple and pinches it gently, then harder, harder… 

Shane whimpers. Ilya kisses and sucks the nipple, then repeats the process on the other side. He moves back up to kiss Shane intensely, tongue swiping into his mouth, before trailing back down and coming eye level with the proof of how turned on his boyfriend is. 

“Is it okay? Can we…?” Ilya asks, mouth hovering over Shane’s dick.

“Yeah,” Shane breathes out as he nods, eager for Ilya’s mouth. His cock twitches upward, a magnet to the man’s touch. 

“Need better permission,” Ilya says. “You know what I want. I need to know what you want.”

Shane huffs, rolling his eyes. “You,” he says. He reaches down and places both hands at the back of Ilya’s head, attempting to pull his mouth down onto him. 

“Me what?” Ilya teases, squirming away from Shane’s pull. He presses a kiss to Shane’s lower stomach instead.

“God, Ilya, I want you to fuck me, okay?” Shane whines. 

“More,” Ilya says, this time kissing just the tip of Shane’s cock. 

“Fuck my brains out. C-,” Shane stammers and squirms in desperation. In a horny haze, he decides to stay true to his promise from earlier in the week and say exactly what’s on his mind, how he really feels. “-Come inside me, fill me up, make me yours.…Rearrange my fucking organs,” he trails off, lost in it. 

“Holy shit,” Ilya says, repeating the phrase he definitely picked up from Shane. “Someone has been reading porn.” 

Shane is too gone to care, or to say that yes, of course he had to do something in the months and sometimes years that went by between their hookups. As a reward, Ilya takes his entire cock into his mouth, sucking and licking the length with a hunger that would suggest they hadn’t done this a mere hour ago. Shane moans and bucks his hips up, pushing deeper into his boyfriend’s mouth. 

Ilya runs a finger along Shane’s hole, where there’s a slight opening already from a week’s worth of ruining it. Shane grabs the lube — they conveniently placed containers near every sex-ready space in the house — and pours it onto Ilya’s outstretched hand. The first finger is seamless, like slipping into a glove, and Shane wonders when it switched to feeling empty without Ilya’s fingers, instead of achingly full with them. 

Ilya continues bobbing his mouth on Shane’s cock as he gets in a second, then third, finger and crooks them to a fleshy point he’s mapped out. Shane loses it, sputtering down Ilya’s throat. Ilya groans with joy around Shane’s cock, and the vibrations and tightness of his lips only milks out more of it. He’s somewhere in a whited out space when Ilya flips him over onto all fours and slips inside of him. 

Shane comes back to earth after who knows how many thrusts as Ilya unravels above him, his rhythm shaky from how much Shane’s sex talk had turned him on. With the realization of how much Ilya was absolutely wrecked by what he said, Shane continues his ramble. 

“Fuck me harder,” he moans, moving his hips to create a faster movement. “Mark me with your cum.” 

Ilya reacts with sounds Shane hasn’t heard before, desperate and Russian but clearly dripping with arousal. 

“Want you so deep in me,” Shane continues. “Want all of you. So empty without you.” He moves Ilya’s hand from his hip to his lower abdomen. “Feel your cock filling me,” he says, showing Ilya the small bulge that arises when all 9 inches of him are buried there. 

“Blyat,” Ilya cries and thrusts harder, his face red and his brow furrowed. Oh, this is fun, Shane thinks. 

“Come in me,” he begs again. “Please, Ilya. Need to be leaking you. I’m so fucking yours, I love you so fucking much. Come for me like you love me.” 

“Bozhe moy,” Ilya yells as he thrusts in one final time, his cock twitching as warmth fills Shane’s hole. The feeling, combined with the friction from his cock against the couch, made more intense with every thrust, sends Shane over the edge again. He quickly puts his hand over his dick to try to capture the come and protect the couch beneath them. Ilya is too out of it to notice this and mock Shane for caring about cleanliness despite his asshole being gaped open, dripping come. 

Ilya collapses onto the couch, panting and staring blankly. Shane pulls a blanket underneath himself to have something to drip onto and lays next to Ilya. 

