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Harris isn’t listening well enough to the media scrum to catch the question, but the uncomfortable silence that follows it is enough to make him look up at where Ilya Rozanov—wet from what must have been the world’s fastest shower and looking almost more attractive than is fair—is smiling.
It is the sort of smile that makes Harris nervous. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there is an entire press corps between him and Ilya.
Ilya leans forward in his chair, deliberately, to put his mouth right next to the microphone.
“Oh wow,” Ilya says brightly. His Russian accent is thicker than usual. “Drapeau must be trying so hard to seduce me. But I am sorry, I am already taken. A one man man, I am.”
“Excuse me?” the reporter asks blankly. Harris registers, belatedly, that the reporter asked something about Hollander.
Ilya smiles, and it looks a little like a shark. Harris knows he should try to stop him, but he would also rather not get his arm bitten off.
There's blood in the water, and he doesn't want it to be his.
“You think a mistake is actually an attempt at seduction, da?” Ilya leans towards the microphone again and says, very clearly, “Drapeau made many mistakes. Let in many goals. So he must be gagging for my dick.”
Harris closes his eyes.
“But you have to admit,” the reporter stammers, “that it's a little suspicious. The two of you get together, and then—”
“And then we play our rookie year,” Ilya says smugly. Harris’s eyes pop open again. “And then I win Cup. And then Hollander wins Cup.”
“Are you saying you've been together since your rookie year?” another reporter shouts.
“The summer before,” Ilya says like it's reflexive. “But was a, how do you say it. Situationship. Now is relationship, for many years. Since art historian kissed ancient history after Cup win.”
It takes Harris a second, because he honestly forgets that Kip Grady is anything other than a smoothie person, but holy shit. Harris knows it's been years, but that's years.
That second is too long, because it gives the first reporter a chance to say, “Come on, you have to admit it's kind of suspicious: you join a losing team and make it out of the first round of the playoffs against the top ranked team in the league, and the thing that gets you there is your boyfriend tripping?”
Fuck, Harris thinks.
“Ah, I see,” Ilya replies, and his voice is unnervingly calm. “You are questioning my integrity and my skill. You think that the only way I could get Ottawa here is by cheating, and you think that I am cheating. I am sure Hollander can quote you every statistic from every game either of us have ever played to show that we are not fixing matches, but I keep better things in my head, like image of his freckles. But I assume you have checked stats for yourself, da, before you accused me of fixing game?”
About seven people from Ottawa lean forward to try to shut down the press conference. Ilya covers his microphone to keep them from speaking into it.
Into the pandemonium, the reporter stammers, “I wasn't—”
“Accusing me of fixing game?” Ilya asks with that shark smile, hand lifted just enough so he can speak into the microphone. “Is a serious accusation, no? Sounds like, what is the word, journalistic misconduct, if you were to accuse me of fixing important game with no proof, yes?” He stands. “I am very proud of my team today.” And then he turns and walks away.
Fuck, Harris thinks again, louder.
–
“I'm going home,” Ilya says when he gets to the locker room. There's still a celebration going on around him, people clapping him on the back, but all he feels right now is rage.
It's the sort of rage he thinks his father felt, and Alexei, the sort that eats through muscle and bone. He is his father's son, and right now he can taste fury like blood.
“C’mon,” Bood says, slapping him on the back. “Just come out for a drink, and then you can go—”
“I'm going home,” Ilya says again, a little louder. He can hear how strong his accent is, stronger than it's been in a long time, but he can't get his mouth around those soft Canadian syllables when he wants to fucking hurt something.
“Roz—”
“They think he fucking tripped on purpose,” Ilya snaps.
Bood blinks at him. “What?”
“Hollander,” Ilya says, throwing his stuff haphazardly into his bag. He needs to be out of here before he fully loses his shit. He shouldn't have said any of that to the reporter, but what he can do now is not make it worse. “They are already trying to destroy his reputation, after everything, after all these years of—I’m going home.”
