Something wrong with Rozanov

Gruppa Skryptonite – Latinskaya muzyka

Montreal – Ottawa, July–August 2018

Living across three cities required careful planning of practically every step. From late spring to mid-July, Ilya shuttled between Boston, Montreal, and Ottawa, changing locations every few days. He needed to get acquainted with the Ottawa team and gradually ease into the training regimen at the new place, obtain a residence permit in Canada, and simultaneously finalize the documentary issues related to leaving the Boston Raiders. The house in Boston hung over him like a millstone: Ilya had moved out his few belongings, consisting mainly of clothes, shoes, and hockey awards and gear—Shane, when visiting him, would thoughtfully examine the half-empty shelves and closets and remark that it looked as if Ilya had just moved in, rather than lived in this house for over five years, so few personal items did he have. Ilya packed the first boxes himself until Svetlana intervened: looking at the bewildered, exhausted gaze of her best friend, she forced him to hire a moving service, which undertook to pack all existing items carefully and safely for transport, move them to the new place themselves, and arrange them on the shelves indicated by the owner. They even promised to do the cleaning for an extra fee — both in the old house and the new one. To Ilya, such services seemed wild. It wasn't about paying them a round sum of money — he preferred to do everything himself. But, of course, Svetlana's advice was timely. He left his old Boston house without “sitting for a moment before the journey” (it was difficult to explain the sacred meaning of this action to Shane). There was definitely nothing left here that he could forget, and some things would be better for everyone to forget. The house was sold within 2 months: Ilya put a quarter of the proceeds into his niece's bank account. For the first four weeks after moving to Ottawa, Ilya lived in a hotel twenty minutes' walk from the Ottawa Centaurs training facility, then rented a large private house in the suburban neighborhood of West Carleton-March — it was found by Shane, who knew his hometown and its surroundings like the back of his hand, and he brought in a realtor acquaintance for the paperwork. The deal was signed for two years with practically no personal presence from Ilya: at the beginning of the process, he put a few signatures on powers of attorney and other papers and shook the necessary hands a couple of times, after which all issues were resolved by an amazing capitalist mechanism, into which one simply needed to periodically throw fuel in the form of many hundreds of Canadian dollars. Shane insisted that Ilya purchase his own housing as soon as possible: he wanted Canada to become a new home for Rozanov, especially since they now lived three or four hours away from each other, taking airport controls into account. Ilya found many different excuses: he cited the uncomfortably high tax rate on purchases for non-residents, the lack of a Canadian passport, and in general, what difference did it make whether to buy or rent—he was already here. The truth lay close to the surface: Ilya knew that everything good in his life ended quickly, and he did not want to shoulder the solution of additional problems if he put down roots here too quickly and it turned out to be another unfortunate mistake. It was disgusting that such thoughts were in his head at all, and they had to be kept in the strictest secrecy. Shane didn't deserve this. Everyone around who was close to Ilya deserved much more than he could give — so he thought, and one could, in principle, live with this, but Shane, damn it... Their shared experience was already 9 years old, 8 of which they got closer, broke up, got closer again, and separated anew: no sooner had their fingers and souls touched, allowing them to feel a certain painful, illicit kinship for a few minutes, than the clawed paws of contradictions and fears grabbed them by the shoulders, holding them back, and everything started all over again. Time after time, circle after circle, so that being apart and striving to be together again, at least for a short while, became a common, very sad habit for them. 9 insane years during which Ilya did not stop loving him for a second, no matter how much he wished to convince himself otherwise. Rozanov's heart was literally bursting at the seams from this endless, murderous, suffered love. There were no doubts left in it, and God, how scary that was. He could count on the fingers of one hand the things that would frighten him as much as a) loving Shane Hollander and b) losing Shane Hollander. So he thought every time he looked into those black eyes, for which he invented new names every time: coals, if Ilya looked into Shane's eyes when it was dark; amber drops — if the soft pre-sunset sunlight fell on Shane's face; beads — as a universal name. Ilya had no idea how to express all this in English, let alone French, which he began to learn after moving to the Canadian capital, so he spoke in his native Russian. Businy, ugolki, yantar', neft', (Translator notes: beads, coals, amber, oil) — Shane pronounced every sound very diligently, trying to repeat after Ilya, but his diction, unaccustomed to the strange, unknown language, would not obey and did not allow him to put individual sounds into a whole word. Ilya realized that sooner or later he would have to make an important decision of the "to be or not to be" category: it only remained to assess how much time he had to find a way to destroy the walls built over the years up to the very sky, capable of protecting from trouble but at the same time not allowing one to see the sunlight overhead.

