#ilyashane

By mid-season, the rhythm has settled.

The days and games begin to stack together—one skyline superimposed on another, arenas distinguished only by their swapped-out colors, their swapped-out chants. Like interchangeable settings on a light fixture. Time compresses; the calendar becomes less of a schedule than a condition. Airports repeat. Hotels repeat. Ice is ice is ice.

Travel still does have its pleasures, especially when Ilya orchestrates an upset. He thinks he’ll never tire of rousing a crowd. In Boston, though, everything cuts a different pattern. The home ice wears down smooth as butter. Boston shows both its love and its vitriol bluntly, forever boisterous and delighted by spectacle. Ilya draws heat from the crowd the way fire draws air. He likes that, the immediate feedback. They know exactly when to rise, when to boo. What they are here to see, and who they’re here to hate.

The Montreal colors always cut differently, too, in the kaleidoscope of Ilya’s head. A singular, salient point of fixation, like a gem-encrusted smear struck clean across the lens.

This is the part of the year where the world narrows to use. Wake. Skate. Eat. Play. Fuck. Recover. Repeat. There is no room for doubt when the body is occupied, no margin for reflection when everything hits and hurts the same way. Goals come easily; assists, easier still. Forward momentum. Motion becomes its own justification.

Ilya doesn’t count days. Instead, his skin build up static—the body already looped in by the brain. It’s automatic, and it shows in his play. He skates harder on impulse. Lets hits linger. And when the days ticking back on the clock in his head start to thin down to the single digits, the electrification gets hard to ignore. Sleep won’t touch it. All that energy is left crackling, begging for release.

Ten days left. Five days left. Two days left.

Go.

Boston loves this part best: the old friendly hatred, burnished and handed down generations. Rivalries here are as much nostalgia as appetite. Spectators sway in their seats, tasting blood in the water. Montreal’s banner is a provocation, and Ilya can feel the crowd rise to meet it—a tremendous roar already cresting toward impact. He likes to give them what they come for. The cheers feed him. The jeers only incite him further. There is a real sort of pleasure in playing the villain. If Boston wants blood, he’ll happily oblige.

On the ice, every sound carries. Ilya steps onto it keyed high and tuned like a fiddle. The house is full, as expected; Ilya throws up both hands, spurs the hungry fans on, and allows the rush and the waves to break over.

The first crack of the puck off the ice splits the air like a gunshot. The Metros come out heavy, testing bodies early, intent on setting the momentum through force. The neutral zone collapses into chaos. The noise spikes instantly, deafening, and Ilya can feel that long-held static finally discharging, every molecule sparking toward perfect alignment.

Hollander is on fire. He’s been on a tear lately, and it shows. The economy of his stride is immaculate. Every movement is pared down to purpose, honed into an artform that’s nearly aesthetic. Passes threaded through traffic, edges caught clean and sure. Each arrival timed barely ahead of the puck. Like he’s found some magic method to move time forward, mere milliseconds ahead of all the other players.

There’s something else to him, too. Confidence? No—something darker, more volatile, percolating just underneath the surface. Hunger? A desire to prove? Whatever Hollander’s game is, it’s dangerous. And it’s working.

They collide near the boards, stick on stick, shoulder knocking shoulder. The impact lands square and clean, a full-body check that rattles Ilya’s frame and sets his teeth singing. He laughs under his breath as they part; the crowd’s boos choke the noise. His heart kicks his lungs, blood gushing fast in his ears. He loves this. The way Hollander’s play never fails to complete the circuit. The way it strikes him conductive, sparks him alive.

The game stretches, high-voltage: a thin-fraying wire.

They trade chances, then goals—Montreal striking, Boston biting back. The crowd surges and ebbs in ferocious crests. Hollander skates like a creature possessed, relentless on the forecheck, cutting angles, beautifully forcing mistakes. In answer, Ilya drives himself harder, faster, quads burning and blood beating and lungs scraping raw. He stays out a second too long, then another. He would not trade this feeling for anything.

By the third, the score reads 4-3.