“Holy fuck, Hollander,” Ilya gasps, still gathering himself. His whole body is covered in a layer of sweat that Shane wants to lick off. Instead, Shane leans in and kisses him, moving his arm under Ilya’s shoulders to pull him in for a cuddle. Ilya all but purrs at the motion and settles into the crook of Shane’s neck, kissing it gently as he does. “Where did you learn that?” he says into Shane’s skin. 

Shane smiles smugly. “The internet.” 

“Da, I know the internet, I mean where on the internet?” 

“If I told you, I wouldn’t be able to surprise you when I pull out new things like this. And clearly you like being surprised,” Shane responds. 

“Fine,” Ilya huffs. But then he considers more of the conversation. “And there is a website that taught you to beg me to come in you like I love you?” He follows up. 

“That one was off the cuff,” Shane says proudly. “It just felt right.” 

“I love you,” Ilya says, “ya tak sil'no tebya lyublyu.” 

Shane hums with happiness at the Russian translation he’s already memorized. “I love you so much, Ilya.” He feels overcome by it, a wave of butterflies swarming through his chest. “It’s like I’ve always loved you.” 

Ilya shakes his head, and Shane feels the movement against his shoulder. “You hated me those first few years. You wanted to fuck me, yes, but still hated me.”

Shane considers this. He runs his fingers through Ilya’s sweaty hair and breathes in the scent of them combined with the thick humidity from the rain outside. “I don’t think I ever hated you,” he says. “But no, I guess I didn’t love you, not at first.” 

Ilya moves so his head is next to Shane’s, their eyes meeting. “When did it become love? For you?” he asks so simply, a tender plea. 

Shane racks his mind for the answer. 

It seems obvious and impossible all at the same time. He’s thought about the man in front of him and his galaxy of moles and his shoulder muscles and his thick Russian accent every day now for the better part of a decade. Even on the days when they didn’t speak — which, if they were to take an inventory, were the sad majority — Shane always wondered what Ilya was doing, who he was flirting with, how he felt about any random assortment of topics. 

He had mapped Ilya’s whereabouts across the country, sometimes without even realizing. If someone had asked Shane at any moment over the past 7 years, “what city is Ilya in right now?” he could answer in the blink of an eye. He wouldn’t answer. But he could.  

Through his and Ilya’s tireless circumnavigation of each other, Shane had become so familiar with the geography between them that he could take up cartography if he ever needed a side hustle. He’d learned how many miles Montreal was from Boston, from Los Angeles, from Moscow. And as they kept moving, it was no longer town to town, but how many miles their invisible, electric connection was spread taut over at any given moment. He no longer had to think hard about Ilya’s location or look at game schedules to know if the man was achingly, painfully far away, or close enough that the tightness in Shane’s throat could subside. He just felt it.

Shane regularly has had full conversations with Ilya in his head, too. That habit had probably started around the same time as the mapping — the summer before rookie year — and grown from a minor murmur in the back of his head into loud, all-consuming thoughts that made the nonstop plane, train, and bus rides go by easier. 

It was Shane’s favorite way to fly. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t spend his hours above the clouds in an imaginary conversation with Ilya. He’d throw on noise cancelling headphones and a classical music playlist (so that no lyrics got in the way of the scene in his head), and pretend to nap while his mind ran rampant. He could even do a perfect Russian accent in his brain for Ilya, though he’s sure it would never translate out loud. In those secret moments, Shane told Ilya about his lonely childhood, his hatred of press conferences, how he felt about his teammates, and everything he craved but would never let himself indulge in. In return, Ilya would deliver sarcastic quips or belittling but flirtatious remarks. As time went on, Ilya’s responses began to include softness, too. An empathetic brush of his thumbs over Shane’s cheek or a pouty but genuine “Hollander.”

Yes, Ilya had been a main character inside of Shane’s head for all of Shane’s adult life now. But when had it turned from obsession to love? 

Shane knew it was a crush from day one — hot and lustful and so urgent he could have died the night Ilya got snowed in and couldn’t fuck him. He knew his skin burned under Ilya’s touch, giving the man a power over him that no one else had ever achieved. But that wasn’t love. Loving Ilya the way he did now gave their hot lust a layer of tenderness: velvet fabric wrapped around a lit fire that kept the flame from burning the way it used to. 

