Chapter Text
FALL 2018
Shane feels most himself when his body is screaming at him to stop. It’s screaming its lungs out right now.
He's been running so long he can barely hear the van blasting techno at the forest’s edge. He lets the blood pound in his ears. The air drops a few degrees the deeper he goes. If he could run as fast as he moves on skates he would win this. He could still win this. He believes in himself most with things that want his body to do something bodies aren’t supposed to do, like run without stopping, going forever without missing a beat.
The fraternity would be dumb not to want him, he's been telling himself. His grades are good. His name is hovering at the NHL's radar. Maybe he wasn’t good enough for an early draft pick, that wasn’t even true. Back then there were just still staples in his head.
He’s running shirtless through the woods, a neon pink X painted across both his chest and back. Warpaint stripes slash across their faces. The Lambda brother who painted him spilled neon all over his sneakers. He sees the flash of dots whenever he looks down, checking for roots and rocks.
He skids to a stop between thin trees, heaving, but they’re too thin to hide him. He panics and he decides to drop to his hands and knees, shoving himself halfway into a bush, branches scratching at his bare chest as he flattens himself against it.
One of the Lambda brothers shoots by in the dark. He’s lit in green neon. A portable speaker swings from a carabiner on his jeans. The blaring techno fades as he runs deeper into the trees.
For the first time in maybe an hour Shane drops onto his ass and sits. He pulls himself into a butterfly stretch, fists gripping his ankles. His calves burn and his lungs throb. It’s the best feeling and the worst one at the same time, because he likes moving and competing, but this whole thing is stupid. He still isn’t sure if he should be here. He doesn't really want to be one of them.
He leans forward with a hiss until his forehead grazes his ankles. The moon is big and yellow above him. The early fall New England air is damp and still hot. He starts to stand once more galloping tears through the trees from behind him. Maybe it’s straight at him, but it's bolting close enough and fast enough that he can’t tell. He knows it’s a brother and not a rush from the color; the green flashing toxic in the corner of his vision.
He panics again and double checks his own chest first. He’s pink. Right. Certain colors catch other colors. Green catches pink. The brother that catches you marks you, and at the end of the night they see who was caught, who was hunted, even if they aren’t supposed to call it that anymore. It sounds too much like hazing.
He squints sharply over his shoulder. The neon streak is far enough away it looks like it’s floating. First it’s that and then it’s bulleting right toward him.
Shit.
He stumbles and peels off deeper into the woods. He’s no longer counting his breath or listening to his chest. Something pinches suddenly in his leg and burns. He knows that feeling right away. He fucking strained something.
He’s not still losing this.
The trees thicken and ahead of them is a stretch of open field. He pivots toward the green, near where the forest bowls up like a cliff lip in reverse. For the first time tonight he feels slightly screwed, not for what happens when he’s caught, but for everyone knowing that he was.
Just as he slows in the densest part of the trees, finding silence for once except for his gasping, he feels how he isn’t alone. Feet suddenly stomp past him, pause, and then they stop altogether.
He sucks in his cheeks and he swallows his own ragged breath, his pulse throbbing in his neck.
“You are mine, Hollander.”
The thick accent pushes through everything, past the faded music and the hot blood in his ears. It’s a rumbled threat in a deep, taunting voice. It takes him a seizing moment to pair it with a face.
They rode here in the same car. Shane was stuffed in the back seat with three other rushes, stacked on each other’s laps like kids. That guy had been one of their babysitters.
The competitive danger feeling and the pinch in his leg doesn’t stop. Shane takes a big breath, pushes off the bark he’s resting on, and then he bolts again. He skids around a deep knotted thicket like it’s an ice drill. Rozanov isn’t fucking getting him. He’s not going back with another guy’s neon stamped on his chest.
As the trees get dense he has no choice but to slow down or he’ll slam into the wall of them ahead. They’re so tall now they practically block out the moon. The ground beneath is stiffer here, short grass and bigger rocks he has to pick over.
He throws his arms out to pinball off a couple trunks and chooses one to flatten himself against. He’s definitely scraped his elbow open, the sting blooming on his skin. The muscle in his calf still burns. That’s going to ruin his next practice. They might ease him off the team for slowing down. Then not even D1 will want him.
He thinks too much and too loudly. So loud that when it goes quiet again, when he’s not running but resting there, silent and stiff, he realizes the quiet has gotten dangerous.