The Raiders press, desperate and loud, indiscernibly throwing bodies. The zone floods. The Metros bend, but they do not break. When the final horn cuts through the ear-splitting din, it almost feels out of nowhere. The arena erupts in a mass of boos, a wall of sound that imparts its own force.

Ilya throws back his head, mouth wide-open and panting. His chest heaves with effort; salt stings his eyes. The clamor rolls over, thick and furious. He sinks teeth in the inside of one cheek, fighting a grin that threatens to split his face wide open.

Defeat has never felt better.

They line up for the handshake. Hollander’s grip sears Ilya’s, when it comes. His palm feels heated even through the glove. When their eyes meet, Hollander’s are blown wide and scintillating. It holds—long enough to have clear meaning. Before Hollander has even fully released him, all of the blood in Ilya’s system floods south.

The locker room is pandemonium. Gear clatters; tape rends. A kick is swiftly delivered to a stall door, hard enough to rattle the metal. More than a few curses careen off the walls.

“Fucking Hollander,” someone scoffs, and the name passes down hand to hand, beaten down by repetition. Cheap chirps, ugly. Ilya hears the words “lucky” and “soft bitch” and “cocksucker”. Ilya makes no contribution. Instead he peels his jersey off of his aching shoulders and swallows the beat of his sprinting pulse.

“He’s been hot all week,” clips the voice of St-Simon. “Won’t last, ey, Roz?”

Ilya snorts, automatic. He bends to tend to the laces that he’s delayed tying, for the sole purpose of buying himself one more second.

The team’s still buzzing when Carmichael suggests going out—head down to one of those spots in Seaport, where they can throw shots back to drown the loss. A few heads snap Ilya’s way, expectant. He shakes his head, already halfway into his street clothes.

“Next time,” he grunts, flat. “I am not in the mood.” He lets his shoulders sag, just enough to sell it.

A series of groans, each dogpiling the other. Then Marleau’s voice, rough and goading, cuts in from a few stalls down.

 “Montreal’s good for that, huh, Rozanov? Plenty of ways to find comfort.”

This incites laughter, and couple of whistles. Someone shoves his shoulder. Ilya flips off his assailant without looking, snatches up his phone, and makes for the door.

“Try scoring next time, maybe,” he chides the lot of them, and takes off before anybody can clap back.

In the hush of the hallway, with his ears still ringing, Ilya finally checks his screen. There’s an unread message there, already waiting.

Jane: Hell of a game.

Ilya exhales through his nose, thumbs flying.

Nice job, he types.

Lily: Nice job.

Lily: You almost looked happy out there.

The reply comes on the order of seconds, but it feels like minutes.

Jane: We needed it.

Jane: You didn’t make it easy.

Despite himself, there’s a crack of a smile. Much subtler than the one that, a short time earlier, very nearly broke open his face. This version needs no resistance. Involuntarily, he leans back into the wall, the meat of his scapula pressing in deeply. It’s cold where it makes contact with the concrete. Or maybe it’s more that Ilya’s skin is burning.

Lily: Boston fans do not appreciate your effort. Very rude.

Lily: Maybe you need someone to appreciate you hm?

The next pause is eternal. Those three dumb little dots drone on for what might as well be forever. Ilya wonders, fleetingly, if Hollander will always be hopeless at sexting. After four years of data, he knows which way he’d bet.

Fuck it, fuck semantics. With a flourish, he types the hotel name and room number. No more commentary needed, just coordinates—an offering in the form of logistics. He pockets the phone long before the reply arrives, and bolts himself out of the building. True, Hollander might have won the day’s match; but Ilya can already feel the night tilt in his favor.

The hotel smells like sweet chemicals and stale air, neutral in the way of which all hotels aspire. Anonymous carpet. Anonymous walls. A few paintings that might depict water, or sky, or neither. They could be of anything, anywhere. That’s probably the point.

In the entryway, stripped down and starving, Ilya waits.

And waits.

And—

The knock, when it finally comes, is perfunctory—two short raps, almost apologetic. Ilya practically wrenches the door open, revealing Hollander standing there, frozen. His hair is still mussed from the cold winds outside. Ilya wants to grab him and haul him in closer—but Hollander’s already stepped in, and disrobing.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Ilya will not wait a single second longer. If the door closes behind them, he does not hear it.

