Chapter 2: Every Floor
Ilya had lost a game seven, in his own building, on his own mistake, in overtime, to Shane Hollander. He had thought that was going to be the worst part of his night.
He'd been wrong. The worst part of his night was a man named Danny.
"No way," Danny said. He was about six-four and built like a mailbox, and he had a can of something in each hand, and his jersey said ROZANOV across the shoulders in letters the size of Ilya's forearm. "No way. Mikey. Mikey, look. Look who it is."
Mikey looked. Mikey was Danny's brother, or cousin, or some other close relation produced by the same small gene pool south of Boston; he was only slightly smaller and was wearing the same jersey. He looked at Shane. His mouth fell open. "That's him."
"That's him!"
"That's the son of a bitch!"
Shane, beside him, had gone rigid. Ilya could feel it without looking, the way you could feel a guy tense up beside you on the bench before a fight. He kept his own face down and his cap low and his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, and stared at the lit-up panel of buttons, and very carefully did not exist.
"Hi," said Shane.
"You," said Danny, pointing at him with a can. "You broke my heart tonight. You know that? You broke my heart. I been a Raiders fan thirty-four years. My dad took me to my first game. And you come in here with your little," he made a gesture that Ilya assumed was supposed to be a wrist shot, and sloshed beer on the carpet, "your little thing, and you just," and then, horrifyingly, his face crumpled. "That was a hell of a goal, man."
"Thank you," said Shane faintly.
"I hate you so much."
"That's fair."
"Can we get a picture?" said Mikey.
The elevator doors had finally closed. Danny, turning to embrace Shane, put his entire back against the button panel. Every single floor from three to twenty-six lit up with a cheerful little chime.
Ilya closed his eyes.
"Hey, buddy." A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Danny was holding out a phone. "You mind? Take one of us with him?"
He took the phone.
There are moments in a man's life, Ilya thought, that must be lived through so that they can later be told. His grandmother had said that, about the winter of '91. He was fairly sure she had not meant this. He held up the phone. On the screen, two enormous drunks in his own name and number had their arms around Shane Hollander, who was smiling a smile of such pure distilled panic that Ilya bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood.
The doors opened on the third floor. Nobody got on.
"Say cheese," Ilya said, through his teeth, in the flattest American accent he could manage, which was not very flat at all.
"Cheese!" said Danny and Mikey.
Shane said nothing. Shane looked at him over Danny's shoulder with his eyes very wide, the look of a man watching a car go off a bridge in slow motion.
Ilya took four pictures. Then he took a fifth, just for himself, because Shane's face was really something. The doors closed. The doors opened on the fourth floor. Nobody got on.
"Thanks, man," said Danny, taking his phone back. He peered at Ilya. Ilya stared at the floor. "Hey. Anybody ever tell you you look a little like—"
"Yes," said Ilya. "All the time."
"Ha! Bet that's rough tonight."
"Wicked rough," said Ilya.
Beside him Shane made a small, strangled sound, like a kettle starting.
The doors opened on five. Nobody got on. On six, a woman in a bathrobe looked in at the four of them, and at the panel blinking like a casino, and stepped back and let the doors close without a word. On seven, Danny explained to Shane at length why Boston would win the Cup next year, because Rozanov, man, Rozanov's the best player in the world, he's got hands like a surgeon, you saw that thing he did in game three, and Shane said, "He's very good," and Danny said, "He's the best," and Shane said, very quietly, "Yeah. He is," and Ilya had to look at the ceiling.
They got off on nineteen. Mikey hugged Shane goodbye. Danny pointed at him from the hallway as the doors closed and said, "Next year, Hollander," and Shane said "Next year," and then they were alone, and the elevator stopped on twenty, and twenty-one, and twenty-two, chiming like a church.
Neither of them moved. Neither of them looked at the other. There was a camera in the corner of the ceiling, a little black dome, and Ilya had clocked it the second he got on.
On twenty-three, Shane said, without turning his head, "Wicked rough?"
"Shut up."
"You did a Boston accent."
"I am a resident of Boston. I pay taxes there. It is my accent."
"That was the worst thing I've ever heard."
"You scored on me in overtime of game seven," said Ilya. "We are even."
On twenty-four, Shane's hand moved half an inch closer to his along the rail. Ilya could feel the heat coming off his knuckles. He did not look down. Twenty-five. The doors opened on an empty hallway that smelled of carpet shampoo and closed again. He could hear Shane breathing. He could hear himself.
Twenty-six.
Shane got the door open on the second try. His hands were shaking. Ilya noticed that with a fierce, ugly satisfaction, and then he was through the door and it was shutting behind them and he had Shane up against it before the lock had finished clicking.
He didn't kiss him. Not yet. He held him there with one forearm across his chest and looked at him: the flush on his neck, the dark hair still damp from the rink shower, the eyes that had found him at the blue line three hours ago and cost him everything.
"You saw me," Shane said. Breathless. "On the play. You looked at me."
"Yes."
"Is that why you—"
"Yes," Ilya said. "It is your fault. All of it. I want you to know this. I hope you feel terrible."
Shane laughed, a short helpless sound, and his hands came up and fisted in the front of Ilya's hoodie.
