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It starts, of all things, because of Fox News.
Cliff is still getting his bearings in Ottawa. Still a little bitter about the trade, still routinely arguing with his ex about when and how to get all his shit moved up from Boston, still dealing with the rigamarole of moving to a different country. He signed a six-month lease on a loft ten minutes from the Censplex and that's where he's sitting, scrolling on his phone and feeling sorry for himself, when some of the dumbest shit he's ever seen comes across his phone screen.
Some idiot with a podcast is rambling into a microphone about 'low-value women.' Something about the average American woman having slept with seven men.
"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," says the idiot, face turning red. "These women want you to sodomize them! These worldly whores won't service their men without expecting service in return--"
"Marley." Rozanov is in the kitchen, where he'd been halfway through popping open two more beers. "What the fuck."
"Sorry," Cliff mutters. "Some fuckin' idiot running his mouth. You never know what's gonna come up on Twitter these days. My algorithm's fucked."
"Mine is good," Rozanov volunteers as he rounds the sofa. "Dogs, hockey, more dogs." He hands Cliff one of the beers and rests against the back of the sofa with his own beer balanced between his hand and his chest. It's almost like old times. Rozy being here is one of the few saving graces of this whole fucked up Ottawa situation.
"Fucking moron." Cliff mutters. "Who doesn't like eating pussy? Well. I mean." He darts a glance out of the corner of his eye.
Rozanov chuckles into the mouth of his beer. "Marley, you know how much pussy I've eaten?"
"I just meant--I wasn't trying to be insensitive. I know Hollander's gay."
"Mm. True, Shane would cry." Rozanov seems to find this particularly funny, because he holds his beer aloft to laugh. "One time, he told me--and this is very funny, if you know Shane--that a girl sucked him off, and he shook her hand afterwards. Because of course he would." He tilts his beer into his mouth then, so Cliff almost doesn't hear him say, "Different for him with cock, though."
Cliff laughs. "You're a fuckin' dog, Rozy."
"Whaaat? I'm just saying, my husband? Fucking lo-o-ves to suck cock. Loves it."
Cliff tilts his beer in a sort of cheers and tilts about half of it into his mouth in one go.
"Loves to be eaten out, too," Rozanov says. Sighs it, like it makes him happy in the way a rainbow would a slightly more stable person. "Won't let me touch him until I do it, sometimes."
"Putting old skills to good use, eh?" Cliff says, and smacks Rozanov's shoulder. "I mean what I said—you're a fuckin' dog, man."
"Only for him, Marley," Rozanov says, and there's something weirdly serious about him then. "Only ever for him, now."
Cliff, who long ago made peace with the idea that one of his best friends is married to a guy--has sex with a guy--doesn't know why something warm and prickly crawls across the back of his neck then. It feels a bit like the first time he had to force himself to laugh when Rozanov casually mentioned sex with Hollander, had to make himself react to it the same way he would when he and Roz would sit and talk about chicks sitting on the couch back at Rozanov's fucking McMansion out in Brookline. Cliff's gotten better since then.
He doesn't know why it also feels a bit like the feeling in his gut when he sees pictures of his ex with her new guy. Probably because Cliff is sad and single and Rozanov is getting regular ass. Whatever.
-
Cliff gets up the nerve to ask about it a few days later.
"Hey, Roz," he says, panting with the exertion of his work-out. Roz is on the stationary bike next to him, and it feels a bit like old times again. "Got a question for you."
"Huh?" Rozanov says, staring ahead with too much focus. Across the gym, Dykstra is spotting Hollander for some bench presses.
"What'd you mean when you said--" Cliff, aware that his voice is naturally booming, lowers it significantly. "That, y'know--Hollander likes it when you eat him out?"
That weird, feral grin crawls onto Rozanov's face. Cliff has always kind of wondered if 'Rozanov' translates into coyote in Russian.
"His ass, Marley," Rozanov says. "He likes it when I eat his ass."
