Archive of Our Own

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APARTMENT 1221

marly
bro
guys
you won’t fucking believe what i just heard

bood
!!!!!!!!!
???????

hazy
you gossipy bitch
what is it

marly
nawww i can’t tell you now
this is IN PERSON gossip boys

hazy
dude ur annoying as hell

bood
what’d you even hear?

marly
bro i just said i can’t tell you over text
i need to see your reactions irl

roz
marly wtf
i have been in the car for 10 minutes
hurry the fuck up we have practice
gossip can wait

hazy
you of all people saying that is CRAZY btw
bood reacted with 😂

marly
chill out roz
you sound like hollander rn

roz
do not insult me like this ever again marleau
be in the car in 2 mins or i leave without you

hazy
BORING!
roz reacted with 🖕

marly
chillllll i’m coming

bood
that’s what she said!

hazy
bood we’re walking to the rink tg after ur class right

bood
what class
i’m already there w luca

hazy
WHAT
SO WHY HAVE I BEEN WAITING OUTSIDE UR LECTURE HALL FOR THE PAST 20 MINS?

bood
bro idk
but i never have class on tuesday afternoons

hazy
fuck my stupid chungus life
@roz can u stop by campus and give me a ride too

marly
he says no

hazy
BRUHHHH

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Ilya Rozanov is a lot of things. He’s Russian, which means he can outdrink every single pathetic American and Canadian on the hockey team. He’s hot, obviously, so he can sleep with pretty much anyone he wants, whenever he wants. He’s pretty smart, he supposes, and he’s great at hockey, of course. He’s a whole bunch of things.

One thing he isn’t, however, is patient.

Which is exactly why he’s tempted to crash his car the second Cliff Marleau gets into it, grinning like a madman.

“You’d better start driving, Roz,” he says, nudging Ilya’s elbow with his own, before reaching forward to crank up the radio. “Thought you didn’t wanna be late for practice?”

Ilya rolls his eyes and sets the car in reverse, tires crunching against the gravel as he pulls away.

“I don’t want to be late because Wiebe will lose his shit if we are late again, and will probably bench us,” he reminds his friend, thinking back to a couple of weeks ago when they were forced to do ten sprints for every minute they were late, which was 17, thanks to Wyatt not being able to find his fucking helmet for ages. He hasn’t forgotten how Marly almost puked after that incident.

“Please,” Marly scoffs, shrugging his shoulders carelessly. “He loves us too much to actually bench anyone.”

Ilya furrows his eyebrows. “He benched Hazy for showing up four minutes late last month.”

“Yeah, ‘cause Hazy’s a fucking idiot and showed up to practice smelling like weed,” Marly replies, then reaches forward to crank the heat up another notch. “That’s an actual reason to be benched.”

Ilya merges onto the main road, snow banked high along the curb. He knows the route to the rink so well by now that he could do it with his eyes closed—or at least without really paying attention, which Marly knows, and is thus why he keeps on talking.

“So are you gonna fucking tell me or not?” Ilya says, growing frustrated.

“Nah, bro, I told you,” Marly says with a shake of his head. “I need all of you there, in person. It’s better that way.”

“Better for who?”

“For the drama, Roz,” Marly says, like it’s obvious. Like Ilya is the one being unreasonable. “You gotta give the story the telling it deserves.”

“Whatever the fuck that means,” Ilya snorts, hitting the indicator and taking the turn toward the rink maybe a little too fast, just because he can. He loves driving, especially fast—gets a real kick out of the risk of it all.

“I’m a terrific storyteller, Roz,” Marly goes on, thankfully ignoring the way Ilya drives through a stop sign. It’s one of the reasons Ilya continuously lets him get a free ride to practice—besides the obvious fact that they live together. He never comments on shit like that, unlike someone like goody two shoes Shane Hollander, who would surely be disapproving.

“Fine, keep your fucking secrets,” Ilya says. “But if this is about Dykstra hooking up with that Mexican girl, I already know, and that is not interesting gossip.”

“It’s not about Dykstra.”

“And if it is about my hookups, I also know this, and it is still not interesting.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but it’s not about you,” Marly says, but there’s something slightly off in the way he says it that makes Ilya wonder if he’s lying. His words come out too fast, and he sounds almost pleased, which makes the hairs on the back of Ilya’s neck stand up for no reason at all. He’s used to being gossiped about—spoken about in general, really—and he’s never cared, so he’s not sure why Marly’s words feel unsettling now.

When Ilya pulls into the parking lot of the rink, they’ve got 8 minutes to spare, which is really cutting it fine, but they’ll be okay, he thinks. The lot is mostly full already, familiar cars parked all around Ilya’s Mercedes. Ilya turns off the engine and Marly is out of the car before Ilya even manages to get his seatbelt off, bag slung over one shoulder and grinning at him over the roof of the car.

“C’mon Roz. Chop chop, or Wiebe’s gonna kill you,” he taunts, amused. “Or worse, Hollander’s gonna make you run extra drills.”

“I fucking hate you,” Ilya tells him wholeheartedly, and follows him inside.

He walks into the locker room, throws his bag down, and immediately starts to get ready for practice. It’s so familiar, like everything else about his life, which over the course of his three and a bit years at McGill University, has settled into an easy routine of class, hockey, parties, repeat. It isn’t boring—quite the opposite, actually—but it’s easy, easy to breeze through life being as well-liked on campus as he is. And it’s not like he intended to become like, popular, at university or whatever, but Ilya’s found that the secret to getting everyone to like you is to not care if they do or not, which is pretty much his entire mentality.

Most people at McGill know a lot about Ilya, not that he cares. They know he’s 21 years old, that he’s a hockey player—alternate captain on a team that’s ranked 7th in the country, which is respectable enough for him. He’s majoring in psychology, a degree he’s coasting through surprisingly easily, and has been breezing through life with a recently-discarded fake ID he’s never really needed. He leads a busy, social life on campus, then heads home every night to an apartment two blocks off campus that he shares with Marly, Bood, and Wyatt—the four of them crammed into a place that’s definitely too small to fit all of their hockey crap, but is home all the same.

Ilya’s also, by most accounts, a player—or fuckboy, whatever the hell people like to call it. He doesn’t care that people know this either, and doesn’t take offense to it. He likes to fuck lots of pretty girls, and doesn’t believe that’s something to be ashamed of.

He shrugs off his sneakers, socked feet cold against the tiled floor, and starts the familiar ritual of getting ready for hockey practice. It’s muscle memory by now, to the point where Ilya doesn’t even have to think about it anymore. Around him, the locker room is full of familiar faces, most of which are already fully dressed and ready to go. He notices Troy Barrett in the corner with one AirPod in, hidden from his best friend, Dallas Kent, who’s currently talking his ear off about something dumb, knowing Kent. Ilya huffs a quiet laugh of amusement to himself at the sight, and continues tying his skates.