"I don't," he said. "I don't feel terrible at all."
So Ilya kissed him.
It wasn't gentle. He hadn't come here for gentle. He kissed him the way he'd wanted to on the handshake line, hard, his hand on Shane's jaw tipping his head back against the door, and Shane made a noise into his mouth and kissed back just as hard, all teeth and want, his hands dragging the hoodie up. Ilya let him. He broke off long enough to pull it over his head and toss it somewhere and the cap went with it, and then Shane's mouth was on his throat and his hands were on Ilya's bare back, sliding down, pulling him in by the waistband until their hips met.
He was hard already. So was Shane, through the dress pants. Ilya rocked against him once, slow, deliberate, and felt Shane's whole body jolt.
"Three months," Shane said against his neck. "Raleigh. It's been three months."
"Eighty-four days."
Shane pulled back to stare at him. "You counted?"
"I am Russian. We are a people of suffering. Of course I counted." He started on Shane's shirt buttons. His fingers were not steady either, and he was annoyed about it, and he gave up halfway down and just pulled. A button pinged off the wall. "Tell me you want this."
"Ilya."
"Say it, Hollander. I want to hear it. In your stupid polite Canadian voice."
Shane's eyes were very dark. "I want this," he said. "I want you. I've been wanting you since the second you shook my hand. Is that polite enough?"
Ilya walked him backward to the bed.
They got the rest of the clothes off badly, the way they always did the first time after a long gap, elbows and belt buckles and Shane hopping on one foot to get a sock off while Ilya laughed at him and then stopped laughing, because Shane was naked, and he'd forgotten, every time, he somehow forgot. Hockey-thick thighs. The dark trail of hair below his navel. The fading bruise along his ribs from a hit in game five that Ilya had watched happen on a monitor and been unreasonably furious about. He put his mouth on it now. Shane's breath stuttered and his fingers slid into Ilya's hair.
Ilya worked his way down, slow, unhurried, the opposite of everything else tonight. He kissed the jut of a hipbone. The inside of a thigh. He took Shane in his hand and felt him pulse, heard him swear, which Shane almost never did, and then took him in his mouth, and Shane said his name. Not Rozanov. His name, the real one, broken in the middle.
He stayed there a long time. Long enough for Shane's heel to dig into his back and his hips to start lifting off the bed in little desperate jerks. Long enough to forget about the blue line.
"Ilya. Ilya, wait. I want." Shane tugged at his hair. "Bag. Front pocket. My toiletry bag."
Ilya lifted his head. "You packed condoms. For a road trip to Boston. During the playoffs."
Shane's face went red all the way to his collarbones. "I pack them every road trip."
"Every road trip?"
"Just in case," Shane muttered. "Shut up. I'm a planner."
Ilya kissed his stomach, grinning against his skin, and got up and found the bag and the condoms and the little bottle beside them, and when he came back Shane had rolled onto his side to watch him, and the look on his face stopped Ilya cold for a second in the middle of the hotel carpet.
It wasn't a look you could put in a highlight reel. It was just Shane, wanting him. Openly. With nobody there to hide it from.
"Come here," Shane said quietly.
He went.
He took his time opening him up, slick fingers and slow, Shane on his back with one knee drawn up, breathing through it, then not breathing through it at all, just pushing down onto Ilya's hand with his head thrown back. Ilya watched his face the whole time. He liked to. He liked every flicker, every catch of breath, the moment Shane's mouth fell open and stayed open.
"Okay," Shane said finally, hoarse. "Okay. Now. Please."
Ilya rolled the condom on and moved over him, and Shane hooked a leg around his waist, and Ilya pushed into him in one long slow stroke while Shane's nails bit into his shoulders.
Neither of them said anything for a while.
He set a slow pace, at first. He wanted to feel all of it. The heat. The grip of him. The way Shane's breath hitched each time Ilya pressed all the way in. But it had been eighty-four days and a game seven, and Shane kept pulling at him, heels in the small of his back, saying harder, Ilya, come on, in a voice Ilya had never once heard him use on the ice, and Ilya had never been good at saying no to him. He gave him harder. He gave him everything. The headboard thumped the wall and neither of them cared. Shane came first, with Ilya's hand wrapped around him and a sound like he'd been hit, and the feel of him tightening was so much that Ilya followed a few strokes later with his face buried in Shane's neck and Shane's name in his mouth, over and over, in a language Shane didn't speak.
After, they lay in the wreck of the sheets, breathing. Shane's hand drifted up and down Ilya's spine. Outside the window the Boston harbor glittered, all black water and lights, a city that would be cursing Shane Hollander's name in every bar until sunrise.
Ilya found, to his great surprise, that he didn't hate it. Not right now.
"You can't stay," Shane said, eventually. Quiet. Not a question.
"No. Of course not."
"The rules."
"The rules." Ilya pressed his mouth to Shane's shoulder. Then, before he could stop himself: "Shane. I want to tell you something."
Shane went still underneath him.
And someone pounded on the door.
"HOLLANDER!" Hayden Pike's voice, very drunk, very loud, right outside. "It's been an hour! You promised! I'm coming in! Open up, I got the spare key from the front desk!"