When had his heart changed from a hot red coal to a this sweet fluttering thing every time Ilya touched him? 

After the All-Star Game, when Ilya had pinned him onto the bed and asked to fuck him, he had asked if Shane was scared. It was the first time Shane felt Ilya's deep sense of care, and he remembered feeling a tiny shift in the way his heart beat for the man. But that night was still so sexual, not loving. 

And then there was Montreal, the first time Ilya was inside of him. It had been so, so long since they’d been together, so maybe it was the months of endless yearning talking, but something had definitely shifted then. Shane had never felt so close to anyone before. He quite literally hadn’t been. 

All of their previous interactions, before Montreal, had left a giant void inside of Shane’s chest. They said their goodnights and the second they were apart, the reality of the time between each meetup would hit him and carve an uncomfortable darkness inside of him.  

But this time, Ilya left and Shane still felt warm. His home wasn’t a lonely, lifeless thing anymore: it was a warm place where Ilya had been, the scents of cigarette and his earthy hair gel still lingering. His bed was a place Ilya had been, too, and Shane got to remember the weight of the man’s body next to his every time he fell asleep at home. 

This was not love, either, though. At least not to Shane.

The real moment happened when his iron chest alchemized to mercury under Ilya’s gaze, and Rozanov became his Ilya. Instead of two hot, muscular bodies they were these timeless souls staring staring deeply into each other. It was the moment Shane looked at Ilya and saw every past and future iteration of him all at once: the little boy with curly blond hair on a slanted and melting rink in Russia, the mischievous rookie who messed with the press, the middle aged hockey coach who accidentally taught their kids Russian curse words. 

And that moment happened to be completely inconsequential. 

Shane can’t help but laugh when it hits him.

“What? Shane, tell meeee,” Ilya pleads, tired of waiting patiently for his answer. His head is on the pillow next to Shane’s and his eyes are scanning Shane’s face, trying to read the answer inside of his skull. Shane thinks maybe he could. 

“The Olympics,” he finally replies with another laugh.

Ilya pushes up from the couch, mouth open wider than the O shape he makes when he’s about to bury his come in Shane. “The OLYMPICS? In Russia?”

Shane nods, still smiling at the revelation, just as surprised. 

“You had just lost to Latvia,” Shane explains. He looks into Ilya’s eyes, filling with love from just the memory. “I watched the game from this random ice cream shop in the Olympic village, and I saw the look on your face when the timer ran out. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced.” 

“Oh, and this is love, to you?” Ilya mocks. 

“Shhh,” Shane puts a finger over Ilya’s lips jokingly. “Let me finish.” 

“You did, twice,” Ilya jokes. 

Shane goes quiet, considering keeping this to himself for longer. Maybe it’s too cheesy for this moment after all. Maybe this is more of a “we’ve been dating for a year or five” conversation, not for right now. He looks up at Ilya to read his face, and sees only curiosity and love reflected back at him. 

“Do you want to know or—“ 

“Da, I do. Desperately. I will stop with the jokes,” Ilya replies. 

Shane takes a breath, getting back into the memory. “When I saw your face on the screen, I realized I would have done anything to make it better for you. I would have switched places with you. I would have given up the Olympics if it meant saving you from your misery. I knew that you must have been under so much pressure, with your family there and all of the memories that country holds for you. I would have given anything in the world to make it better.” 

Ilya moves his fingers across Shane’s cheek. He coughs a little to try to get rid of the lump in his throat. 

“That’s what made me realize that you were more important to me than hockey,” Shane said. “And that meant that you were the most important thing in the world to me. Are the most important.” He looks at Ilya, concerned that this is too much, because who the fuck would admit that? If his mother overheard him talking like this, she’d have a heart attack on the spot. “Maybe that’s stupid,” he backtracks, looking upward to break the eye contact. “I’m sure there’s some other moment when I-“ 

“No, no, it makes sense,” Ilya concludes. 

“Fuck off,” Shane says, assuming he’s joking. 

“I’m serious!” He kisses Shane’s cheek then turns to the side so they’re both looking up at the ceiling as Ilya uses his hands to demonstrate the point. “It’s like this. Shane Hollander, Mr. Logical Brain, says hockey equals true love,” he spells it out with his hands like an equation. “And then Ilya beats hockey,” he shoves the imaginary word out of the air, “so now Ilya equals true love. Yes?” 