***

In early August, the annual League awards ceremony for the season that ended in spring was held in Ottawa — for the very award that he and Shane had been trying to take from each other for many years. It turned out funny that each of them had two such trophies. Ilya was nominated this year (he believed undeservedly), but he didn't even count on the main prize, having not yet had time to forget the scandalous aftertaste with which he left the Boston Raiders. Hollander was passed over too; in the end, the award was taken by a rookie from the New York team, who was called the “Scott Hunter of the new generation” (who was very offended by such comparisons, especially in the last couple of years before the end of his sports career). After the ceremony, by tradition, a big party was held, which neither Rozanov nor Hollander could bail on: the former was just beginning to adapt to the new team and understood that in the role of captain it was important to build the correct format of socialization and learn who was who among his newfound colleagues from the very start; Shane was essentially too responsible and in places even an overprotective “leader of the pack”; moreover, before the start of the season, two young players had been drafted to Montreal. His career track, in general, was taking interesting turns: teammates joked that as he matured, paternal instincts began to wake up in him. Hayden was the most relentless, still dreaming of introducing Shane to his wife's friend — a yoga teacher for mommies, whom he had advertised to him several years ago. Shane Hollander's plan worked precisely, like a Swiss watch. They no longer needed to pretend to be sworn enemies either on the ice or behind the scenes of the competition, although for those around them, apparently, the fact that they were now sitting opposite each other at the same table and periodically exchanging remarks caused dissonance out of old memory — but not too often, so as not to provoke additional suspicions. “Roz, what are the plans for Ottawa? You want the Stanley Cup this season or will you wait a couple more years?” Shane finished his third Negroni: his cheeks and nose turned a little red from intoxication, and the freckles on his face seemed to be erased. “Because this year and next year the Metros will take it, well, you know how we do it.” “Bathing in the rays of past greatness for years is bad form for an athlete,” Rozanov answered calmly, and this impressed the others, primarily because it sounded too high-flown for a person with non-native English.Roz, fuck, are you serious, thought Ilya, snatching glances at the other's profile when Shane turned his face to Hayden sitting nearby. He had started up his broken record about marriage again and was showing Shane an Instagram profile belonging to another friend of his wife Jackie. “By the way, she has a full C-cup, let me show you,” Hayden continued scrolling through someone else's Instagram and whistled when Shane snatched his phone from him to zoom in on one of the photos in a tiny red bikini. “Well, what do you think?” Something boiled inside Ilya at this, and trying not to show it on his face, he applied himself to a glass of vodka with ice and lime juice. “Juicy ass,” Shane replied, running his fingers over the display. “I like those.” “By the way, they say that a love for women's asses is a sign of quality masculinity, like when you love not the chest, but the hips, all that stuff below the belt. As a sign of fertility, get it? When you look at a woman as a potential female for your offspring, and not as a tit meant to feed you. I'm an ass guy too. Well, you get it, not in that sense.” While Shane enthusiastically scrolled through the profile of a strange girl he didn't give a damn about, the toe of his shoe touched Ilya's shoe under the table, then went higher up the ankle, lifting the hem of the trouser leg on the other's pants. Then down again to circle the protruding bone on the inside of his ankle. “Send me her profile,” Shane replied, handing his friend back his phone. “I'll follow.” Shane's phone vibrated with a new DM from Hayden with a link to the account of the poor girl, who probably nearly lost her mind when she received a notification that the world-famous hockey player Shane Hollander had followed her. With every new like on someone else's photos, the toe of Hollander's shoe rose higher and higher, then a couple of centimeters down—and another 10 centimeters up. Ilya realized that his breathing was starting to give him away: the danger turned him on even more than before because it was danger executed by Shane Hollander. He was noticeably drunk but was perfectly aware of what he was doing when he pressed his foot against Ilya's groin. People next to him at the table were carrying on a lively conversation, talking to each other, laughing a lot, drinking a lot, and clinking glasses; Ilya understood that under the table, mere centimeters from his spread knees, were the knees of other players: one awkward movement, and that's it, it would be the end. Washing down the anger, jealousy, horror, and arousal with vodka diluted by melted ice, Ilya shifted along with his chair to press his stomach against the edge of the table. Shane ignored the very fact of his existence, kneading the other's dick with his sole under the edge of the snow-white tablecloth. It was amazing how alcohol affected Shane. Ilya thought that perhaps they should drink together like this more often. Ilya had always ceased to give a damn about his own reputation, but for Hollander to sacrifice his—no, that was absolutely unthinkable. It was even a little touching. He was trying on the role of a bad boy, and damn it, this role suited him very well. Rozanov lowered his hand under the tablecloth, having first made sure that no one was looking at him, and ran his nails along Shane's ankle, sinking his fingertips slightly into the tight space between the sock and the edge of the leather shoe on the other's foot. Their eyes met, and simultaneously they felt that they would be ready to laugh in sync first, and then, probably, beat each other's faces in, only to lick the brown smeared traces of blood off each other's faces a minute later. Hatred and tenderness intertwined like a snake coiling its long flexible body around a forest hare