Marly is loud, as per usual, and even taller in his skates, which aggravates Ilya to no end. He’s bouncing around excitedly, casting Ilya these little side glances that aren’t at all subtle, nor are they doing anything to help Ilya shake the weird feeling he has about Marly’s gossip. Why wouldn’t Marly just tell him in the car? They’re best friends—Ilya could’ve just faked a surprise reaction later.

Ilya decides to ignore him, which is a skill he’s mastered by now. Instead he shifts his gaze to the far left side of the locker room, almost out of habit, to where Hollander is lacing his skates with the kind of grim, focused precision he seems to bring to literally everything he fucking does. As if tying a simple knot requires that much attention. Beside him is J.J. Boiziau, saying something that Ilya can’t hear from where he’s sitting, and Hollander nods in response without looking up, mouth twitching ever so slightly, not quite reaching into a smile, before it flattens back out.

Shane Hollander is their captain. Of course he is. He’s so fucking obsessed with hockey, Ilya can hardly believe it. He probably irons his jersey before every practice.

Ilya has never really understood him, if he’s being honest. Three years on the same team and he still can’t figure out what goes on behind that permanently composed, serious face. Sometimes, he wonders if there’s anything behind it at all, besides hockey—wonders if Hollander really is exactly how he appears: overly disciplined, humorless, and allergic to fun. He is a good captain though, Ilya will give him that much, albeit grudgingly. He’s every hockey coach’s wet dream personified into one 6-foot tall, 21-year-old human that Ilya is convinced might secretly be a robot. He half expects Hollander to run out of battery one day at practice and just…shut down, eyes glowing red as his voice box slurs out an error message—but even that would probably be too expressive for Hollander.

In Ilya’s opinion, Hollander’s also an exhausting person to be around, in a way. Being around Hollander is a constant reminder of every mistake you make, communicated via the specific type of silence he gets whenever he disapproves of something. He doesn’t even have to say anything, just look at you and narrow his eyes, like he’s almost baffled by your actions, which always makes Ilya want to do something even more reckless just to piss him off.

Hollander’s got all these freckles too, not that Ilya’s looking. They make his face look uncharacteristically boyish, he now realizes, like a cute baby animal. Ilya’s face scrunches in disgust at the thought, and he shakes his head at himself, as if that’ll shake the image away.

Luckily, Ilya doesn’t have to think about it for much longer, because Coach Wiebe is clapping his hands and barking out “Let’s go, let’s go!”, which gets everyone moving swiftly to the ice. Ilya too grabs his stick, and follows the rest of them out.

Like everything else in Ilya’s life, practice goes the same way it almost does. Wiebe and Hollander have them doing the same drills that are slowly but surely becoming boring but annoyingly, work, and soon enough, all of them are sweaty and panting on the ice. Ilya likes hockey practice an embarrassing amount, more than he’d ever admit to anyone. He loves the way his head goes (mostly) quiet when he skates, the way everything narrows down to just the puck. It’s pretty much the only time his brain ever goes fully quiet, not plagued by the horrid thoughts of his family—his alive relatives more haunting than his dead ones.

Hollander acts as if it does the same for him, except Hollander’s version of his brain relaxing looks much more rigid and stressful than Ilya’s does. He looks so…grimly focused, and it’s kind of admirable but mostly just deeply unsettling. Hollander won’t do anything unless he’s doing it perfectly, especially Wiebe’s drills. When he corrects a freshman’s technique, he does so in maybe five words, flat and clipped, already skating away before the other guy has finished nodding in understanding.

At some point in his third or fourth shooting drill, Ilya wins the faceoff against Troy so easily that he receives an angry insult of curses in return before striking the puck right into the goal, past Wyatt, whose jaw drops open in shock at how fast it flew by. Ilya grins as he skates away to the back of the line, passing Hollander as he does so.

“Show-off,” Hollander mutters under his breath, skating past. He doesn’t even sound the slightest bit out of breath, which is annoying. Apparently normal human cardiovascular limits don’t apply to him.

“Don’t be mad that you cannot do this, Hollander,” Ilya chirps back.

Hollander doesn’t answer that—doesn’t even glance over, actually. He just gets into position, jaw set, brown eyes narrowed with complete focus. It’s nothing new though, this lack of reaction. Hollander doesn’t chirp back, ever, which Ilya knows because he’s been desperately trying to get a reaction out of him since freshman year and has only succeeded maybe four times. It’s not even fun when Hollander does respond, because his chirps are so dry and awful that it makes Ilya feel less accomplished than if he’d just been ignored.

Hollander’s indifference to him used to really bother Ilya, for whatever reason. These days, however, it’s just background noise to him. Mostly.

They run the drill a few more times, and Hollander wins every faceoff, no matter who he goes against. Of course he does.

When they finally have a water break, Ilya drifts over to the bench with the rest of the team, like always. Hollander does too, but he always seems to hang around at the end of the bench, like he’s trying to stay unnoticed by the rest of the team. He avoids conversation unless it’s with J.J. or Hayden Pike—who currently isn’t here, thanks to an injury Ilya can’t even pretend to care about—and even with them, his friends, he barely says 10 words. Today, he says one thing to Luca Haas, a Swiss freshman who’s recently joined the team, and the kid lights up like he’s just been acknowledged by the fucking King of England, and Hollander’s mouth does that weird thing where it looks like it wants to smile but can’t quite manage it.

But that’s the full extent of Hollander’s social battery, apparently.

The water break ends with Wiebe yelling about their next drill, and everyone takes a while to get going again—except Hollander, of course, who’s at center ice within about 5 seconds. They run the drill a hundred fucking times, it feels like, and people are starting to groan with annoyance, the way everyone starts to once they get tired and irritable.

“Let’s go again,” Hollander mutters, flat and instructional. God, he sounds like he’s talking to a fucking whiteboard.

Unsurprisingly, his words don’t land. No one really listens, and Ilya can immediately see the way Hollander’s body tenses up at the lack of compliance. Ilya considers it for a moment, but ultimately remembers his role on the team, and decides to intervene.

“Okay, dipshits!” he calls out, loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. “We’re running the fucking drill again. I wanna eat dinner before ten tonight, so let’s go.”

And it works, of course. The team resets, a couple of them chuckling at his words. Ilya moves too, catching sight of Hollander in the corner of his eye. He’s not glaring, not annoyed, exactly—Hollander’s face isn’t expressive enough for him to tell—but he’s gone very still. His jaw is tight, and his gaze flicks from the team doing the drill, to Ilya, and then away again. It’s quick, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t, and then it’s gone.

Ilya furrows his eyebrows in confusion, wondering what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. He just gets back into position, and they run the drill again and again and again, until Ilya thinks his feet might fucking fall off—and then practice is finally over.

As always, the locker room after practice is loud with chatter as the team begins to peel off the layers of their hockey gear. Most of the freshmen players shower fast and bolt, eager to prove that they’re dedicated whilst simultaneously not trying too hard to be liked. The upperclassmen, on the other hand, take their sweet time, always blasting music too loud until a member of staff at the rink yells at them to turn it down.

