Chapter Text
The mood was electric; Harris felt stupid with it, felt like a conduit for queer joy and hometown pride and like he couldn’t figure out how sentences worked even in his head. His personal tweets had devolved into screaming since the beginning of second period, but they were tweets so no one would be able to tell. He felt like he needed to climb under a desk or into a cupboard or a drawer or somewhere very small and just quietly explode—that or get up on the roof of the arena and shriek until he lost his voice and swooned dramatically and Troy had to rescue him, also dramatically, which would suck because heights were not Troy’s favourite thing—but he’d do it, for Harris, Harris knew he would—
6–0 Ottawa, on home ice, against motherfucking Dallas Kent (excuse his French) and motherfucking Toronto. Pardon.
Hahahaahahhahaaaa.
Ha.
Haha.
It was the first game following the birthday-vid-heard-round-the-world and subsequent benching-unbenching, and to say that tensions had been high leading up to tonight was to miss the opportunity to use the word ‘stratospheric’. Harris was sure the League had planned it, planned for big tough Dallas to come up north and show those sissies who was boss (only in, like, a press-friendlier way!), and the sheer unholy glee that Harris was feeling was—
Troy had also punched Kent in the face, twice, and, well, yay.
Rozanov racked up a hat trick with what Harris, at least, recognized as unusually technical tactics, and then he got a fourth goal, and Troy had two of the assists and one of the other goals and Toronto was tearing itself apart and half the Guardians fans who’d made the trek up here were holding signs that said ‘Love Is Love’ and cheering for Ottawa while in Toronto’s colours.
If they only turfed Kent, a few others of the worst of them, Troy said, Toronto would have a decent shot at a soul. But, Troy said, as it stood three quarters of their room hated the other twenty-five percent, except that those were the ones in charge, so—ripe for revolution? Maybe? Didn’t fucking matter because the game buzzer was going and Ottawa had a shut-out victory for the openly queerest team MLH had ever seen and Shane fucking Hollander, excuse Harris’s French, was in the stands wearing his own jersey in the kind of message that no one else could possibly have the balls to send and Rozy was bellowing on the ice in victory and pointing at Shane while the team collided with him.
Dallas Kent broke his stick.
Hahaha. Haha. Fuckin’ A.
***
Harris tucked himself into an alcove in the hallway, shoulderblades meeting the wall; he could, obviously, head right on into the locker room, or over to press, but he wanted to take a moment and marinate.
Read: chill. A little. Because he was a fucking professional, and he was not going to walk into the press room and cackle and it was very important, for his personal image and professional self-respect and, and also the team’s image and the Image of Gay Hockey, that the behaviour of the Centaurs’ Senior Comms Director suggest that this was all purely according to plan and not remarkable in the least—
Hands flat on the wall behind him, too; push the adrenaline into the wall. Pushed the air out of his lungs in a sharp burst, squeezed his eyes shut tight. Then: centered himself. Careful. Deliberate. Professional. Four rounds of box breaths.
You got this.
Harris opened his eyes and, horribly, went “Gleep?!”
Shane fucking Hollander was four feet away, staring in at Harris in the alcove with a small furrow between his eyes. He was flanked by his accompanying Voyageurs, both of whom looked similarly doubting.
Harris did not got this.
“Are you Harris Drover?” asked Shane Hollander. Ilya’s—Shane Hollander.
“Um,” Harris managed. “Wow. Um, yes. Hi. It’s a pleasure to—“
“I’m sorry,” Shane Hollander continued. “I’d’ve liked to have a better introduction, but we don’t have a lot of time and Ilya’s said you’re great, so—”
“What?”
“Is there somewhere we can go?”
“You, go, like—” Harris waved at Pike and Boiziau, who were still watching him as though bracing for another gleep.
“No,” said Hollander, understanding somehow—because he was a genius and Harris was not a fanboy, Harris was a professional—while Ilya says you’re great revolved in his tiny shrieking brain, belying that—“No,” Hollander repeated. “Ilya and me. Is there somewhere private we can go.”
Oh. Well. That was—it had been a really good game, yeah, but like—press and—couldn’t they wait? How had they managed to keep this secret for so long, if they couldn’t even hold off an hour and a half before jumping each other’s—
Shane Hollander squinched up his whole face, genius figuring that out too. “It’s urgent,” he said. “And private. Confidential. It’s a legal thing. Not—”
Oh. Harris blinked, and glanced at Pike, whose face gave nothing away. “I suppose,” Harris said, “there’s my office? You could use that briefly, before Ilya does press? More press,” he added, conscientious, because Ilya loved a sweaty scrum.
“That’s great,” Hollander said. “Hayden, can you—”
“Yeah.”
“And, uh, can you get me an escort?” Hollander asked, turning to Harris again.
“What?”