Careful, picking steps crunch around him again. The neon green returns to the edge of his vision.
He doesn’t realize how hard he’s breathing until he sucks it in wet and holds. His spine grinds into the tree and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to make himself smaller, invisible.
It doesn't seem that Rozanov sees him. He wanders past him with long, taunting steps.
“Hollander...”
Sing-song, his name rings through the trees. Shane sucks in his stomach, like he’s keeping in his noise or puke. Sweat runs into his eyelashes and burns.
“Come out. You are safe.”
His Russian accent makes everything sound rougher.
“Might let you go. Maybe.”
A whoop sounds in the distance, followed by an explosion of laughter. Someone else is getting caught, the sound distant enough that it feels like another world.
“Maybe not.”
This is the most of Rozanov's voice he’s ever heard. The rest was during his recruitment interview, when he asked Shane if he was going to fight the older Bulldogs captain. When Shane said he didn’t know, he didn’t say anything back. He just smirked and wrote something down.
His chest aches where he’s holding in air. He wipes his knuckles across his face, smearing neon across his nose. The bright X on his chest glows as though it’s lit from beneath his skin.
“I can hear you, Hollander.”
Rozanov is close enough now that Shane can hear his breath too, panting and damp. He sounds worn but still pleased with himself. Shane gets the urge to yell that this is stupid and fucked up, that there are a million better ways to prove he’s good enough than acting like a deer in the middle of the night.
Rozanov taunts the air again.
“Will you make this easy? Or hard?”
It’s not fair.
He misses home.
Shane pinches the skin of his own arm, twisting tight so he can focus on the sting instead of the frustration burning inside him.
“Hard? Okay.”
And there they are, alone together.
Rozanov steps out of the dark and right in front of him, lit by a corner of moonlight. A black bandana hangs around his neck, a neon green triangle glowing across his chest. Matching green lines under his eyes make the blue-green of them harsher, almost like butane. Shane’s eyes drag cautiously down to the hands at his sides, smeared glistening in the same paint, still looking wet.
Rozanov must see him looking because he slowly lifts a hand in greeting, wiggling his fingers menacingly.
He’s fucked. It’s over.
But he doesn’t charge at him yet, he wanders closer. He gets so close Shane stops accepting air again. Close enough that their bare chests brush. Shane’s whole body buzzes but he doesn’t move, his muscles locking, waiting for the slap of a handprint somewhere on his skin, bracing for the shame of it more for than the possibility that it hurts.
He stares down at the chest closing in on him, rising and falling as throbbing as his own.
An embarrassing thought pushes in. For the first time in maybe his entire life, he imagines losing.
Rozanov bends closer without touching and nudges toward his ear. Shane feels the heat of his breath. It lifts the hair along his neck. He can hear the smirk on his face. He thinks he can hear his own veins when a growl brushes his cheek.
“You should run now.”
It should be over. Shane doesn’t understand why it isn’t. He listens anyway. He pushes off the bark and sprints away, back toward the center of the field. His brain freezes because he realizes he’s heading closer to where they started. It’s too late to turn. Other guys whip past him, blues and yellows and pinks, laughter ricocheting through the trees. He runs like hell and his stomach rolls from the heat of moments before, from the place on his neck that still feels stamped with breath.
Rozanov let him go. Shane skids to a stop, looking wildly around, wiping at the paint blurring across his chest.
Why the hell did Rozanov let him go?
Shirtless bodies streak off in all directions. More music blasts from someone’s car parked at the edge of the woods.
Pounding feet spring behind him again. He ignores his wheezing lungs and charges forward. One second he’s gaining speed, turning wide toward another entrance into the trees, and the next he’s yanked by the shoulder. His body is too sweaty to grab the first try, too slippery to hold. It still knocks him off balance and he tumbles forward onto his hands and knees. All his breath punches out of him.
Two fists grab him and flip him onto his back. His head thumps the ground. He gasps and his eyes shoot open. Rozanov looms over him, shoving a paint slick hand into his face. The fist clamps over Shane’s cheeks and squeezing. He thrashes. It doesn’t hurt but it makes him furious because he can’t move and because he lost. The hand smells like cigarettes and body paint.
“Found you,” Rozanov taunts, his light eyes thrilled and wild.