Hollander is one of the first people out, same as always—showered, dressed, and leaving with his hair still damp. He’s saying something low to J.J. on his way toward the door, which makes his friend laugh out loud. Hollander smiles at that, warmer than he ever looks, and then the door swings shut.

With only them and a couple freshmen gone, pretty much everyone else is still in the locker room. Ilya is surrounded by Bood and Wyatt, the former borderline ranting about how much he likes this girl from his economics class, Cassie or something, while Wyatt half-listens as he unlaces his skates. Ilya averts his gaze, only to find Dallas Kent still shirtless, flexing at his own reflection at the end of the locker door. Ilya grimaces and turns away again.

The room is loud, as per usual, and Ilya has a small half-smile on his face until Marly—who’s practically been vibrating all practice—finally, finally cracks.

“Okay, okay,” he says, voice loud enough to cut through the noise. “Okay, now I can say it.”

“Fucking finally,” Wyatt says, giving up on his skates for now. “Jesus Christ, Marly. It’s been like, what, three hours?”

“Well, timing is everything,” Marly replies with a grin.

“What the fuck are you guys yelling about?” Troy grumbles, and Ilya resists the urge to roll his eyes.

Marly briefly glances toward the door, like he’s worried someone who left is about to materialize at any moment—Hollander, perhaps, who certainly wouldn’t approve of Marly’s gossiping. Most other people in the room have their attention on him now, looking at him with impatient interest, wondering what Cliff Marleau of all people could possibly have to announce.

“Okay, so, I was in the library earlier—” Marly starts.

“The library?” Bood interrupts with a scoff. “You can read, Marly? Congrats!”

“Fuck off,” Marly shoots back.

“Just let him tell his fucking story so we can all leave,” Ilya says, shutting the both of them up. The two of them give in a strange look for this, because everyone knows Ilya is always overly eager to hear locker room gossip. Truthfully, Ilya isn’t really in the mood today, though he doesn’t know why. His moods are always like this, though, up and down and back up again without explanation. He’s gotten better at ignoring it over the years, but today he can’t seem to shake it.

Marly nods, then clears his throat loudly. “As I was saying,” he starts, giving Bood a pointed look, “I was in the library, and I overheard some people talking— fucking whispering about something, and then I got closer and I realized it was Pike and his girlfriend.”

“Ugh,” Ilya groans loudly. “I thought you said this was interesting gossip.”

Wyatt laughs, and Marly shoots Ilya a glare.

“The gossip isn’t about Pike, you fucking donkey,” he says frustratedly. “Now, let me continue— uhh, where was I?” He frowns, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion, before his expression lights up again. “Oh yeah! Right, so, Pike and Jackie are talking, and I wasn’t even paying attention at first, but then Pike says Hollander’s name and I just have to pay attention, y’know, because when has that guy ever been the subject of anything remotely interesting—”

“Hollander?” Wyatt says, chewing at his bottom lip. “You have gossip about Cap?”

“Uh-huh,” Marly says with a smug smile. He takes a breath, genuinely milking every last second of attention, like he’s about to announce a fucking NHL draft or something. “Jackie was saying she felt bad for him, because apparently…Hollander’s got a crush on someone. Has for a while now.”

The room goes weirdly quiet.

“Is that it?” Bood says, sounding almost offended at how boring that is. Just as boring as Hollander, Ilya thinks to himself. “That’s the big reveal? Everyone likes someone, Marly, that’s not—”

“A crush?” Troy scoffs, joining the conversation now. “What are we, twelve?”

Marly sighs, clapping his hands together once. “That’s not the fucking gossip, Barrett. The gossip is who Hollander likes.”

He turns to look at Ilya then, who’s still sitting there, arms loosely crossed as he half-listens to the conversation. His stomach goes still at the weight of Marly’s gaze on him.

“You,” Marly grins. “It’s fucking you, Roz.”

For what feels like an hour but is only really a second, nobody says anything. Ilya can hear the collective inhale of everyone in the room, before the room explodes into a collection of laughter and gasps and exclamations.

“No fucking way,” Carmichael says, and then he’s cackling, doubled over with one hand braced against the bench. “No way. Hollander? Cap has the hots for Roz?”

“That’s what I said,” Marly nods, looking thrilled with himself.

“Wait, hold on—” Wyatt says, looking confused and simultaneously ignoring how Carmichael won’t stop laughing. “Since when? Is this a new thing, or—”

“Jackie made it sound like it’s been going on a while,” Marly shrugs. “Like, it’s not super new.”

“God, this is funny as fuck,” Carmichael wheezes, doubling over again. “Dude, uptight Hollander pining after someone like Roz…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ilya frowns, and his voice comes out steadier than he expected, given that something underneath his ribs currently feels like it’s been dropped down a flight of stairs. 

Carmichael shrugs. “Hollander is boring as fuck and you’re not, man,” he explains, which makes Ilya’s eyebrows furrow unwillingly. Carmichael’s technically right, Hollander is dreadfully boring, but there’s something about the way he says it that doesn’t sit right with Ilya. Hollander’s boringness isn’t necessarily an insult, it’s just a matter of fact.

And then Luca Haas finally speaks up: “Did they say anything else?” he asks, nervous, like he’s afraid to speak. “Pike or his girlfriend?”

Marly shrugs. “I remember Pike wasn’t a fan of it,” he explains, which makes Ilya roll his eyes. Of course—Hayden Pike has never liked him, and Ilya returns the sentiment for their captain’s best friend. “And…” Marly goes on, “then Jackie said she feels bad for him. ‘Cause it’s not exactly easy to play hockey and be gay, y’know? It must be hard, being gay, captain, and having a thing for—” he gestures vaguely at Ilya. “—you know.” 

Once he says that, the atmosphere in the room shifts somewhat. The gossip no longer feels like gossip, doesn’t really seem funny anymore.

But then, further down the room, Dallas Kent laughs. It’s a short, ugly sound, entirely without humor.

“Fuck, of course he does,” Kent says, not bothering to lower his voice. “The guy’s already weird enough, and now he’s gotta make it weird for the rest of us too with his fucking gay crush on Rozanov.”

“Shut up, Dallas,” Wyatt says flatly as Troy snorts under his breath.

“I’m just saying, maybe don’t broadcast it in the locker room,” Kent grimaces, looking disgusted. “Some of us gotta shower next to the guy.”

Luca adjusts the towel around his waist and runs a hand through his damp, blond hair. He’s clearly still unsure if he’s allowed to share his opinions in the team yet, because when he speaks again, it’s to nobody in particular. “I mean— I don’t think it’s that weird. Or— it’s not weird at all, actually.”

It’s such an earnest yet badly timed thing to say while some of their teammates are still amused, that a few people laugh at that too. Luca instantly goes red and looks like he regrets opening his mouth at all. Ilya thinks to himself that the kid isn’t wrong, and is annoyed that he even cares about any of this.