“Someone’s waiting at security. Can you authorize them through?” Hollander brandished his phone like a badge.
“Who’s—”
“It’s really not my place,” Hollander said. “Just get Ilya to your office, and I can grab them at the door if someone’ll buzz them in, so—”
Professional. Professional. Duty to the organization.
But this was, again, Shane fucking Hollander, Ilya’s Shane, and of the two of them he was the more sensible—whoever Shane Hollander wanted to bring into the bowels of the CTC for an urgent legal thing would have to be someone they could trust—
“Okay,” said Harris. “Okay, can you—?”
The three men shifted and he slipped out of the alcove, threading his way between Hollander and Boiziau, and doing his absolute fucking utmost not to notice that fact, or Hollander’s pecs, or Boiziau’s deltoids—
Troy, Harris told himself. You are very happy with Troy, and you are a professional, and you will never make a noise like ‘gleep’ again in your life.
“Ibrahim?” he called, and explained when the guard came closer that Mr. Hollander and Mr. Boiziau had a friend waiting at the garage security door, and could Ibrahim show them down and then escort all three up to Harris’s office please?
And you are a professional, Harris Drover, and are not going to watch them walk away.
***
The locker room was stupid and electric and ridiculous, and Troy’s big grin when Harris stuck his head in made him wish that he could stay. But, “Ilya?” he called instead.
“Press, yes?”
“Um,” Harris said. “Actually, Shane Hollander.”
A giant collective oooooh rose up from the idiots. Ilya grinned. “You see boys? If only you were better at hockey, you too could have a three-time Cup winner—”
“Six-oh!” Wyatt yelled.
Ilya flapped a hand. “Yes, yes, well, you’re very good too, I love you, you’re all very good, you’re all better than Toronto—” A group bellow. “But I am the only person Shane Hollander waits for. Bring him to me, Harris!”
“Ah. No.” A sudden pause and hush. “He’s—um—he wants you to come to him.” Shit; Troy sniggered but shut up when Harris scowled. “Not like—he seemed kind of worried, actually.”
All of the good humour drained from Ilya’s face in an instant. He grabbed his phone, shoved it in a pocket, and barked “Where?”
“Um, my office. Um, Ilya, shirt—”
Wyatt tossed a shirt at Harris’s head as Ilya pushed past him; Harris was proud of himself for the catch. He’d hand it over as soon as—
He smacked into Ilya’s broad back.
Ilya’d pulled up short in the hallway right outside the locker room door, staring at Pike. “Ilya,” Pike said. “It’s Marie.”
Harris, slipping around Ilya’s massive bare torso, watched the captain’s jaw set hard. “Um,” Harris said in Pike’s direction, passing Ilya his shirt. “Follow me?”
***
Ilya put his shirt on as he sat at the coffee table in Harris’s official office space, waiting for Hollander and Boiziau and the unspecified Marie. God, Harris hoped Ilya hadn’t done anything stupid. Got… married, or something, or had a secret kid who was now being produced like a tiny hostage—
He’d wondered, very briefly, if Hollander and Ilya were about to get married, but dismissed that option based on the look on Ilya’s face as they’d hurried through the halls. Whoever Marie was, Ilya wasn’t looking forward to seeing her.
Pike was leaning against the wall at the end of the room, taking up more room than he seemed like he should. One of those people who seemed small, when you were used to hockey players, and who was, compared to the actual average of average people, fucking massive.
Harris, seated at his desk across the room, ignored Pike’s steady gaze and occupied himself with catastrophe-comms planning. A legal thing. An urgent legal thing that—
Someone knocked at the door, and then it opened. Hollander came through first, and Ilya took a breath for the first time since he’d seen Pike. He rose from the low couch and reached out a hand; Hollander took it.
“Good game,” Hollander said. Ilya’s answering grin was brief and vicious.
A woman had followed Hollander in: must be Marie. Boiziau, nodding sharply to Pike, pulled the door closed behind her and presumably took up a sentry position next to Ibrahim in the hall. The office was bigger than Harris’s first office here. But still so small.
Marie looked around like she agreed. She was in her mid-fifties, maybe, with short-cropped greying hair, rimless glasses, and a soft purple sweater. Harris had absolutely no idea why she was here. He stood up too; small or not, it was his office, after all.
She stared at him and pursed chapped lips. “Who’s this?” The words shot out of her like she was on a timer.
“This is Harris,” said Ilya. “The Centaurs’ communications director. He should—”
“He should not stay,” Marie snapped, not needing to let Ilya finish to know where his thoughts were headed. “No one should be here except—Mr. Hollander, I understand that you’re close to the subject matter, but my duty is to Ilya—”
Ilya said, “I want them here.”
“Without your full understanding of why I am here, I cannot recommend that you waive—”
“If these three betray me?” Ilya shrugged. “Then what would be the point?”