"Oh," Cliff says. "Right, yeah. Obviously. And he, like, does it back, or--"
"Mm, no, is not quite how it works." Rozanov ups the speed on his bike and pushes himself over the handlebars, intent on his cardio for a minute. "With blowjobs, it’s like that. I suck him, he sucks me. But Shane likes to bottom. When I eat him out, it makes him loose. Helps him to get fucked. And he loves getting fucked, Marley."
Cliff can't help but let his eyes return to Shane on the bench. He's finished his reps now and he's sitting straddling the bench, shorts bunched up high on his thighs. Cliff clears his throat and makes himself look away.
When Roz finishes his cardio, he all but skips across the gym to Hollander, gets him in a headlock and grinds his knuckles into Hollander's dark hair. Every guy in the gym looks up when Hollander squeals, but they must be used to it by now because they only look for a second.
Cliff wonders if he's the only one who sees the way Rozy palms his guy's ass before he lets him go.
-
A few weeks later, Cliff has a few games with Ottawa under his belt and he's feeling marginally better about things. They've got him paired with Holmberg, a massive Swede who hits like a fucking tank and defends the guys on the line like a mother bear. Cliff also spends a lot of his time on the ice with Hollander, so he notices when Hollander's play gets a little sloppy one night in Detroit--and he especially notices when Hollander goes stomping into the locker room at the end of the game without even looking at Rozanov.
"Everything alright, man?" Cliff asks, following behind Rozanov at a more sedate pace--because anything is more sedate than the ass-on-fire tear that Hollander had been on.
"Fine," Rozanov grunts, by which Cliff gleans that it is not and also that Rozy does not want to talk about it.
Cliff doesn't push, because he's not that kind of guy. He can't help but notice when Hollander stands up from putting his street clothes back on, hair still damp, and announces, "I've gotta do fucking press," before sweeping clean out of the locker room without a backwards glance.
Rozanov is still half-dressed in his gear, elbows on his knees. When he sees Cliff looking at him, he glares from under those intense Slavic eyebrows of his, and Cliff quickly turns around.
When he thumps himself into his stall, though, Rozanov sucks on his teeth and swears under his breath, then sits up.
"He is mad," Rozy mutters.
"Yeah man, no shit. What'd you do?"
"Why does it have to be me? Maybe it was him. Maybe Shane fucking Hollander isn't as perfect as you all seem to think he is. Fuck."
Cliff levels him with a look, the sort of c'mon, man look they've been known to give each other. "Is it him, though, Roz?"
"Fuck, maybe! I don't know." Rozanov rubs his face, groaning. "I am...taking new medication. And it makes it difficult to--" He glances at the other Centaurs, but they're minding their business, which is something Cliff sort of likes about this team. They're in each other's pockets all day but they know how to give a guy space, when he clearly needs it. Roz sighs again. "To get it up. To, uh, want to."
"Oh, so you're not having sex," Cliff says. "Yeah, that kind of thing can fuck things up. I'm sorry about that. But you guys are strong, you'll get through it."
"He doesn't know," Rozanov sighs, miserable. "I haven't told him why, I just haven't been--"
Cliff sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Roz, man, you've gotta tell him. How long's it been?"
"Like, five days," Roz mutters.
"That's it?" Cliff says. From the way Hollander had been behaving and the kicked puppy look on Rozanov's face, Cliff had been assuming a drought of monumental proportions. A few weeks, at least. Not a long fucking weekend.
Rozanov, for the first time all evening, gets some of his usual swagger about him. "Marley, let me show you something." He pulls out his phone and shows Cliff his calendar app. There's some kind of color-coding system that Cliff doesn't understand. Every day is blocked out in colors, sometimes multiple, with the notable exception of the preceding week.
"Blue is for fucking," Rozanov tells him, to Cliff's dawning incredulity. "Pink is for mouth stuff, purple for hand stuff. Orange for masturbation, together or apart. Green for anything else."
"So that's insane," Cliff says, jaw approximately in the basement.
"My Shane has needs," Rozanov says, shrugging. "I am a provider, Marley. I take care of him."
That is, Cliff can't help but think, weirdly sweet.
"Okay. I guess. But why the fuckin' graph, Roz?"