Ilya isn’t really listening anymore, if he’s honest. The conversation keeps going, with people asking about Hollander and Ilya—lots of weird, little side comments about Hollander being gay being thrown around. LaPointe wonders aloud about whether this means Hollander’s been checking Roz out at practice this whole time, which makes him—and some others—laugh all over again. Ilya doesn’t.

Instead, he thinks about Hollander’s stern, freckled face frowning at him during face-off practices today, and wonders to himself if maybe Marly misheard Pike and Jackie. Yes, people develop weird crushes on all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons, but Ilya isn’t sure he can believe this. He doesn’t want to agree with some of his less friendly teammates about Hollander being too much of a fucking robot to develop feelings for anyone, but a part of him has always kind of thought so. Hollander’s just so…serious, so much so that when he quietly came out as gay about a year ago, Ilya wondered how he’d figured that out. Hollander didn’t seem like the person to have romantic—or, god forbid, sexual—thoughts about anyone. Either way, it’s none of Ilya’s business. He’s not even into guys, but either way, this is exactly like when a girl likes him and he isn’t interested…he’ll just ignore it and hope that they move on.

So Ilya doesn’t understand, exactly, why his stomach is churning and he feels so sick. Something hot sits in the pit of his gut—amusement, or maybe disgust, which he hopes it’s not, but he doesn’t know what his subconscious might think. He almost feels like he’s been caught, even though he has no reason to, because he hasn’t done anything. Either way, Ilya feels deeply bothered, especially by the way most of his teammates are still quietly laughing with each other about this whole thing.

He wonders, distantly, whether this makes him a bad person. He’s not homophobic, or, he didn’t think he was—but now there’s a strange sensation of unsettlement churning in his gut, something ugly that he doesn’t want to look at directly because he’s scared to discover something bad about himself. Ilya has never thought of himself as the kind of guy who’d get weird about this. He’s slept in the same room as Hollander a dozen times, showered next to him more times than he can count, and he’s never once flinched at anything regarding Hollander being gay—not like guys like Kent, who can’t seem to handle it. So it can’t be that, he can’t be homophobic. He better not be.

There is no clear explanation for the feeling he’s got, just a weird, looping static under his skin that refuses to go away.

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For the most part, Ilya forgets about the whole thing. Class, hockey, parties, and hookups continue as normal, his days blurring together along with his usual, familiar rhythm of life. He goes to his classes, mostly—and he goes to practice, always. He goes out on the weekends and often on weeknights too, and every once in a while his mind wanders back to the locker room, and how his stomach has dropped, but that’s just background noise. At least, he’s been ignoring it like it is.

Last week, his ethics professor announced that she was going on maternity leave. For the remainder of the semester, Ethics A and B would be merging into a single lecture, taught by whichever unfortunate professor is left to deal with double the amount of kids than they signed up for. Ilya isn’t bothered by it—doesn’t care for ethics and is comfortably passing the class anyway, which a change in professor (hopefully) won’t affect.

So, he now finds himself standing in the doorway of a significantly fuller lecture hall than he’s used to, scanning the rows for somewhere to sit. It’s definitely going to fill up more the closer it gets to the lecture actually starting, but by now it’s already full enough that the back, where Ilya usually likes to situate himself in lecture, is completely full of unfamiliar faces from Section B. Mildly annoyed by this, Ilya does a slow scan of the room with his eyes, weighing his odds of finding an empty seat somewhere as far near the back as he can get, so it’s less obvious—and therefore less embarrassing—that he’s sitting alone.

When his gaze reaches the middle of the room, maybe six rows back, Ilya finds none other than J.J. Boiziau, and next to him, Shane Hollander. Hollander’s already sitting down, his backpack slung over the empty seat next to him like he’s saving it for someone, though certainly not for Ilya, judging by the visible flicker of surprise that crosses over his face when Ilya starts to make his way over to them.

In a way, he gets it, because Ilya’s not exactly close with either of them. J.J., he supposes, he gets along with well—as well as you should with anyone you’ve spent almost every day with for the past three years. J.J.’s fun, too, always a good laugh at practice and a fellow lover of fast food. Hollander, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. Ilya’s fairly certain it’s not possible to be close with Hollander, just like it’s impossible to be close with a brick wall. Or a mannequin. They’ve spent three years on the same hockey team, and Ilya’s chirps and teasing—any attempts at conversation, really—have only ever been returned with flat non-reactions.

Still, familiar faces are better than sitting alone and looking like a loser, so Ilya keeps going until he reaches them.

“Is this seat taken?” he asks, gesturing down at the seat where Hollander’s backpack rests. Ilya glances at Hollander and catches his expression—the briefest widening of eyes, there and gone in less than a second, quickly smoothed back into the same composed nothing he usually wears. If Ilya hadn’t been looking at him directly, he’d have missed it, and only seen Hollander’s short nod as he removes his bag without making eye contact.

Ilya drops down into the seat, slinging his backpack under it, and only then does he remember Marly’s words from two weeks ago—Hollander, and his alleged crush on Ilya. The gossip that has been sitting in the back of Ilya’s mind and pointedly ignored since that day in the locker room.

He looks at Hollander again, but the widening of his eyes seems to be his whole reaction to Ilya’s presence. There’s no lingering stare, no fluster, absolutely nothing that would suggest he’s sitting next to his supposed crush. If anything, Hollander looks completely unbothered. Maybe a tad surprised, like you’d be if you saw a squirrel run across the quad, but that’s all. He goes back to unzipping his backpack, pulling out, weirdly, an actual physical notebook and a couple of pens.

His lack of reaction makes something in Ilya’s chest twist, somewhat uncomfortably. Marly must’ve been wrong then, because no one with a crush acts like that—bored and nonchalant about the object of their alleged affection sitting only six inches away. Ilya’s had people crush on him before, plenty of people (though not that he’s counting), and it’s never looked like this. Usually, there’s a lot of fidgeting and anxious eye contact, as well as laughing too hard at things that aren’t funny while they run their hand up Ilya’s arm and say things like you’re so funny, Ilya, oh my god!

People with crushes on Ilya usually don’t stay silent and calmly organize their pens by color on the desk in front of them, which makes Ilya pretty much 100% sure than Marly or Jackie or whoever else was wrong. Maybe they were talking about someone else, and Ilya’s name got tangled in the conversation somehow, you know, with gossip being gossip and changing slightly the more people repeat it.

It’s the only explanation, really, because it isn’t like Ilya has had any reason to think otherwise, either. He sees Hollander literally every single day at practice, and the guy is exactly the same as he’s always been. He’s focused. Stern. Completely absorbed in hockey and his captain duties and absolutely nothing else—to the point where Ilya’s stopped thinking about the gossip at all. If anything, it’s made him go back to his original theory, namely that Shane Hollander might actually be physically incapable of developing feelings for anyone, ever. Hockey seems to be the only love of his life.

“Rozanov,” J.J. says, leaning forward past Hollander to grin at him, considerably warmer than the other greeting Ilya just got. “Didn’t peg you for an ethics guy.”