Pike shifted and the absolutely terrifying woman Hollander’d just ushered into the room turned her baleful stare on him. She looked at Pike and didn’t say, don’t you mean betray again? but Harris could hear it, and honestly he wasn’t sure if he would have forgiven Pike, if he could have been as good as Ilya, if it had been him—
Evil Marie scowled. “If that’s your choice.”
“Yes, please,” Ilya said, nodding towards Harris. “Will save time, no?” He didn’t look at Pike.
Hollander rounded the coffee table and squared up beside his—Ilya, facing the agent (? lawyer? harpy?) whom he’d led in.
Marie shook her head, just once, sharp and precise, and got on with things. “In that case. Fifty minutes ago, I got a call from a friend at the Commission. They’d just got off a call with a friend at the Embassy.”
Ilya and Hollander stiffened in unison, taking in breath like they were bracing for a punch. “So,” Hollander said.
Marie’s tone softened, only very slightly. “Ilya, you’re about to be charged, in absentia, with the promotion of homosexuality and participation in an extremist movement.” Hollander huffed, like the punch had landed. Ilya closed his eyes. “And—” Marie added, and Ilya’s eyes shot open—“and with offences against sexual integrity of persons under sixteen.”
Ilya went pale, then flushed, then pale, and sank down to the couch. Hollander had squared himself again, like he was planning to fight the entire country of Russia by himself. Pike, still in the corner, said “No.”
“I am told,” Marie added, remorseless, “that they have testimony. Complainants willing to go on record.”
Pike, again: “No. Absolutely not. No way in hell.”
Harris’s brain was full of cotton. Or—fire, or—
“Including,” this fucking woman continued, “the son of your former coach.”
Hollander inhaled and spat out, “I will kill him, Ilya, I—” at the same time as Ilya said, “He was older than me! What—”
“Ilya,” said Marie, voice like a knife. “You need to stop talking.”
He shook his head, ignoring her, maybe not even hearing. “They—they can’t, they—I never—”
“You spent several summers in Russia, Ilya. They have testimony.”
“It’s lies,” he said. “They can’t prove that, they can’t—
“They don’t have to prove it,” she said, still implacable. “They just have to make it politically unpalatable to approve your claim, confuse the issue badly enough, for long enough, that the Commission has doubts.”
Hollander had got a hold of himself, paused his death threats, visibly reasserted his epoch-making self-discipline. He asked, “So what do we do?”
Marie nodded. “We get ahead of them. Why do you think I got a phone tree and drove straight here from Gloucester? Tia finalized the application while I was driving; we added a section noting that we’ve been made aware of certain pending charges and that—” She slipped into a quoting tone—“we categorically deny all such politically motivated allegations.” She nodded. “The timing looks bad for them, too, obviously. Worse. They were waiting to see if you’d embarrass them or just yourselves. It’s not a coincidence that the call came after that first period.”
Ilya scoffed, eyes still unfocused. “You know nothing about hockey.”
“I know a six-zero score. The point is, our… friend at the Commission is waiting for this to come in. They’ll expedite it, get the hearing scheduled before the news of the charges even hits VK. We’ll look what we are, pragmatic and defensible. They’ll look—” She smiled sharply. “What they are.”
“I,” Ilya started. “I don’t want to—”
“Time has passed, unfortunately.” And then she did soften, all the way, and the change was alarming. “Ilya. Somebody at the Embassy made that call. Someone’s buying you time. Not even the Russian diplomatic staff believe this, Ilya. The Commission isn’t stupid, but the longer we wait, the more we end up on the back foot.”
“And now that we know,” said Hollander, strategizing, “waiting will make it look—”
Ilya stood in a rush. “Okay,” he said, cutting Hollander off, a captain once again. “What do you need?”
“Tia redrafted while I was driving,” Marie repeated. “I reviewed when I was waiting in the hall. It’s in your inbox. You’ve seen everything except the latest edits; I need you to read it, I need you to sign it.”
Ilya nodded, pulling out his phone. “Da.”
Harris’s head, filled with burning cotton, had been… leaking, maybe? It felt like that. For the whole last—how long? Four minutes? Three; he checked the little ladybug clock Troy had given him for Christmas. Three minutes.
A long time in hockey.
Hardly any time at all in anything else.
He sat back down at his desk, slowly. Watched the little spots on the clock twirl round. He hadn’t been needed, wasn’t needed now—no, he needed to figure out how to spin—no, you idiot, you don’t spin. You do what Marie tells you; you categorically deny.