He does what hunters here are supposed to do and paints him. The strong hand drops from his face and presses hard and slow down his chest, over his sternum, to where his heart throbs.
Shane doesn’t have to look down to know what’s there now, a mix of neon pink and green. He doesn’t look down at all. He’s stuck glaring up, watching Rozanov’s chin tilt as he tracks his own hand grinding the paint across Shane’s skin. He sucks in air to catch his breath, fails, feels his stomach clench. He exhales sharply when the hand comes off him, waking from whatever frozen state he was in. More bodies rush past them. His face burns red. He shoves both heels of his palms hard into the chest above him. Pink smears onto Rozanov now.
“Fuck you.”
Rozanov drops back onto his ass and barks a laugh. Shane flips over and sees him on his hands and knees too, pushing himself up with a scramble. Shane beats him to his feet. For a second he’s standing over him, wearing a huge fanged grin. He offers out a hand.
Shane doesn’t take it. He glares at it instead, at the mix of colors smeared across it. He’d rather lie there or pass out than let him help him up right now. He needs to cool off. He can’t remember the last time he was so wound up and pissed at himself. Probably because he can’t remember the last time he lost so badly at something.
With a grunt he rolls onto his front and pushes himself to his feet. Rozanov has already wandered toward a circle of guys taking beers from a cooler in the grass. While Shane stands he watches him, crack a can and slug it down his bobbing throat, drain it easily and crush the can under his sneaker.
He limps toward the cars where some of the rushes are sitting on the hoods, already caught. A cloud of shame follows him. Maybe it’s because a minute ago, flat on his back with Rozanov grinning above him, he might have thought about staying there.
No one could catch him last year. Ilya came loitering out of the woods with just the pink X he walked in with, his body unmarked and only dirtier, a flask tucked in his back pocket. No one came close.
They’re not supposed to call it a hunt with the rushes since it scares them, and they have to pretend to care about them until they decide who to keep. There are rules to teach them. They can break them later. For now they pretend to be good boys and memorize them.
Lambda gave him a title this year, assistant social chair. Mostly he arranges alcohol runs, kicks people out, and talks to the cops when they show up. Marly does the rest. There’s some planning, maybe.
On the drive back he drinks a beer and falls asleep against the window. Him and Marly at the wheel are the only ones not stacked in twos in their seats. The eight first years cram on top of each other, covered in sweat and dirty paint. All the cars drive in a line back to the city. If they race he misses it, drool smeared on the glass.
Hollander, who he caught, is wedged next to him with Pike stuffed in his lap. They’re teammates. They sit next to each other for everything, like boyfriends. Everything he knows about either of them came from recruitment. Hollander’s from Canada and plays college hockey. Pike told them later he was supposed to go to the NHL. He grew up playing juniors and was projected to go in the draft his senior year, but he ended up in the hospital and wasn’t cleared in time. What Ilya knows about Pike is that he gets nervous and tells you whatever you want him to.
Ilya wakes when they park on the street. He squints and drops his head back at the hockey player stack beside him.
“Comfortable?” he asks them.
Pike grumbles from the top of the pile. From under him Hollander glances over tightly, embarrassed it looks like, and then stares ahead.
The party is already alive when they get there, stuffed wall to wall, and there are twenty more of them heading in. He’s dripping with sweat like everyone else from the cramped cars. Before they go up, him and Marly make them rinse off with the hose hanging in the driveway. They all strip to their underwear to do it but no one asks them to. Even Hollander does. Ilya snorts watching Pike and him hose each other’s backs.
Boston is still hot in the fall, and the box fans upstairs do nothing. His curls are tight and damp at his ears. The old house has narrow, broken steps, broken everything, too skinny in parts to let more than one person through. They file into the noise face by face. From below he can hear that every time someone enters, a crowd cheers.
Ilya herds the rushes in from the back of the line. He hosed himself too but hasn’t put his shirt back on, draping it damp over his shoulder. There’s still a low rush in him, a creeping heat like drugs, the way he feels after the gym. That and he’s buzzed from the beers he drank after catching his hunt and the one he cracked in the car.
The last of them make it up the stairs and Ilya holds the splintered door open for Hollander. He wasn’t wrong about the limp. He even holds the door for him.
“Hurt yourself?” he asks.
Hollander shoots him a weary look over his shoulder. Ilya raises his brow in return. Hollander shrugs and mutters something. The moment doesn’t last. The traffic jam of bodies spills into the kitchen and rearranges them like a tide.