Rozanov shrugs a shoulder. "Shane likes to track things. Helps him, uh, stay good in his brain. I think it also helps to remind him..." Rozanov pauses and his eyes go a little distant. "He can look at this and see how much I love him, in a way. For a long time, this was our entire relationship. Circles on a calendar. Now he can look at it and see how often we're together. How often he's had me on him. In him."
Cliff, who can't really pretend to understand that but can tell that it apparently matters to Hollander, and therefore Rozanov, can only nod.
The subject kind of drops after that, because Cliff doesn't know what else to say and Roz seems like he's done sharing, at least for now.
Later, Cliff's back stomping through the back halls of Little Caesar's Arena, because he got halfway home before realizing that he'd forgotten his fucking air pods and the flight tomorrow would suck utter ass if he didn't go back and get them. Little Caesar's is a new complex, huge and labyrinthine. He gets a little lost. He doesn't really think anybody except janitorial staff will be there, which is why he doesn't move as fast as he probably should when he hears talking from a stairwell.
He rounds the corner and there's Hollander, half-hidden in the alcove of the stairway, kneeling. He's got his face pressed to Rozanov's fucking crotch.
"I'm sorry, baby," Rozanov is murmuring. "I know you need it. I wish I could--"
"Shut the fuck up," Hollander says. He sounds wrecked. It makes Cliff's heart jackrabbit in his chest. Cliff can hear from thirty feet down the hall when he inhales. Fucking sniffs Rozanov's fucking dick. Jesus Christ. "I don't care if you get hard, Ilya. I don't care if you fuck me. You can't just stop touching me. Fuck."
"I just--"
"God, shut up," Hollander growls. He wrestles his hands into Rozanov's pants and pulls out his dick and--yeah, he's soft. That's a limp dick if Cliff's ever seen one. But Hollander opens his mouth and shoves it in anyway, and Rozanov makes a sound like he's fucking hurt. Hollander sobs.
"It's okay, baby," Rozanov murmurs. "It's alright. I'm here. I'm touching you."
Cliff fucking runs back outside and jogs all the way back to the hotel. Still in his post-game suit. The flight in the morning sucks. Hollander and the purple bags under his eyes fall asleep with his head on Rozy's shoulder and Rozy pets him the whole flight.
-
Things get better with Rozanov and Hollander, though it doesn't seem like they ever broke truly bad. Roz makes a few vague allusions to adjusting his dosage or switching to a different medication or something. Hollander spends twenty minutes at the back of the team bus whispering to Rozanov while he thinks everyone is asleep, murmuring I love you and I’m proud of you and you’re doing so well now, baby, I want you to keep doing well. After that night in Detroit, there's one more kind of weird game in Minnesota and then it's business as usual.
Things are not business as usual for Cliff. Cliff has a wet dream for the first time since he was twenty years old. Cliff goes out to a bar and pulls a girl with black hair and asks her if he can fuck her from behind. Cliff stays up until two AM one night daring himself to google things like 'Guys sucking each other off' and 'Guy getting rimmed' (because he's taught himself some new words) and, possibly most damningly, 'Asian guy getting fucked'. These are not masterful google searches. They get the fucking job done.
Cliff lays in the dark for another two hours with the cum-stained tissue clutched in his hand. Practice the next day sucks ass. (Rims?)
Rozanov and a couple of the boys come over a few days before Christmas to watch the Patriots eat the fucking Browns alive. Hollander is traveling for some brand deal he's got coming in the New Year and the other married guys are all with their girls and kids, so it's just Cliff and Roz and the rookies, for the most part. The rooks are good kids, but they treat Cliff's kitchen like a fucking jungle gym, and he kicks them out not long after the game is over.
When he comes back to the couch and throws himself down to pick at the lukewarm nachos on his plate, Rozanov's phone lights up on the coffee table. He's got the push notifications turned on and the text from Hollander is there for all the world to see.
Thinking about that time in Winnipeg ASG weekend 2018.
Rozanov picks up his phone, smirks, and taps on his phone for a minute. Cliff pretends to be engrossed in his nachos and gives himself eye strain with how hard he's trying to see out the side of his own head.
I remember. That was special.
Fuck yes it was. You were a fucking animal. I came three times.
Are you touching yourself?