Shane beams, his body filling with the thrill of being seen so perfectly. “Exactly.” 

Giddy, Ilya rolls back on top of him and kisses him, smile against smile until they melt into each other, moving their tongues fluidly again. “Now I have to make love to you. It is rule,” he moves his head down and sucks a small spot on the crook of Shane’s neck. 

“I just came, like, five minutes ago,” Shane protests, not moving away from the welcomed contact. 

“Has never stopped you before,” Ilya looks him in the eye again, raising an eyebrow mischievously. 

“And I want to know your answer. When it became real for you,” 

“I guess it has always been real,” Ilya shrugs. “Since summer before Rookie year.” 

Shane pushes him off now. “No, come on, I don’t accept that. I want a real answer, not just when you knew you wanted to fuck me.” 

Ilya thinks about this for a second, as though it had never crossed his mind. Shane thinks maybe it hasn’t. “… And then I can make love to you?” 

“You can do whatever you want with me then. But we should take a bath before, too.” 

Ilya smiles. “Careful what you promise.” He stands up and grabs his towel from the railing beside him, offering it to Shane. “For your dripping come hole,” he says bluntly. “So we don’t leave trail on floor.” 

“Fuck off,” Shane rolls his eyes. 

“What, two can’t play that game? You are only one who can dirty talk?” 

Shane doesn’t answer this, for fear Ilya will retaliate by actually stopping the dirty talk. He wraps the towel around himself and stands up, following Ilya into the bathroom. 

Ilya pours a layer of eucalyptus Epsom salts into the giant clawfoot tub, and Shane feels warm at the sight of his boyfriend moving fluidly through the space like he’s been here forever. 

—

Ilya watches the foamy bath rise as his memory scans through all of the early encounters with Shane. That very first day, when Shane introduced himself like a little nerd, something in Ilya knew that Shane was his. He couldn’t explain it: it wasn’t love or an ownership kink thing, it was just a knowledge that Shane Hollander was meant to be next to him at all times, but that he would have to settle for a fraction of that, at least for now. 

From that first moment onward, too much time apart was unnatural, a glitch in the system. And Ilya suffered in those glitches, aching for something that hadn’t even existed yet. Every moment he wasn’t with Shane occurred in error. It made him believe in alternate universes, and that they were stuck in the wrong one, in a place that wouldn’t let them be together even though that was his simplest, most fundamental need in the world. 

To Shane, Ilya was a sexual awakening. Ilya knew this from the moment he saw Shane’s dick swell in the shower after their CCM photoshoot together. Every shocked look on Shane’s face and avoidant pullback was part of this journey of self discovery — one that Ilya had had the luxury of doing in his early teenage years, without the press breathing down his neck. 

So Ilya allowed things to stay sexual for a very long time. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. 

But to Ilya, Shane was a spiritual awakening. 

The God his mother had talked to him about when he was younger became real every time Shane kissed him, really kissed him. It wasn’t a Christian God, though, Ilya had decided. It was something more ancient than that, something deep in his bones that told him this love was eternal and therefore he was, too.

“I can see your brain working,” Shane interrupts. He turns off the tap, preventing the bath from overflowing, and climbs into the tub. Ilya watches his boyfriend’s sweaty, tired, holy body sink into the bubbles. 

“I gave you time to think!” Ilya says, defensive but light. “It was so so long with you staring into distance. I could smell your brain overheating.”

Shane splashes the bubbles out of the tub at him. 

“Wow, Mr. Filthy Mouth is making everything dirty now, even floor,” Ilya teases. He steps into the bath, too, moving so his knees are outside of Shane’s, but still touching. Of all of the positions they’ve been in, this is Ilya’s very favorite. Being naked and not sexual makes for a much deeper type of intimacy, he's realized. 

“Is hard to explain,” Ilya says, holding a hand out in a shrug. 

“Try?” Shane pleads.

Ilya nods. He turns on the translation mode in his brain, hoping that years of studying English will help him. He breathes. “To me, you are not just Shane Hollander," he starts. "And you have not been for a very, very long time. Everyone else on the planet is their own thing. Hayden Pike is Hayden Pike. Beyonce is Beyonce-“

“- I love that those are the examples that come to mind.”