“Is a part of my English language requirement,” Ilya says, settling back into his seat. “Wasn’t my choice.”

“Tragic,” J.J. replies, without any sympathy. "You planning on taking notes?" he asks then, gesturing to Ilya’s bare desk.

“Who do you think I am?” Ilya says, which makes J.J. laugh, loud enough that a couple of heads in the row ahead turn briefly to look. He’s always been one of the more likable guys on the team, Ilya thinks to himself, a genuinely warm guy that doesn’t care what other people think of him. It confuses him slightly, that J.J. and Hollander are so close, since they’re the complete opposite in that sense—but perhaps that’s why they work so well. Who knows.

Speaking of Hollander, he hasn’t said a single word since Ilya sat down. His notebook is open on a fresh page, and he’s sitting slightly angled away from Ilya, and he wonders if it’s purposeful.

“You good, Hollander?” Ilya asks, mostly because the silence is starting to feel targeted, like it’s all his fault. Also, Ilya’s never been able to resist poking at his captain whenever the opportunity arises.

“Fine,” Hollander says, without looking up from his notebook.

“You are very chatty today,” Ilya says sarcastically.

“We’re in class.”

“It hasn’t started yet.”

Hollander looks up at that, looking not exactly annoyed, but more like he’s contemplating if this conversation is worth his precious energy. He huffs frustratedly. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Rozanov.”

“I don’t know, anything,” Ilya tells him. “You could ask me how I am doing. Is usually something normal people say to each other.”

Hollander glares at him.

“How are you doing.”

“Wow. So enthusiastic.”

Hollander exhales sharply through his nose—not quite a sigh—and turns back to his notebook without further comment. After all these years, it’s something Ilya’s chosen to interpret as a kind of victory, that he’s successfully pissed off his captain to the point of being ignored. Hollander’s eyebrows have furrowed together like he’s irritated by the exchange, which isn’t surprising, because he seems irritated by most things Ilya says to him, like Ilya is an annoying mosquito that won’t stop buzzing around his face. Still, he did engage. He bit back, dry and clipped as always, which is more than most people manage against Hollander’s stone wall—which Ilya is usually quite smug about.

Today, however, being shunned so soon feels a little weird. Ilya feels vaguely embarrassed, like he’s a little kid trying too hard to get a laugh out of an older, cooler teenager. It’s a stupid thing to feel, obviously, given that Ilya doesn’t actually care what Hollander thinks of him. He just likes winning, and today, he feels like he’s lost.

The lecture hall continues to fill in around them, the ambient hum of chatter growing louder before the professor—young, probably a PhD student wanting some extra cash—clears his throat and starts fumbling through his notes. Ilya settles into his seat properly, preparing to do what he usually does in lectures, which is absolutely nothing. He just sits there, chin propped up by his hand, half-listening and absorbing only what he thinks might be relevant. It’s an unconventional method, he’s aware, but it’s worked for him so far, so.

Beside him, Hollander starts writing almost immediately. His pen glides across the page in smooth, unhurried strokes. Ilya notices it out of the corner of his eyes without really meaning to, and finds that Hollander’s handwriting is annoyingly beautiful. He writes in actual cursive, possessing penmanship that looks like it belongs to somebody’s grandmother more than a hockey player. It should look stupid, but for some reason, it suits him perfectly. Ilya should’ve expected it, really.

Hollander’s brows knit together slightly as he writes, with a kind of fierce focus. His nose scrunches too, crinkling the freckles that mar his cheeks. It makes Ilya notice something he’s never paid attention to before—the sheer number of freckles scattered across his face, much more than Ilya remembers ever seeing on him, more than seems statistically possible for one person to have—crowding across the bridge of his nose and high on his cheekbones, and darker where they overlap. Ilya wasn’t aware Hollander took school this seriously either, which he feels like he maybe should’ve known after three years of such close proximity. Yet, it’s just another thing he’s never bothered to notice all this time.

The lecture drones on about something or other—boring, mindless content that Ilya has only vaguely absorbed at this point in the course. He should definitely be listening properly, but he isn’t. Instead, he finds his attention yet again snagging on the movement of Hollander’s pen, filling up page after page with dense, orderly notes while Ilya’s own notebook remains in his backpack—or at home, wherever he left it last.

Maybe he can get notes off J.J. later. J.J.’s handwriting is objectively worse, but it’ll probably be legible, and J.J. is the kind of guy who’ll just hand them over without making it a whole thing.

A small, distant part of him wonders if Hollander would. He’s sitting right there, after all, with his perfect notes that are detailed enough to recite the entire lecture from the beginning.

Ilya dismisses the thought almost as soon as it arrives, because Hollander would probably just tell him to take his own notes or something. He’d use the same tone he always does—flat, unimpressed, probably throwing in something about personal responsibility for good measure. Goody two shoes Shane Hollander, who’s never missed an optional morning skate in his entire life, is not going to hand over his meticulously organized cursive notes to Ilya Rozanov out of the kindness of his heart. And it’s not like he’d want to, anyway—regardless of whether he has a crush on Ilya, which, again, he clearly doesn’t, given his complete indifference.

Ilya is about to ask J.J. for his notes when a girl in the row ahead of them turns around. The first thing that Ilya notices is her beauty—she’s very pretty, with long, dark hair pulled into a loose braid over one shoulder. She has a nice smile, too. Ilya thinks he’s definitely seen her around before, maybe in his stats class last semester, though he can’t say for certain.

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all as she leans her arm along the back of her chair to face him properly. “You’re Ilya Rozanov, right?”

“Guilty,” Ilya replies, straightening in his seat.

“Thought so,” she says, her smile widening. “I’ve seen you play. You’re really good.”

“I know,” he says, and grins when she laughs, delighted with the attention.

They talk for a minute or two, not about anything substantial. It doesn’t require any effort on his part, mostly just eye contact and the right amount of teasing, all while the professor continues to drone on at the front of the room. This girl has a nice laugh, and Ilya wonders that he wouldn’t mind seeing more of her, later, not in an academic environment.

“Are you going to the Zeta Phi thing tonight?” she asks eventually, dropping her voice slightly, like it’s some sort of secret—despite the fact that half the university is probably attending.

Ilya considers it for a second. Bood had mentioned it a couple days ago, but to be completely honest, he’d forgotten all about it until now. He shrugs, easy and noncommittal. “Maybe,” he says with a smile.

It’s apparently the right answer, or at least a good enough one, because the girl giggles and bites back another smile. She flirtily says something about hoping to see him there, before she turns back around to face the front.

The second she’s fully turned away, J.J. leans forward across Hollander’s lap, grinning wide.

“We all know you’re gonna be there,” he whisper-yells, loud enough that Ilya has to shush him with a laugh, glancing over to make sure she hasn’t overheard.

“Obviously,” he says, not bothering to deny it. “You know I wouldn’t miss a party, Boiziau.”

J.J. laughs again, shaking his head, then nudges Hollander’s arm with his elbow. “You should come too, man.”