You know I am.
Show me.
Cliff is a little incredulous, because Rozanov is still sitting casual as you please on Cliff's fucking sofa, ankle crossed onto his knee and looking for all the world like he's texting Hollander about groceries.
The next ping of Rozanov's phone comes after an extended pause. Cliff tries to make himself not look, but of course loses the battle after about thirty seconds. Rozanov is just staring at the screen, jaw visibly clenched with the smallest of smirks curving along his mouth.
The picture is graphic, of course, but also—beautiful? It's taken in an open closet mirror. Hollander's sitting on the edge of a bed and wherever he is, the sun is setting. Orange light covers him and he's completely naked. He's got one foot braced on the edge of the bed, knee pulled up to his chest. He's fucking himself with a dildo. It's fucking purple.
Rozanov very slowly types out My pretty baby. Glad to see you brought your second-favorite cock with you.
Cliff makes himself get up from the couch and hide behind the counter of the kitchen. Forces himself soft by thinking about the hospital bill if Rozanov ever found out that Cliff saw that picture.
Or--maybe not. Because Rozanov gets up a few minutes later, lazily pulls on his jacket and says, "I will go now, Marley. I need to call my husband and see how he's doing in California. I hear it's very hot there."
Then the motherfucker winks.
-
Cliff goes a little insane. He googles gay bars in Ottawa and then, in a panic, wipes his internet history for the past six years. Then he hates himself because it's twenty-fucking-twenty-two and it's okay to be gay. The most famous hockey player in the world is gay. The most famous hockey player in the entire world is gay and married to the second-most famous hockey player in the entire world and they live in Cliff's brain now, making him think about freckles and moles and shit when he's jacking off and that's not right. Those are his friends.
Cliff is also, like, not gay, and he knows this about himself. Cliff loves fucking girls. Cliff loves boobs and pussy and everything that comes with sexy women. Their bras and panties and long hair and even their perfume, the way he can smell it on himself after he's had a girl in his bed. Cliff is thirty-one and he knows he's not gay.
Cliff gets tapped for the All-Star Game, which is a first for him. They're doing a draft this year, and Hollander gets tapped as the Captain of Team Canada, as polled by the fans. He drafts Roz, of course, as his first pick. People throw a fit, because there's a Team Russia this year, but it's likewise not like the league wants them playing against each other after that last Montreal-Ottawa game. That shit still gets Cliff heated.
He's a little surprised when he's Hollander's fourth pick, and the first D-man on his list after his first-line wingers (Pike and Barrett, no real surprises there). Hollander also drafts Lemaire, formerly of the Nomads and now of the Guardians, who Cliff remembers being in Hollander and Roz's rookie class, and rounds out his top six with Boiziau from Montreal.
Drafts have always been a bit of a crap shoot as far as actual strategy goes. Hollander probably does his best, but it still sort of ends up being four teams made of guys who just want to spend the weekend hanging out with each other and maybe play some fuckin’ hockey. The games are in San Francisco this year, a city that definitely doesn't want for clubs, and the boys get themselves enthused about a night on the town pretty quickly.
San Francisco is a city where it's easy to be a professional hockey player and still have anonymity, because there are plenty of much more famous people in the state and the city. It is also a city, Cliff can't help but notice, full of gay men.
"Yes," Rozy says, belly to the bar in the second club. Or maybe the third. "San Francisco is Gay Mecca, have you not heard?"
"What does that even mean?"
"Is a pilgrimage! Everybody must come! At least once." Rozanov wiggles his eyebrows. Hollander is behind him striking that weirdly cute thumbs-in-pockets pose, but he's got a strange look on his face as he gazes around at the couples dancing. Men with women, women with women, and lots of men with men. This isn't even specifically a gay club.
It takes Cliff a minute to realize that Hollander kind of reminds him of last Fourth of July, when his sister brought his nephew to his first firework show.
Wonder. It's wonder.
Hollander puts his hand on Rozanov's back and says, "Hey."