Ilya smiles. “Da. Our two best friends. But what I mean is that these people are… contained? Is that right word? They are just here, in bodies. But you… you are everywhere, Shane. You’re the center of things. Gravitatsiya. Gravity. You are not this small human body, in this one little life. I see a million lives with you, before this and after this. Really. And even if you didn’t look like you, I would know it was you. 

“Like if you died and became bird, I would pass that bird and say ‘oh, there he is, my baby.’ If your soul was in a tree, my soul would know that too. I would recognize the Shane tree. The same way I know when sunlight is sent from my mom. You and her are the only people I have ever seen do this.”

Ilya stops, wondering how the water got onto his chin, then realizes it’s his own teardrop. He cups some of the bath water into his hands and washes off his face. Shane is sitting there, mouth open, eyes looking at him lovingly so he knows it’s okay to continue.

“If, after we die, we all become blobs, you are the two blobs I will recognize.”

Shane laughs lightly at this, and Ilya watches a small tear fall down Shane’s freckles and into the tub.

“So,” Ilya continues. “When I think about when I knew I loved you, it’s also the moment I realized all of this. And I think that was when I got my first real kiss from you.”

“The night of that photo shoot, right? In LA?” Shane can't help but smile, clearly excited that it would be so early.

“No, no, don’t get your panties tied up, Hollander. After that,” he waves his hands to illustrate the point.

“But we kissed that night,” Shane says. 

“Yes, but those were sex kisses. They were foreplay for fucking you. We both wanted something out of it. And plus, I kissed you, not the other way around.”

“Who cares?” Shane protests. 

“I do,” Ilya says, genuine. “Because in those days, it was just fucking, right? Obviously it was something more than that, too, but there was nothing from you to prove that. And I wasn't admitting it, even just to me," he holds back some of the sadness underneath those words. "But no. The first time you gave me real kiss was at your apartment.” 

“Wasn't that the first time we…” 

“Had sex, yes. Was not part of that, though. It was after. Do you remember this? I laid down next to you after I showered. You talked about how fucking hot our sex was. Which, of course, making you come like that, being with you like that. Of course. And I asked if it was worth the wait. I thought, you know, we make some jokes and get on with the night. But then you looked at me, and pushed our noses together, and kissed me. Real kiss. And then, God, you kissed my forehead. And… boom. In love. Yours.”

Shane still has a massive grin on his face and tears in his eyes, but then he thinks for a moment. “Didn’t you leave right after that? Why didn’t you stay the night?” 

“Oh well of course I was scared shitfaced,” Ilya says. 

“Shitless,” Shane corrects. 

“That whole talking and one wrong word,” Ilya rolls his eyes. “You are word police.” 

“If I don’t correct you, you’ll say it wrong in front of other people and embarrass yourself,” Shane replies. “But that’s beside the point. You fell in love first.” 

“This is surprising to you?” Ilya asks. Shane looks at him like he can’t believe he’s serious. 

“I’ve been putty in the palm of your hand this whole time,” Shane says. “I always thought I wanted this more.” 

“Ah, no,” Ilya shakes his head. “I am putty. You are hand.” 

Ilya lies back, letting his head fall to the back of the tub. He sits there in bliss, wishing to soak in the moment. Shane lays a hand on his knee and plants a kiss on the other one. 

In the silence, Ilya notices a very important detail he had missed. The sound of the raindrops has died down, leaving them without that natural background music for the first time in hours. He gets out of the tub, kisses Shane on the forehead as he leaves, and runs into the hallway to look out the windows. The sun must have just set, because there’s still a trace of orange light behind each cloud in the sky. The lake is still and sandy pink, no raindrops across the surface. 

“No more rain!” Ilya yells across the house. “Swim time!” 

He doesn’t have to hear Shane groan to know it’s happening. Ilya grabs two beach towels from the drawer in the laundry room and runs into the bathroom with them. 

“Skinny dipping, you promised,” Ilya says through his smile. 

“I absolutely did not promise that, liar.” Shane gets out of the bubbles and puts on the towel from Ilya’s hands. He starts walking toward the back door next to his boyfriend. 