Still. He’d have to draft—there’d be lawyers, Marie, the League—oh, fuck, he’d have to tell the League, get the MLHPA, Ilya and Hollander were already persona non grata with Crowell goddamn it, and now Crowell’d get to choose between Rozanov and probably every other Russian prospect ever, and god damn it, and Harris could cope with this but—
Ilya made a noise and his lawyer, who’d relaxed slightly while he thumbed through his emails, snapped back to razor-sharp awareness like a pointer dog. “What is it?”
“Text,” he said, waving the hand with the phone. “Well. WhatsApp. From Sasha.”
Hollander’s usually blank face was suddenly enraged; Ilya, usually expressive, was empty.
The coach’s son.
“What does he say?” asked Marie.
“He says, he is sorry,” said Ilya, and Hollander snarled. Harris flinched. “He says, is bullshit. He tells me about his family, how they are.” Ilya nodded. “They are well.”
Pike, who’d been holding back, said “What the fuck?”
Hollander: “He thinks he can just—”
“His sister, mm?” said Ilya, not seeming to care if he got a response. “She was younger than both of us. Very smart. University, architectural engineering.” He was careful with the words. “There is problem with her diploma. She cannot graduate, cannot work.”
“Ilya,” Hollander said.
“His parents, they are selected for audit this year, yes? He is in Paris, mm, but his family—oni zhivut v Moskve, da? They are not—and is bullshit. Obvious bullshit. He is older than me, he is club rat, he is sorry. It will not hurt me, if he says things.”
Marie said, “I need those texts.”
Ilya looked at her, blank-eyed, and then back at his phone.
Hollander grabbed for Ilya’s wrist at the same moment the lawyer barked, “Don’t delete them, Rozanov!”
Hollander had won, but Ilya’s face hadn’t changed and Harris was beginning to be frightened of it. “They do this to his sister,” he said. “Sasha’s parents, they are good people. And they are alive, so. And they tell him—or they do not have to tell him. But they ask, did Ilya Rozanov ever, and they do this to his sister, and he says yes. And then his sister graduates, yes?”
Marie said, “I understand that you’re sympathetic, Ilya, but—”
“They do that, just so they can put charges that are bullshit. He should not have told me it; he would not have except that he is club rat, half cocaine, loyal. I put him saying bullshit in my application; I use their witness to prove their charges are fake. What do you think happens then? They do this, to me, out of pettiness and hate; what do they do to him for that, him who has family, who has no career in hockey, no safe place club and multi-millions contract, no—” His voice caught.
“Ilya,” Marie tried. “The file will be sealed. It strengthens the application.”
“You said bullshit, before you knew he said so too. Said they are not stupid, they would see. Application doesn’t need more strength.”
She pursed her lips again. Hollander’s grip on Ilya’s wrist had slackened, but not dropped.
“Marie,” said Ilya. Cajoling, now. “You’ll seal it? The Commission has friends at the Embassy, yes—do you think the Embassy has no friends at the Commission?”
She sighed, sharp.
“Ilya,” said Hollander.
“His family is in Moscow,” Ilya said. “They are good people. They—” He turned to Hollander, held his eyes for a moment that felt like an hour. “They cannot touch my family, Shane. My family—is all here.”
Hollander released his hand.
Ilya thumbed over his phone screen again. After a few quiet moments, he said, “It’s signed, Marie. With you.”
She inhaled, checked her own phone. Paused a moment, typed a few things, and then looked up. “It’s sent.” She shook her head. “I wish you had kept those texts, Ilya.”
He smiled. “What is phrase?”
Hollander murmured, “If wishes were horses.”
“David’s,” Ilya agreed.
Marie’s mouth tightened. She said, “I’ll be in touch. Congratulations on the game.” She turned, and stopped, turning back. “And I’m sorry this couldn’t wait.”
Ilya hummed, and Hollander said, “Of course, Marie. We appreciate it. As always.”
The door closed behind her. Pike said, “Fuck.”
Ilya sank back down to the couch. Said: “Refugee.”
Pike said, again, “Fuck, I—”
“No.” Hollander, now. “No, absolutely not.”
“Apologize again, Pike,” Ilya added, “and I will personally commission your daughter to—” His voice caught.
“Ilya,” said Pike.
“To.” Deep breath. “Decorate your face in your sleep every night for a month.”
Harris couldn’t help the laugh, and the three men turned to him. Harris felt like they’d only just remembered he was there.
“Ilya,” he said, feeling that something was needed. “We know it’s bullshit. Politically motivated, spite, she’s right. It’s—” And then, pathetic but all he had, “I’ve got this.”
Ilya nodded, an approximation of a warm smile on his face, and Harris chose to ignore Hollander and Pike’s more skeptical expressions. There was a knock on the door.
Boiziau said, “Hey. Ibby says press is asking for—you okay for it?”
Ilya inhaled deeply, blinked twice, and switched on his megawatt smile full blast. “Never better,” he lied, and sallied forth, Hollander beside him and Harris in their wake.