Rozanov turns his head, smiles the way he only does at Hollander. "Hm?" His eyes go all the way up and all the way down. He's checking the fuck out of his husband, which is sort of crazy to Cliff, because he's been spending the better part of fifteen years recovering from being raised by a man who thought marriage had ruined his life. Cliff's dad couldn't even look at his mom, he hated her so much, and he liked to tell Cliff that it'd started at the I do’s.
Hollander takes Roz's arm and lifts it over his head, settling it back around his shoulders. He puts his own arm around Rozanov's back and says, "Let's dance."
"Fuck yes!" Rozanov crows, and Hollander laughs. Rozanov waves at the bartender. "Forget the drinks, fucking forget them! I'm taking my husband to dance."
Cliff loses track of them after that. It's a huge club, and there are some insanely sexy women here. Sexy men, too, and Cliff spends about twenty minutes working up the courage to work himself into one of those particular throngs before he chickens completely out and retreats back to the bar. Pike is here, a little drunk, FaceTiming his wife in the club.
God, Cliff thinks he might need to call his ex.
Before he can go any further down Bad Idea Avenue, he catches sight of them again. Hollander and Rozanov, about twenty feet away, young and fucking hot. They are dancing forehead-to-forehead, hips-to-hips, and Cliff doesn't think he's ever seen Hollander move that easily, save for maybe on the ice, but hockey doesn't allow for that kind of raw sensuality. His arms are around Rozy's neck, Rozy's hands are stuck up under Hollander's shirt, and they are grinding together on the dance floor in a way that makes it pretty obvious what's happening between their hips.
"One time," Pike says, sounding a bit sad and a bit bored. His wife's hung up, and he's propped against the table with a hand on his chin. "One time, I called Shane. He and Rozanov were definitely having sex the whole time."
"Oh yeah?" Cliff mutters, not sure how else to respond. Hollander throws his head back and Rozanov attaches his mouth to the dip of his throat, licking sweat.
"Yeah," Pike sighs. "I think it's, like, a thing for them. Like, people looking at them? Or hearing them, I guess. Probably makes sense after all that hiding. Jackie thinks it's hot."
"Women, huh?" Cliff says, though it sounds like it comes out of someone else's mouth.
"Nah, she's probably right. It's probably hot." Pike sighs. He thumps his forehead against the table. "I'm drunk. I miss my wife. Fuck."
Cliff sighs and throws one last glance at the happy couple. And they are fucking happy. Roz is looking at Hollander like Hollander personally put the sun in the sky.
"C'mon, buddy. Let's get you back to the hotel."
-
Cliff fucks a guy. He goes to a gay bar in Montreal--another gay Mecca, or so he's heard, which makes the Metros' utter betray of Hollander reek all the more, in a way--and picks up a guy named Charles, who immediately clocks that it's Cliff's first time with a guy and still somehow doesn't mind showing Cliff a good time. It's fun, and really fucking hot, and Cliff still isn't sure he understands the whole sucking cock thing but he thinks he's willing to try.
Filled with this new revelation, with this insane new knowledge about himself, Cliff is desperate to tell someone. Anyone. He has no fucking idea how Hollander and Rozanov kept this shit under wraps for eleven fucking years because all Cliff wants to do is talk to someone about it.
He shows up at Hollander and Rozanov's house at nine in the morning.
"Marley," says Rozanov when he opens the door. "Are you okay?"
"I need you to tell me about gay sex," Cliff blurts.
Hollander, sitting in the living room beyond the foyer, stands straight up from the couch and carries the dog into the bedroom. When he comes back, he looks almost mad, and he tears into the kitchen, where he pulls out a carton of eggs and slams the fridge door like it insulted his mother.
"There's something in the fucking water in fucking Ottawa," he snarls.
Twenty minutes later, Cliff is clutching a coffee and a plate full of eggs and saying, "I'm not gay. I still like women."
"Yes, bisexuality, we know of it." Rozanov waves a hand.
"Ilya," Hollander says, in a very calm tone that says he's losing it.
"Shane," Rozanov replies, eyebrows raised.
"So, the thing is," Cliff says, "I know that you guys have sex, like, all the time."
"Oh my God," Hollander groans, palm to forehead. "Marleau, what the fuck."