“Pleaaaase, Shane,” Ilya begs. “I just bore my heart for you. I deserve treat.” 

Shane opens the door and walks across the back yard, surveying the level of darkness. The automatic lights on the pathway turn on, but everything else is hard to make out now that the sunlight is completely gone. 

“I think I like it when you beg for me,” Shane says. It makes Ilya’s heart jump, first because he loves finding a new kink, but also because Shane’s tone seems less reluctant. 

Ilya gets down on his knees and put his hands together in a prayer pose. “I will do anything,” he pleads. 

“I like you on your knees, too,” Shane smiles. He keeps leading Ilya down the path until they reach the rock that serves as a makeshift dock. The loons’ ghostly calls fill the air, and they are finally soothing to Ilya instead of terrifying. “Fine,” Shane says. “But you go in first.” 

“Deal!” Ilya beams back. He throws his towel to the side and jumps into the lake. 

Shane follows, lowering himself in instead of jumping all at once. Ilya receives him into his arms and holds him the way he does when he carries him into bed. Shane rests his head on Ilya’s shoulder and kisses his neck. 

Shane slips into swim trunks and one of the long-sleeved white rash guards he’d packed for excursion days. He fills a small backpack with protein bars, an extra change of clothes, his wallet and room key, and two plastic water bottles from the fridge, then uses his crutches to take him to the dining room. 

The breakfast buffet is the same as yesterday: a long line of silver tins with food items ranging from simple scrambled eggs to bagels and lox to a platter of small pieces of toast adorned with crème fraîche and caviar. Everyone is making their plates and taking them to the outskirts of the dining room, where there are small booths and reclining chairs lined up along the floor-to-ceiling windows. 

Cata walks up to him and he startles. “Hi, Mr. Hollander!” she says brightly. “May I help you with your tray?” 

“Please call me Shane,” he says awkwardly. “And yeah that’d be great, thanks Cata.” 

She selects one of the red trays and places a bowl on top, having learned his preference yesterday. She starts walking behind Shane and holding it out whenever he stops to scoop up food. He puts a large spoonful of unsweetened greek yogurt, tons of blueberries, and sliced almonds into the bowl, making what he’s decided will be his daily breakfast here. 

Once he’s seated in the recliner, she returns with a large iced coffee and soy milk, his order from yesterday. 

As Shane eats, he watches the ship pull into its port. The dining room is at the bow of the ship, so he can see the dock coming into view and the staff jump off to start tying the large ropes onto the dock’s cleats, anchoring them in place. It’s a quick process and they function like a well oiled machine. The boat stills in seconds. To his left, he sees a larger cruise ship with a massive water slide on its top deck and feels a tiny hint of envy, not that he could use that anyway. 

People leave the other ship like small ants, on their way to the shops and excursions that are lined up for them at the end of the dock. It’s familiar to his last cruise vacation, which is somewhat of a relief. He hates not knowing what to do or where to go. 

By the time Shane makes it out of the ship and into the line for snorkeling, his resistance to the first adventure finally subsides a bit. The warm Puerto Rican sun is already kissing his skin, and the smell of the fried food stands along the beach feels nostalgic. The sign for the snorkeling excursion shows turquoise water and small (thankfully) fish and Shane feels a hint of excitement bubbling up in his chest. 

The excursion is split into smaller groups who are then assigned boats. They sail out into the water, only minutes from where the ship is docked, another slight comfort. One quick gear tutorial later, Shane is handing his crutches to a tour guide with locs and overalls named Roberto and using his good leg to dive off the boat into the clear blue water. 

His snorkel fills with salty water and his eyes burn, but the adrenaline rush of hitting the cool water makes up for any inconvenience. Shane finds himself smiling as he bobs with the waves.  

He figures that, with so many other small boats docking and plenty of humans jumping loudly into the water, all of the big, scary ocean creatures will be long gone. The thought allows him to lean further into the joy of floating around and taking in the very un-Canadian weather. It even allows him to pull on his snorkel and goggles, fastening them tightly to his face, and dunk below the surface to look for fish. 

Immediately, he sees a massive sea turtle about 100 meters away and flails a bit in fear. Noticing literal children swim toward the turtle causes him to bully himself out of the freeze response and relax a little. But just as he does, a scarier animal comes into view. 