They fall—right back into that self-same rhythm, in which it seems each of them has become fluent. Months of silence and distance burn down to friction—friction, motion, navigation in space. Slowly, leisurely, he works Hollander open, drawing him incrementally toward immolation. He won’t unbrand his gaze from that face for even a fraction. He wants, needs to see it—the exact point of melting, the very instant Hollander changes state. He coaxes each molecule one at a time, absorbing each and every released ion, until the lattice breaks and all resistance gives way. Until Hollander, once so solid, turns liquid in his hands. Held together no longer by force, but by flow.  

“This is for me,” he whispers in Russian, scarcely above the threshold of hearing. Whispers into Hollander when his mouth falls open—brief, curt explanations that explained nothing at all.

And later, when this dark science has ended, Hollander lets Ilya maneuver him onto his backside, press him open, and fuck him so deeply that neither can speak.

They collapse in tandem, and Ilya, wasted, bores eyes into the ceiling, drifting somewhere decisively out of his body. The white noise of the clock and A/C is a comfort, the all-encroaching silence not yet set in. Beside him, Hollander doesn’t stir immediately, and Ilya is thankful. When he finally does, it’s to reluctantly groan about cleaning. Ilya chuckles, and reaches for the side table, where there lies a damp cloth he’s already prepared. He draws the cool fabric along Hollander’s stomach, gingerly sopping up the pooled liquid. Hollander’s breath catches oddly just then, as if something’s temporarily clogged the machinery. His windpipe seems to be bubbling in his throat.

Then—abruptly—he jerks upright. In the next breath, scrambling for his T-shirt. Hollander’s movements are harsh and disjointed, like each limb is misfiring mid-sequence. His hands shake violently. With a soft curse, he realizes he’s pulled his pants on backward.

“Early flight,” he mumbles, eyes downcast, redressing. “Coach said—anyway, I have to go.” As if this is anything approaching normal. The explanation might be, but for sure not the cadence. Hollander sounds drained, wrung thin. Almost as if he has gone somewhere else.

To watch him is to witness a crash in slow motion. Sentences flood Ilya’s head: questions, declarations, protests. Some words in Russian, some in English, some mangled. “Right,” he chokes out, because it’s what he can manage.

Hollander dresses quickly, efficient in all things. A familiarly unfamiliar sequence. Ilya can see it happen in real time, the reassembling. Armor, reattached piece by piece: the squared shoulders, the stiffened spine, the gauntlets of neutrality slotting back into place.

Even still, he could not shed the stutter.

“I should—yeah. It was great. Thanks, uh, I’ll…see you.”

“Next time,” calls Ilya, scrabbling for casual and ending up with crooked.

Hollander nods once to the crude hotel carpet, and shuffles himself haphazardly out of sight.

The door shuts behind him with a complete lack of ceremony. And for a few moments after, Ilya waits in suspension. The room, now reduced in occupancy by half, has already begun to recalibrate around the egress. Heat rises. Air whooshes. The bed once shared again becomes gravity’s claim. And with Hollander’s absence—fuck—comes the silence. Seeping viciously into each of the cold, vacant spaces, like it’s been waiting all this time with a vengeance.

Hollander hadn’t looked back upon leaving.

It’s nothing, probably. One of the usual culprits. Fatigue, or timing. Too many games packed in too close together.

But Ilya’s stomach is churning.

It’s a strange new sensation, a gut-punch feeling; an unstable bond forming under poor conditions. Cold chemistry—energy, wrongly distributed. Whatever is forming doesn’t want to hold cleanly; it vibrates and pulsates and strains for rearrangement, hot in anticipation of the next collision.

Ilya, who has lived a whole life by gut-instinct, has no framework for it. This destabilization; this reaction that’s forming with no clear instruction.

It feels like gravity tripping. It feels like equilibrium slipping. It feels like whatever distance he’d thought he’s been keeping has already been spliced and reformed without his consent.

There’s still half a season to go on the docket.