Hollander doesn’t bother looking up from his notebook. “No thanks.”

“Come on, capitaine,” J.J. complains. “You never come to anything.”

“We have practice tomorrow,” Hollander says, finally looking up—first at J.J. and then, for a beat longer than necessary, at Ilya. As he does so, something unreadable flickers behind his eyes, before he looks back down at his notebook and adds, flatly: “You guys should probably remember that.”

“Boo,” J.J. says, unbothered by the reminder. “You’re no fun.”

“Whatever, man.”

Ilya, for god knows what reasons, finds himself unwilling to let it go quite as easily. He turns slightly in his seat, arranging his face into the most exaggerated, pleading expression he can manage. He pulls out all the stops, widening his eyes and even pouting—the full performance.

“Come on, Hollander,” he pleads. “I will even promise not to drink too much…but only if you come.”

“Yeah, right,” Hollander scoffs.

“I’m serious,” Ilya insists.

“No,” Hollander says again, though there’s something faintly, almost amused tugging at the corner of his mouth, like he’s trying to fight it.

Ilya holds out his pinky finger then, entirely undeterred. He waggles it slightly in the space between them. “Pinky promise?”

Hollander stares at it for a solid three or four seconds, like Ilya’s making him a ridiculous offering, which he supposes he kind of is. Ilya is fully expecting him to just turn back to his notes and ignore the whole thing, when—with a long sigh and an exaggerated eyeroll—Hollander hooks his pinky finger around Ilya’s.

It’s such a small thing, so small that it shouldn’t feel like anything at all. And yet, something small tugs in Ilya’s chest, right as he watches the corner of Hollander’s mouth actually curve now, into something that might be called a smile, if you’re being generous. It only lasts half a second, just like earlier when his eyes widened, but it feels realer this time.

“There,” Hollander mutters, already retracting his hand, looking vaguely disgusted. “Happy?

“Delighted,” Ilya says, and means it.

“Let’s fucking go, cap!” J.J. grins, happiness written all over his face. “Your first party of the semester, baby, let’s go—”

“J.J.,” Hollander snaps, mortified, hunching slightly like he’s trying to physically shrink away from the attention. “Shut up, bro.”

“I’m just saying, this is a big moment for me.”

“It’s one party.”

“Not to me, Shane.”

“Fuck off,” Hollander mutters, though there’s no real heat in it, just quiet, embarrased fondness.

The professor thankfully wraps up the lecture a few minutes later, dismissing them with a reminder about next week’s reading that realistically, no one’s gonna do. The lecture hall grows loud with the rustle of everyone starting to pack up. Ilya slings his backpack over one shoulder, and falls into step with the rest of the crowd as they head toward the exit. He splits off from J.J. and Hollander at the aisle, heading toward the front doors while they head toward the library—which is probably Hollander’s favorite place, he thinks, besides the rink of course.

“See you tonight, Boiziau,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t miss it!” J.J. calls back, grinning.

Ilya pauses, then glances back toward them.

“Looking forward to seeing you there, Hollander,” Ilya says, unable to resist one last push.

Hollander rolls his eyes, though he doesn’t look annoyed, not really.

“Okay, Rozanov,” he says, and turns to go. Ilya watches him leave, then begins to make his way home, too.

The rest of his afternoon passes by unhurriedly. Ilya gets back to apartment 1221 a little after two p.m., and tosses his bag by the door where it’ll be ignored until Sunday at the earliest. He walks into the main room, finding Wyatt on the couch with a controller in hand, Mario Kart paused mid-race on the TV.

“Oh, it’s you,” Wyatt says, then tosses the second controller in Ilya’s direction. He snatches it out of the air with a scowl.

“Try not to sound too happy to see me, Hazy,” he remarks, and sits down. Wyatt says nothing, just laughs at his expense. Ilya chooses Bowser, as always, while Wyatt picks Wario (which is a weird fucking choice, but Wyatt’s kind of a weird guy, after all). They play longer than they probably should—one race turning into another, then into a full Grand Prix, which Ilya wins, obviously. He blue-shells Wyatt right on the last lap of Rainbow Road, before getting up and celebrating probably more than a 21-year-old college student should be doing after winning a game of Mario Kart.

“You’re the worst fucking person I know,” Wyatt tells him flatly, watching the replay of his kart spiral off the track.

“I think you mean I am the best,” Ilya counters. “Especially at Mario Kart,” he adds, setting his controller down.

Wyatt rolls his eyes, but doesn’t correct him.

Marly ends up getting back to the apartment around five, loud as always and letting the door slam shut behind him. Ilya, meanwhile, is hungry and has been scrolling through mukbangs on his phone for the past hour rather than getting up and making food. He sends Marly back out for McDonald’s no more than five minutes after he gets home, on the grounds that Marly still owes him gas money from two weeks ago and that getting Ilya a McChicken will be his way of paying him back.

“I’d rather just give you the money,” Marly complains, even as he’s grabbing his keys again.

“Don’t forget my McFlurry!” Ilya calls back.

“Fuck you and your McFlurry,” Marly shoots back, but he goes anyway, and comes back later with three big bags of fries, burgers, as well as Ilya’s McFlurry. Bood is also home by then, so the four of them eat crowded around the coffee table while Wyatt cracks open the first round of beers for pregaming.

They sit there for an hour or so, eating their food and drinking beer after beer, until it starts to get dark outside and the four of them collectively decide they should probably start getting ready to go. Tipsy, Ilya showers and gets dressed, going through the motions without really following them, guided by the sound of Bad Bunny echoing around the apartment. He’s positively buzzing by the time they’re finally pulling on jackets and heading out the door toward the frat.

═══════

The party passes by in more of a blur than Ilya’s used to—time moving strangely quickly once the pregame tipsiness morphs into Ilya actually being drunk. This was also helped (or not, Ilya isn’t sure yet) by the joint Dallas Kent offered him like five minutes after he walked through the door, and although Ilya can’t stand Kent—he’s loud and mean and laughs at things that aren’t funny and are instead just plain offensive, just like he did in the locker room two weeks ago—he still accepts. By the time he’s had two hits, the whole party has gone soft and fuzzy around the edges, and the music is thumping so hard in his ears that he feels like his whole head is vibrating.

Ilya loses his roommates somewhere around then. Luckily, he isn’t alone for too long because the girl from the lecture earlier, the one who invited him, finds him. Or, Ilya finds her—he doesn’t know, the details have gone a little slippery—but either way she ends up on his lap on one of the frat’s ratty couches, legs thrown over his while her fingers thread lazily through his curls. She leans close to his ear to say something that he doesn’t quite catch over the music, something about how good he looks tonight, maybe, though he can’t be sure. He hums back at her anyway, noncommittal, and she seems satisfied enough with that because she starts pressing kisses to his jaw and down the side of his neck, her lips warm against his skin as she mumbles her name to him: Shannon Hollis.

Hm.