Ilya shares the triple decker with eight of them, a fourth floor if you count the attic where people host their shitty bands. He has a room with Kent on the second floor. He wants to change out of his wet clothes before he drinks more, so that’s where he heads. It’s elbows grinding, knuckles brushing bodies and nail scratched railings on the way up. A lot of people try to talk to him. A few grab his arm. He kisses the cheek of a girl he used to fuck freshman year. He slaps hands with who he assumes is her boyfriend.
What he doesn’t want to do is watch bad loser Shane Hollander pout in a corner all night, so he decides he won’t.
He jogs up the stairs and around the corner, untangles his shirt from his neck and rubs sweat off his face with it. A girl tries to hand him a red cup. He takes it, winks, sips, and keeps walking. He doesn’t stop to thank her. He steps over laundry piles on the floor, pushes up onto his toes to reach the lofted bed, and pulls a dirty white t-shirt from the sheets to throw on. His skin is still damp enough that the fabric turns see through. He drops the empty cup on the floor and heads back toward the stairs, back into the noise.
For a couple hours he lets himself get drunker and more tired. Any more of either and he’ll fall asleep wherever he sits. Everything swims just enough that his cheeks feel warm, his limbs loose, the sting behind his knees from running starting to dull.
Someone throws a dart into a window and splinters it. He tapes it up. People take flash photos that light up the darker rooms. Sometimes strangers sit in his lap for them. He chain smokes and narrates someone else’s flip cup game, a flask in one hand and cold pizza in the other. Kent’s girlfriend is there looking for him, and when Ilya joins her to help, she tries to hold his hand. He tells her that isn’t very nice and lets her hand go, but he rests his palm at the small of her back while they look. They never find Kent. He gets bored of looking. Fuck Kent.
Bodies thin out as the night drags on until it’s almost morning and it’s just the ones who live there and a few rushes crashing downstairs.
Around three in the morning, maybe, he leaves the TV room where everyone is watching YouTube and passing a bong. He grabs another slice of pizza from the box in the oven and moseys down the hall, eyes red and heavy. He calls Svetlana and talks to her on the porch. The railing overlooks the backyard, which is really just a concrete slab with a propane fire pit and a cluster of folding chairs.
He drops into a camping chair and stuffs his flask into its cup holder. He sighs as he stretches his legs out and props his ankles on a milk crate. On the phone he gives his drunk report about the rushes and the hunt. She sends him a picture of herself, drunk and posing with her tongue out in a bathroom mirror. He tries sending one back but he’s sloppy and it’s dark and he can’t get the flash to work. For a while he half heartedly tries to convince her to come over instead. She says he would be asleep by the time she got there, so it’s pointless. She’s right but he still complains.
She talks to him about her night. He puts her on speaker phone while he smokes. She tells him about a guy in her class she wants to fuck, whose older sister she’s already fucked, and how she’s trying to guess how much they talk about her to each other. Ilya reminds her she can fuck whoever she wants. When they were younger that included him sometimes. They did when he first moved in with her, back when his own father stopped wanting him. Then he started getting sucked off by someone else and she wasn’t interested in him anymore. Back then he would still slept sometimes in her bed, because he slept sounder next to her.
He gets louder when he’s drunk, and when he’s talking to the brothers his English gets worse. He doesn’t have to speak English with her, thank fuck.
He’s affectionately calling her a whore and telling her goodnight when the porch door swings open.
He drops his phone into his lap and lets his head fall back against the house. An unlit cigarette sticks to his lower lip. When he sees who's joining him, he pulls it away and tucks it behind his ear under the seam of his Raiders cap.
Shane Hollander stumbles out while sucking in air. Ilya lifts himself higher in his chair to watch him, amused and curious. Hollander's wringing at the front of his own shirt, pulling the damp fabric away from his chest before starting to pace. He looks wrecked, and sweat slick, almost distraught. He doesn’t seem to notice Ilya at first, shuffling past him toward the railing where he begins to lean over it.
Ilya doesn’t get up yet. He sinks back into his chair again and takes a sip from his flask. From behind him he watches carefully, waiting for the part where he retches. It sounds like he might. He gives up waiting and asks eventually. “Are you going to be sick?”
He sounds more curious than concerned.