— 

Ilya did a lot of thinking last night after running from the gym. 

For one, Shane Hollander is on the cruise ship. That’s it, that’s the thought. Hollander is one of only a few hundred people who will be confined to the relatively small yacht for a relatively long amount of time, alongside Ilya. It had taken two ice cream cones from the soft serve machine on the back deck to come to accept this fact. 

Over dinner — which was grilled halibut and asparagus, served to him at his solo table in the back of the fancy dining room — Ilya began to plan out how the fuck he should act around Shane Hollander. Clearly, Hollander had remembered him. He tried not to be too flattered by this fact. He also tried not to guess which part of him was more memorable, his hockey skills or his large cock. 

Ilya figured he had two options: ignore Hollander and act like two strangers, or try to be friendly. He felt more inclined for the latter, because what did he even have to lose? If Hollander is an asshole to him, it is just another piece of data for the “is life worth living” checklist. 

Over dessert — a very hard-shelled creme brûlée with fresh raspberries and a shot of decaf espresso, also served to the table — Ilya considered how he could possibly befriend Hollander. He looked out at the dark sea below him, admiring the sleek shine of moonlight that lit up the peaks of the waves. He racked his brain for everything he knew about Hollander: submissive, shy, buttoned-up for the press, not always super social with his teammates. If they were to become friends, it would be by Ilya’s initiation only. 

Over his late-night vodka — in the casino room, where elderly people played Blackjack, a man by the patio smoked a cigar, and two teenagers played pool — Ilya considered why friends was the best option. The alcoholic coating on his stomach filled with luxurious food seemed to embolden him for a second, leading him to consider the brief possibility of rekindling the very, very old spark. He stopped himself from going down this neural pathway. There was no evidence that Hollander wanted anything from him, and friendship was already a giant leap. People like Ilya didn't date wealthy, famous hockey players. He had nothing to offer. 

And, over his second late-night vodka, this time taken on his bed, Ilya pieced a few things together. Oh, Hollander thought he was so smart. 

This is what led to Ilya swimming directly toward a timid-looking but gleeful Hollander in the open San Juan water. Hollander’s eyes go wide from behind his goggles as Ilya waves, entering the man’s line of vision horizontally and kicking his way right through it. He pushes up to the surface and watches Hollander rip his mouthpiece out, but stop short of saying anything. 

“Hello, Hollander,” Ilya says lightly, smiling, teasing. The subtext is “you cannot avoid me now so you might as well make the best of it.” 

“You scared me,” Hollander huffs out. 

“Not as much as sea turtle did,” Ilya teases back. 

Hollander crinkles his eyes, clearly trying to figure out how Ilya had caught onto his fears so quickly. 

“Come on,” Ilya says, generously allowing the boy to stop overthinking. “I will take you to turtle and make sure it does not kill you. Plus, there is manatee over there, too.” 

He sees Hollander balk at the mention of an even larger creature, then try to play it off like it was fine. The man just nods and swims toward Ilya. Just like that, Hollander follows his lead so easily. 

Ilya keeps his promise and positions himself closer to the turtle and manatee the whole time. Hollander accepts this in their forced silence and bravely gets within a few meters of the animals, giving him the ability to marvel at the turtle’s geometrical shell pattern and slow, gentle way of moving, and the manatee’s adorably grumpy-looking face. They can even see the green algae building up on the manatee’s back and the small, white whiskers pointing out from its gray nose. 

The manatee moves rather abruptly, twirling through the water and repositioning himself, and Ilya catches Hollander’s eyes darting over to him, making sure that he’s there for protection. Something in Ilya lights up at this, but he kicks that light far, far below the surface and shoves a large blanket over it. 

When the whistles on the small boats sound for everyone to return, Ilya leaves without a word. 

—

Shane dries off the ocean water and the lingering embarrassment from being so visibly nervous about the snorkeling. But really, who can blame him? He’s from Ottawa, for god sake. There was an entire other country nestled between his hometown and the ocean. The only aquatic creatures he’s dealt with close-up are loons, ducks, and small lake fish. 