And Shannon’s great, she really is. She’s stunning, and is clearly into Ilya, but he can’t seem to focus on that because some small, stubborn part of his brain won’t allow him to stop gazing around the room—scanning faces and subconsciously taking note of who’s here and who isn’t. He notices J.J. near the kitchen doorway, a red Solo cup in hand as he laughs at something alongside Hayden Pike. There’s a girl with them too, dark hair, pretty like a doll, who Ilya assumes is Jackie, Pike’s girlfriend.

He doesn’t see Hollander anywhere.

Which is fine, obviously. It’s whatever. Hollander never comes to parties, and it’s not like Ilya’s been counting on him actually showing up or anything, pinky promises aside. Still, his eyes do another lap of the room anyway, before he abruptly decides that he needs another drink.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells Shannon, easing her off of his lap carefully. When she pouts a little, he says, “Do you want anything?”, and she nods, handing him her cup.

It feels much louder in the kitchen, somehow, or maybe Ilya just felt detached from the party in the living room with Shannon. He pushes through the crowd of people doing shots at the kitchen island, spotting J.J. again along the way, still with Pike and Jackie beside him.

“Rozanov!” J.J. says, brightening immediately, raising his cup in what seems to be an attempt at a salute. “There you are.”

“Here I am,” Ilya says, grabbing a bottle of vodka off the counter and filling most of his cup with it.

Pike, beside J.J., appears much less enthusiastic. He only gives Ilya a short nod, which is understandable—they’ve never really gotten along. Ever since freshman year, the two have done nothing but clash, butting heads over the dumbest things. Admittedly, most of it stems from the fact that Pike is Hollander’s best friend and is fiercely protective over him for whatever reason—Hollander is a grown adult and can take care of himself for god’s sake—and Ilya loves to irritate their hockey captain more than anything.

“Have you seen Shane?” J.J. asks, leaning slightly closer to Ilya so he can be heard over the music. “He isn’t answering any of my texts.”

“Nah,” Ilya replies, shrugging, splashing a little more vodka into the cup than he probably needs. “Have not seen him all night.”

J.J. groans theatrically. “Of course he isn’t here. I should’ve known, but that fucking pinky promise lowkey convinced me.”

“Pinky promises mean nothing to Hollander, apparently,” Ilya says with a smirk, tipping his head back to chug half of his drink in one go. Then, without really thinking, he adds, “He is too boring to leave his room on a Thursday, probably.”

He truly, wholeheartedly means it as a joke, but it doesn’t land. J.J.’s face drops, and he looks both disappointed and offended at once. A flicker of a frown crosses his face before he looks away. Meanwhile, Pike doesn’t bother to hide his reaction at all.

“Shut the fuck up, Rozanov,” Pike says sharply.

“Whoa,” Ilya retorts, holding his hands up as he feigns innocence, though he does feel quite guilty. “It was a joke.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t funny,” Pike mutters.

Jackie rubs Pike’s arm, then shyly tucks a dark strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sure he’ll swing by later,” she says, mostly to her boyfriend and J.J., though her eyes do flick toward Ilya too, for the briefest of seconds. “He said he was going to, right?”

“I dunno,” J.J. says with a sigh, though his mood seems to improve at her attempt to cheer him up anyway. “Maybe.”

He says this, though none of them look particularly hopeful. Ilya drains the rest of his cup, taking the silence as the unspoken understanding between the four of them that, no, Hollander isn’t coming. The pinky promise from earlier was clearly just a fluke, a way for Hollander to get out of the conversation easily, clearly holding less weight for him than it does for Ilya. He doesn’t want to sound like a fucking child, but c’mon—you don’t break pinky promises.

Ilya resists the urge to sigh and pours himself another drink, then grabs a second one for Shannon while he’s at it. On his way out of the kitchen, he accepts two shots lined up on the counter, and drinks them back to back, the burn of the liquor barely registering anymore as he heads back to the couch, where Shannon is exactly where he left her. She beams as Ilya hands her the drink, curling back into his lap while her mouth finds his ear again between sips.

Time starts to get away from Ilya again after that. He drinks more and more—another shot here, half a beer there…whatever he can get his hands on, really. Shannon’s fingers are curled at the back of his neck, and they feel nice and warm against his skin. At some point, though he isn’t entirely sure when, she pulls back slightly, a small smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

“You wanna get out of here?” she asks, and she’s so close that Ilya can feel the words more than hear them, lips grazing softly over his ear. Her hand trails down his chest. “My place is like, two minutes away from here.”

And Ilya does—or, at least he did, earlier, back in the lecture hall when she’d first turned around. For most of tonight too, if he’s being honest, her mouth tempting him for hours. Really, it should be an easy yes. It’s always easy to agree to go home with a pretty girl, and Ilya does it at every party he’s at.

Except, right as he opens his mouth to agree, an image surfaces in the foreground of his mind, so much clearer than his blurred vision: Hollander’s face in the lecture hall, flat and stern and littered with freckles, reprimanding him about hockey practice.

It’s a weird thing to be thinking about, because Ilya always has hockey practice. Sometimes he even gets tired of it, feels like hockey is the only fucking thing he does—but tonight it feels significant, somehow. He has practice tomorrow. He should remember that.

“Rain check?” he says instead, and it sounds silly even to him. “I have practice tomorrow. Early.”

Shannon blinks at him, visibly thrown by his words. She doesn’t look offended, just confused, like she’s completely misread the situation—which she has, but it isn’t by any fault of her own.

“Oh,” she says. “Sure, yeah. Okay.”

“Sorry,” Ilya says, though he doesn’t entirely know what he’s apologizing for as he eases her gently off of his lap and stands up. It takes slightly more effort than it should. “Next time.”

“Yeah,” she answers, still looking a little baffled by the whole thing. “Sure. Whatever.”

Ilya doesn’t stick around long enough to see whether she actually believes him. He just grabs his jacket out from the pile by the stairs, mutters something vague to Marly about heading home, then lets himself out of the frat house and into the cold. The night air hits him hard when he’s outside—freezing cold compared to the thick heat of the party. It almost makes his eyes water, and definitely sobers him up a tad, but not nearly enough. He starts to walk in what he’s roughly 90% sure if the right way home, feet unsteady against the icy sidewalk while his breath fogs out in front of him.

Somewhere around the second block, Ilya decides to cut through campus to get home, partly because it’s faster and partly because campus is much better lit than the street, which makes his way home feel less like an invitation to get mugged. It’s obviously desolate at this time of night, most of the buildings dark, and it’s so quiet that he can hear the crunch of his own footsteps against the crisp snow.

Although, his footsteps are only that loud because he’s stumbling a little—not much, but to the point where he’s walking with his head down, staring at his feet to make sure he doesn’t accidentally trip over one of them. The alcohol buzzing through his veins does little to ward off the cold, and by the time Ilya passes by the library, his throat is dry from the smoke, drinks, and cold air—and he decides he’s thirsty. Luckily, there’s a water fountain only a little bit further down the path, one of the outdoor ones the university has installed every few hundred feet along the main pathways, presumably for exactly this kind of moment, although Ilya is doubtful this particular case is what they had in mind. He walks towards it without any hesitation, then leans down to press the button. It takes a short moment for the fountain to sputter to life, before the faucet starts spilling with water. Ilya drinks straight from it, lapping it up like a dog, some of it running cold down his chin and down his shirt. It’s honestly kind of gross, because who knows whose hands and mouths have touched this exact thing over the years, but Ilya’s so thirsty that he’s happy to just ignore that right now, because this water is the best water he’s ever had in his life, he thinks.