Bood gives him a blank stare, dumbfounded amidst the chaos. “Someone said they thought Hollander threw the game for you? Hollander? Have they ever fucking seen him play?”
Despite everything, Bood's surprise helps a little. But only a very little. If Ilya doesn't see Shane soon, he is going to lose his shit. “Da.”
“Jesus.” Bood shakes his head. Then, over the noise of the room, “Hey! Hey!” The noise cuts off, then bubbles up into a low whisper. “If anyone asks you if Hollander threw the game for us, you don't give it any fucking oxygen, okay? We're not going to play with that shit, got it?”
“I think Hollander would actually explode if he tried to throw a game,” Hayes says.
Next to him, LaPointe says, “And anyway, what the fuck? We won that game all on our own.”
“Even though Montreal played like shit,” Haas adds.
“We won by not playing like shit,” LaPointe says, pointing two finger-guns at Haas.
“Please do not start commenting to the press about this,” Harris says from the doorway. He looks tired. Ilya can't bring himself to feel that bad about it, even though he probably should. “We are making it clear to the League that we take these unfounded accusations of match fixing seriously, and in the meantime, all of you just…don't talk to anyone. At all. Please.”
“What about my wife?” Hayes asks.
“What about his wife?” LaPointe agrees. Hayes throws a roll of tape at his head.
Harris sighs. “You can talk to your own wife, as long as she's not a member of the press.”
“She's a doctor,” Hayes says, as though they don't all know about Lisa, best doctor in the world.
Abruptly, painfully, Ilya wants Shane. “I'm going home,” he says, and grabs his shit, and leaves.
–
Shane is already home when Ilya gets there, looking small and empty and bruised. Ilya hates seeing him look like this. He hates everything that happened to get them to this point, out and more miserable than when they were still hiding.
There’s a live wire under Ilya’s skin, all raw nerves, and he pours two glasses of water and then wipes up a nonexistent spill and then nudges everyone one of his shoes in the entryway just because he can’t imagine sitting still.
But then he looks at Shane again, Shane who is watching him with hollow eyes with something dead behind them, and all he wants to do is fix this. So he carries both glasses and sets them down on the coffee table—on coasters, so they do not scratch at Shane’s raw nerves—and then sits down next to Shane. Their thighs touch, a line of heat.
“Congratulations,” Shane says. “You all earned it.”
“We had an unfair advantage,” Ilya says with a shrug. Shane gives him a sharp look, and Ilya continues, “Centaurs are like man-horses, yes? Have four legs. Unfair advantage.”
Shane snorts out a laugh that doesn’t sound much at all like a sob, and something eases in his body. “Fuck you.”
“Am too tired,” Ilya says, slumping dramatically against Shane’s side. “You wore me out.”
“We played like shit,” Shane whispers, almost like an apology. He doesn’t look at Ilya.
But Ilya can’t let that stand. “Your team played like shit, and you carried them on your back like you always do. Even on your worst day you are the best player I ever play against, and this was not your worst day.”
“It’s my fault.”
“I will fucking bite you and not in a sexy way,” Ilya says sharply. “I did not let reporter say this shit about you, and I will not let you do it either. If your team hadn’t wanted to lose then Drapeau should have blocked some more pucks. Or your useless defensemen should have been less fucking useless. Or your teammates should have scored more goals. You are not your entire team.”
“Fuck you,” Shane snaps, and the anger is such a relief over that blank hollowness. “That’s easy for you to say when you won.”
“Yes, I won,” Ilya says. “And you won before, and you will win again, and so will I. This is a sport. Sometimes your team loses, and it is not your fucking fault.”
Shane’s head jerks towards him, and Ilya has a wild moment when he thinks Shane is going to hit him. But then Shane’s mouth is on his, his weight pushing Ilya down, and his kisses are sharp and bloody and Ilya loves him more than life itself.
Later, when they’re sweaty and sticky and Ilya’s heart doesn’t hurt as much, Shane picks his head up from Ilya’s chest and asks, “Wait, what reporter?”