Rozanov, for his part, just nods and makes a go on gesture with his hand, which he then rests on Hollander's shoulder and rubs.
"And it just seems like...man, I don't know. Is it that good? Like, if I suck enough dicks am I just gonna--never want to eat pussy again, or--"
Hollander is melting.
"No, no, is not about that." Rozanov leans forward in his seat, soothes his hand over Hollander's broad back but otherwise pays him no real mind. "Shane and I are in love, Marley.”
"Well, yeah," Cliff says. "But you guys have...like, kind of an insane amount of sex? Even compared to the other married people I know? And Hayden Pike has, like, thirty kids."
"Four," Rozanov and Hollander say in tandem. "Two are twins."
"Creepy trick," Cliff says.
Hollander sighs and turns his face just far enough that Cliff can see how tightly squeezed his eyes are. He takes a fortifying breath. "Ilya and I talk during sex. We, um, talk about our days and hockey and like, the weather?"
"You make it sound so boring," Rozanov scoffs. "Yes, today was rainy, please fuck my ass. This is not how it goes."
"It's not not how it goes," Hollander mumbles, and then he and Rozanov are having one of their telepathic moments that Cliff has gotten pretty used to seeing on the ice and during team meetings. Hollander sits up and shuffles his hands over themselves on the table top. "Not today was rainy, please fuck me. But, y'know. I liked the smell of the rain, so please fuck me. That kind of thing."
"Mm." Rozanov raises a hand to touch Hollander's cheek. "Yes, this is more accurate."
“It’s how we check in with each other,” Hollander murmurs. “Make sure we’re…good. That we’re both doing okay, and we’re doing okay.”
"Oh," Cliff says, a kind of relief flooding him. "So you guys really are just. Insanely horny for each other."
Hollander squeezes his eyes shut again. "I really hate this conversation."
"Marley, leave my house," Rozanov says. "My husband and I need to talk about you in private. And by that I mean we need to laugh at you while we fuck."
"As long as you're thinking of me," Cliff says.
Rozanov snaps his fingers and points gleefully. To Hollander, he says, "Ah, see that, baby? All the cleverest people are bisexual, I'm always saying this."
-
Because Rozanov is a fucking animal, and because the infrastructure of the various Ottawa Centaurs' group chats are arranged according to the moon and the tides, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.
It's a fifty-second long video, it is clearly recorded on a cellphone braced on a tripod on a bedside table, and it consists entirely of Rozanov sucking Shane Hollander off like the secret to infinite life is trapped inside his husband's balls.
"Oh, fuck, Ilya," Hollander can be heard whimpering as he clutches at Rozanov's shoulders. "Fuck, fuck, that's so good. Oh my God, I'm gonna come. Gonna come gonna come--"
He comes, pretty clearly he comes, and then Rozanov presses his mouth to Hollander's belly and blows a raspberry directly into Hollander's navel.
"Heh," Hollander murmurs. His hands are still in Rozanov's hair. Gentle. "That was hot. Thank you."
"Oh," Rozanov says, eyebrows raised. "Then I will do again." He blows another raspberry.
"No!" Hollander laughs, cut off by the end of the video.
It's sent to the general "CENS CENS CENS" chat including all players. It's posted by Rozanov, no context on a practice day, and it stays there for ten minutes. In that time, there is a break in practice, the guys all pull out their phones, and Hollander goes careening across the ice to tackle Rozanov into the boards.
"HOW MANY TIMES," he howls, "HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO PRACTICE WITH YOUR PHONE IN YOUR POCKET."
"Fuck!" Rozanov says.
"DELETE IT, ILYA."
The two of them sit on the ice like a pair of kids as Wiebe takes a deep, steadying breath and skates over to them, where he gives them a talk that nobody else can hear.
"Pretty hot, to be honest," says Harris, who's...here. For some reason. Leaning over Troy's shoulder to watch the video a second time.
"Yeah," says Troy, just as the video pops out of existence and Rozy, across the ice, sheepishly slides his phone to Hollander, who chucks it over the boards.
"Yeah," says Cliff. “Pre-tty hot.”
Harris looks at him, raises his eyebrows, and says, “What is with this team.”