He straightens up eventually, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, breath still fogging out in front of him. That’s when he spots him—a few feet down the path, sweaty and breathing hard, dressed in running gear that doesn’t look anywhere near warm enough for this weather.

“Hollander?” Ilya calls out, more out of surprise than anything else. His voice carries out loudly in the quiet.

Hollander jumps, actually jumps, his shoulders startling like he’s just been caught doing something illegal. His eyes are wide for half a second before he registers that it’s only Ilya. It’s such a not-Hollander reaction that Ilya almost laughs, except he’s too busy being startled himself, because he didn’t expect to run into anyone out here, let alone Hollander of all people.

He doesn’t run off, though—just stands there, chest still rising and falling from whatever exercise he’s apparently been doing at one in the morning. He stands and watches Ilya close the distance between them, wearing an expression that looks like he’s trying to appear calm but isn’t quite managing it.

“You broke your pinky promise,” Ilya says the second he’s close enough, folding his arms over his chest and hoping he looks offended.

Hollander blinks his big doe eyes at him, visibly surprised. “What?”

“The party,” Ilya clarifies. “You didn’t come.”

Something flickers across Hollander’s face, then—recognition, followed immediately by something sheepish. His shoulders lift in a small, apologetic shrug. “Uh, no,” he admits.

“Why not?”

“It’s not really my scene,” Hollander says, before looking away. His gaze lands on the path, his feet, anywhere but Ilya, really. “I wouldn’t have known anyone there.”

“J.J. was there,” Ilya points out. “And Pike, and his girlfriend.”

Hollander shrugs again, offering nothing else. Ilya finds it mildly infuriating, honestly, given the amount of effort that went into him getting that damn pinky promise in the first place.

“I would have hung out with you,” Ilya says, before he can really think better of it.

Hollander laughs out loud at that, a surprised gasp more than anything. Ilya frowns, furrowing his eyebrows.

“What’s funny?” he demands.

“Nothing,” Hollander says, still faintly amused as he shakes his head.

“I am serious about this.”

“Sure, Rozanov.”

“We pinky promised,” Ilya says, a little annoyed now, holding up the finger in question and gesturing to it. “You can’t break it. Everyone knows that.”

Hollander doesn’t look convinced in the slightest, and his mouth twitches at the corner, which is probably the closest thing to a smile he can muster. He doesn’t say anything, letting the silence hang between them alongside the fog of each other’s breath mixing in the air. The quiet starts to feel more awkward the longer it stretches, neither of them knowing what to say next. Ilya clears his throat, mostly just to break the silence.

“So, what were you doing?” he asks. “If you weren’t at the party.”

“I was gonna go to bed early,” Hollander says sheepishly, glancing down at himself. His eyes widen a tiny bit, like he’s forgotten what he’s wearing. “I couldn’t sleep, though, so I figured I’d run to tire myself out.”

That explains the panting and the sweat, as well as the flush still sitting high on Hollander’s cheeks from exertion. His dark hair is damp at the temples, beads of sweat dripping down the side of his face. Ilya lets his gaze drift over him for a second too long—can’t really help it, if he’s honest—and Hollander seems to notice, and he shifts his weight in a way that looks like he’s trying to shrink into himself, like he doesn’t want to be looked at quite so directly.

“You should have just come to the party instead,” Ilya says. “Would’ve been more fun than running around in the dark like a crazy person.”

Hollander laughs again, much quieter this time. The sound is almost sad.

“Maybe,” he says, then catches himself and straightens. “We have practice tomorrow, though.”

Right. Of course. How could Ilya have forgotten, when it’s the whole reason he left?

“Ah, yes,” Ilya agrees. “Is why I left early, actually,” he tells Hollander then, before he can stop himself.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ilya nods. “I did not drink that much either.”

Something must be funny, because Hollander giggles yet again. It’s a real laugh this time, enough that it changes his whole face for a second. His smile is very bright, Ilya notices, and his shoulders shake with the motion. For a brief second, he lights up the whole dark street.

“What?” Ilya says, a little defensively. “What is so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing!” Hollander replies with a shake of his head, but he’s still smiling. “I just don’t believe you.”

“Why not? I am being serious.”

“Uh-huh.” Hollander tilts his head, something teasing sneaking into the tone of his voice, something Ilya isn’t used to. “Did you strike out or something? Nobody wanted to go home with you, so you just left?”

Ilya is suddenly so offended, he almost gasps. “I did not strike out,” he tells Hollander indignantly. “I had a very pretty girl wanting me to go home with her, but I said no. Because of you, actually— because you kept saying we have practice tomorrow like it is the end of the fucking world, and it got stuck in my head.”

He says it mostly to win the argument, just to prove a point, but once it’s out of his mouth, Ilya registers how it sounds, laid out like that. It sounds far too honest for what he really intended.

Hollander’s eyes go very wide, like a deer caught in headlights. Color rises fast in his face, more prominent than the cold or his run could ever account for. His face flushes completely pink, and Ilya just watches it. And then, from the way Hollander’s hands have curled slightly at his sides, he half-expects him to say something. Anything.

But he doesn’t, and the moment stretches out, quiet and awkward, before Hollander clears his throat and averts his gaze. He stares at the floor once again, jaw clenched like he’s swallowing back whatever he might’ve been tempted to say.

“I should, uhh, get home,” he says instead, voice a little rough.

“Right,” Ilya says. He feels a stab of disappointment land in his chest, though he’s not sure why. “Me too. Practice tomorrow.”

“Practice,” Hollander agrees, already taking a step back and putting distance between the two of them. He hesitates, though, glancing back once. “Will you be okay getting home?” he asks then, voice quieter. More shy.

Ilya is almost tempted to lie, to say no and act as if he’s more drunk than he actually is, just to buy a few more minutes of Hollander’s presence so he can figure out the real, deeper reason he didn’t come to the party. But Hollander is already shifting his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting like he can’t wait to leave—so uncomfortable in the situation that the lie immediately dies on Ilya’s tongue.

“Yeah. I’m good,” he says.

“Okay, then,” Hollander says. “Night, Rozanov.”

“Goodnight, Hollander.”

And then Hollander’s gone, jogging off down the path quicker than Ilya would’ve expected—it’s so quick that it’s more of a run than a jog, bordering on a sprint, honestly. It’s like he can’t get away from Ilya quick enough, like he wants to put as much space between them as possible as fast as possible. Ilya just stands there for a second, watching him go, before shoving his hands back into his pockets and beginning to walk home himself.