He opts to skip the shopping, since every booth offers the same tie-dye shirts and bobbing wooden turtles with “San Juan” written across them in cursive. He boards the ship early and goes directly to the pool, rekindling his love of water in a safer space. Cata brings him a serving of the pineapple soft serve and he allows himself to relive the last two encounters with Ilya Rozanov. 

At the gym, Rozanov had seemed somewhat scared of Shane. He hated that. The man’s big, blue, Russian eyes had looked him up and down as if assessing a potential threat. There was a sadness behind them, too, that Shane couldn’t place. 

But in the ocean, everything had switched so abruptly that it was as if Rozanov had a secret identical twin. Suddenly he was back to being this bold, big presence making massive assumptions and taking control of Shane in ways Shane didn’t even realize he liked. There had been something so comforting about following Rozanov through the waves, knowing he was by his side. It had the same energy as when Rozanov asked him multiple times to consent all those years ago: a gentle and strong type of care, like being engulfed in a hug by a buff teddy bear. 

When Shane’s mind wanders to their other conversation from the trip, his dick stirs in his swim trunks. He notices his fingers are pruny, anyway, and takes this as the right time to retreat to his room. 

Once situated on his balcony again, another whiskey ginger in hand and his freshly washed hair drying in the sea breeze, Shane reopens Grindr. Rozanov’s profile says that he’s only 50 meters away.

Daniel: Back early from PR?

He gets a response within a minute. 

Ilya: Oh, now you are not too good for me anymore? 

Shane cringes. He knew there’d be payback for leaving the man on “read,” but he couldn’t bring himself to respond before PT last night. Plus, he was already running late for his appointment and showing up with a half-hard cock that he’d have to hide during their stretches. 

Daniel: Sorry about that. Got interrupted. 

He hopes this builds the intrigue and anonymity of it all. 

Ilya: I don’t like fucking married men. I do it, but do not like it.

Shane chuckles at the irreverence. 

Daniel: I’m single. 

Ilya: Good, Daniel. I am too. You liked San Juan?

Daniel: Yeah, it was cool. 

Ilya: Ah, “Cool.” Good talk. 

Shane takes a gulp of his drink and allows the bolder part of his persona to rise up again, just like it did before. He moves to his bed so he can touch himself without worrying that tourists will see him from the dock. 

Daniel: I’m more interested in hearing what you’ll do to me during the next few days at sea. 

Ilya: You get ahead of yourself. 

Daniel: Yeah?

Ilya: Who says I will do anything to you?

Instead of responding with words, Shane takes a sloppy picture of his hand grasped around his cock. He makes sure the light catches the wet dribble of pre-cum. 

Ilya: Yes, is good cock. 

Daniel: It’s a very good cock. 

Ilya: And how is your greedy hole? 

Shane’s breath catches and his hands move faster. 

Daniel: Aching for you. 

Ilya: Mmm. Good. 

A photo comes up in the chat. Ilya’s hard cock with his own hand around the base, the veins bulging. His room is dark, which Shane thinks is weird, considering how bright the sun still is outside of his own window. 

Daniel: Did you just take this?

Ilya: Obviously. 

Shane shrugs it off, more worried about the growing warmth in his lower belly and the leaking cock in his hand. 

Daniel: Want to taste it. 

Ilya: Want you to choke on it. 

Shane is overcome with lust at this, his head spinning as he flashes back to the memory of first taking Rozanov in his mouth. He wants nothing more than to relax his entire throat and feel the man’s large cock slide deeper than should be humanly possible. 

With the other few hookups he’s had, he’s hated giving blowjobs. He finds it kind of gross to think about how pee just came out of the thing, and now it’s in his mouth, so he avoids the act at all costs. But Rozanov makes him a fucking slut for it, salivating at the memory of how his salty cum tasted. 

Before he can respond with something witty or sexy, Shane is spilling all over his hand and moaning out to the empty room. 

Ilya: You already came just from that? Cumslut. 

Shane smiles and then catches himself. He cannot possibly be honored to receive the title of cumslut, goddamnit. He collects himself and finds his breath again. 

Daniel: Who says I came?

Ilya: I can basically smell it in the air. Is obvious. I know when I get into a cumslut’s head. 

Daniel: Fuck you. 

Ilya: Da, you wish.