caught in its deadly trap. “Roz, why did you freeze?” Ilya was slapped on the elbow by his neighbor on the left, his new teammate, who noticed that Rozanov had stretched out like a string. Vodka was poured into his glass—Ilya drank it in one gulp and stood up from the table: “I'll go find Marlow,” he said, adjusting his tuxedo to cover the obvious hard-on. “He was looking for me.” The people at the table, absorbed in drunken conversation, forgot about Ilya's existence a few seconds after he left. Only Shane's gaze stubbornly drilled into his back between the shoulder blades for a while longer. Leaving the hall, Ilya wrote a short text to a contact named Jane: “WC, 2nd floor.” The door to the toilet, where Shane arrived 15 endless minutes later, opened outwards. It was not difficult to lock it from the inside with a mop, which Ilya found in a “technical” cubicle locked with a flimsy lock, the door of which he had ripped out practically by the roots. It was unpleasant, but the breakage could be blamed on the fact that a crowd of many hundreds of drunken hockey players had visited the banquet hall—what else could one expect from them? “We've already had something similar,” Shane whispered, dissolving from the sensation of another's moist breath on his neck. When Ilya kissed him like that, his hands reached for the roots of the curly light brown ringlets on their own. “We haven't had it like this yet.” Fast, without stretching, without lube, just spit, with which Rozanov had generously drenched his dick. He tried to kiss Shane—the latter twisted his head back in every way, over his shoulder, so they could reach each other with their lips; it worked poorly, and Ilya had to be content with the smells of vermouth, gin, and orange peel from the other's breath. Shane was tight but flexible enough. Ilya's palm covered the other's head with force so that Shane's cheek was pressed into the cleaning schedule hung on the toilet door, where the cleaner noted every couple of hours that she had washed the floor, toilets, and sinks. Rounded teeth marks remained on the swarthy neck under the line of dark hair, looking like prehistoric cave painting, strange and crude. From the way Shane clenched inside, Ilya's limbs and brains went numb. “You good?” he asked in a confused whisper, realizing he would come soon. Judging by the wet eyes, half-rolled under the eyelids, Shane was close too. They were sobered up a little by the moment the door handle jerked down. First sharply, with an attempt to push the door outward, then again, more carefully. Two male voices were talking behind the door: judging by the tone and pronunciation, one of them was Marlow. Ilya reacted with lightning speed and with one quick movement firmly covered Shane's mouth with his palm, slowing down significantly but not ceasing to thrust inside. Even in the semi-darkness, he saw the pupils dilate in Shane's wide-open eyes. Rozanov moved carefully and soundlessly, holding the mop with his shoe, covering Hollander's mouth with one hand and squeezing his dick with the other palm. A thin semi-cardboard door a few centimeters thick separated them from the people on the other side. “Can you come without hands?” Ilya whispered almost soundlessly into Shane's ear, holding him now by the face, plugging his mouth with his hand, and above the Adam's apple, feeling the other's throat vibrate with moans that could not escape. Marlow's voice behind the door said: “Looks like it's locked,” despite this, the handle was jerked again and the mop almost fell. They both choked on adrenaline, feeling toxic, poisonous waves of pleasure spreading through their bodies. Shane came first, biting Ilya's palm. Drops landed on the door, some fell on the floor; Ilya's orgasm came a few seconds later, while he was deep inside. Everything happened without a condom, and Ilya liked the thought that Shane would walk around with his sperm in his ass for the rest of the evening. The voices behind the door fell silent — they heard the sound of retreating steps and exhaled in sync with relief. Muffled laughter for two voices echoed along the tiled walls of the toilet. “What did you start at the table?” Ilya finally asked, adjusting the bow tie under Shane's collar. “You liked it.” “That's not what I asked.” “What did you want? I learned all this from you.” “Unfollow her,” Ilya said, and it looked serious. “On Instagram.” Shane smiled silently. No matter how their dialogue went further, he had already won. To achieve open jealousy from Ilya Rozanov — there was something charming and triumphant in this, although Shane assumed that Rozanov was jealous of him much more often than he showed. In such moments, Ilya looked the same as when he was angry: his eyes literally lit up, and his facial expression became cold and impenetrable, as if paralyzed from mimicry. Shane opened Instagram, showing the screen to Ilya, went to his following list, and pressed the “Unfollow” button on the last added account. “Happy?” “Yes. Quite,” Ilya fixed the bangs on Shane's forehead. “We have to go. I'll say goodbye to everyone, and go home.” An awkward pause of understatement hung in the air; Ilya was already ready to take a step towards the door, but Hollander stopped him by taking his wrist. The ice in Rozanov's eyes melted, a smile flickered in his gaze. He understood what Hollander was trying to achieve, so he continued: “I'll go home and wait for you there.” Ilya gave Shane a short and tender kiss on the corner of his lips and departed, leaving him alone; two hours later, Hollander appeared on the threshold of Ilya's country house — drunk enough that he could barely stay on his feet. “Rozanov,” he mumbled, kicking off his shoes. Not taking them off, but kicking them off: one flew towards the large wardrobe at the entrance, the second landed in the middle of the long corridor connecting the entrance group with the spacious dining room. “Rozanov, I love you so much that someday I'll devour you. Do you understand me?” Ilya, of course, understood. He put Hollander to bed (the latter resisted for some time while his clothes were being taken off and he was being guided into the bedroom, and showered Ilya's face and shoulders with unbridled dry kisses), lay down next to him, and for the first time in several months fell asleep without sleeping pills.