Hollander doesn’t answer.
Ilya leans forward, tilting his head to catch a glimpse of his face but he can’t reach his eyes there, so sinks back again with his loose legs spread. This is not a problem he wants right now. His vision is almost spinning and he’s exhausted. If Hollander pukes, he hopes it’s not on the porch. Over it will be fine.
“I just...” Hollander starts to croak.
Ilya hears him spit. He watches the glob drop over the railing. He studies him now, like a game unfolding instead of a liability to find, as Hollander shifts around and wipes his glistening mouth.
“Fireball is so disgusting. Like. So disgusting.” His voice is hoarse and slightly raw. “People...how do people do that?”
Ilya snorts and bobs in agreement. “Yes.” Messy thing. He pushes himself up to dig in his back pocket for his lighter.
“So bad. Fuck.” Hollander collects and spits again, this time onto the wood near his own feet. Ilya watches it lands dangerously close to his shoe. He makes a warning sound, a tut with his teeth, before taking a first drag of his cigarette.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and rubs harder around his mouth with his hand.
Ilya sees him clearly now, through the haze of his drag. Shane Hollander is slumped against the railing, loose and glassy eyed, probably the drunkest he’s ever been. There’s a sick, warm glow to him under the dying bulb of the porch light. He looks good out here, sloppy like this. Usually he’s stiff, moving around like he never took a fucking breath. Then there’s the version Ilya saw tonight, thrashing and panting in the grass, neon paint slicked down his chest, furious from losing.
Beside him, Hollander tries to stand straighter, then slumps again with a small laugh and lets out a long breath.
“That was the grossest thing. The grossest thing ever.” He’s starting to wake up a little. His voice slurs.
Ilya bends to pick up an old beer can from near his feet and sets it on the railing to ash into. “You’ll bring your own next time, yes?”
Hollander scrunches his face and runs an apprehensive hand through his hair. “If you guys even keep me.”
Ilya shrugs, amused. “Still more days.” He waits for the complaint about the hunt, something about unfair, about running so much he'd hurt himself. Instead Hollander shuffles his feet and lifts his head to look at him. He meets the look without blinking while he crushes his cigarette into the can.
“Raiders are screwed this season,” Hollander declares after a beat, gesturing vaguely at Ilya’s hat. The railing wobbles as his weight leans harder into it.
Ilya drops his ear to his shoulder to watch him. “Do you think?”
Hollander puffs a breath like it's obvious. That and he smiles, really smiles like he's just woken up. “Draft class was a reach. Left side’s gonna have a hole. There's no one but old guys to fill it. And the Metros have Parsons now. He could’ve been yours, but,” he trails off with a wave of his hand and his smile that's trying to grow more. "Decisions were made."
He lets himself enjoy this shift in him, playing along with a warning. “This is not allowed in my house.”
“Well, I mean…” Hollander shyly points his chin down. “It’s true.”
“I will throw you over this porch,” Ilya promises.
“Hey, I'm just saying. Numbers are numbers." His skin is hot now. "Right?"
Ilya relaxes his spine on the railing beside him. “Good way for a rush to lose votes. No respect for house team.”
“House team?”
“My team. My house.”
Hollander snorts and picks at the lint on his pants. “Someone said...doesn’t your dad work for Boston or something?”
Ilya hooks his elbows over the railing and tips his head back toward the sky. “No.” He scratches at his brow. Svetlana’s father does. He doesn’t explain. “Look.” He motions his chin to the sky. "Scary."
“What?”
“The very big moon.” He points. “Ghost moon.”
“Ghost?”
“A scary thing in your house.”
“Like, haunted?”
“Sure, yes.”
They stand like that for a while, looking up together. Ilya takes another pull from his flask. The railing creaks as Hollander shifts and leans closer than Ilya expects, fumbling at his a hand loosely at his forearm and tugging.
“Is that water?”
Ilya follows his gaze down and realizes he’s looking at the flask tucked into his waistband. He chews his own amusement. “No.”
Before he can explain Hollander reaches down for it. Ilya watches to see if he’ll grab at his waistband but he doesn't, his hand stalling in midair. He pulls it free from his waist itself and wags it at him. Hollander takes it clumsily. Some of it spills between them, trickling on their hands and onto the porch floor.
Ilya licks vodka from the webbing of his thumb and studies him. Hollander tips the flask back, gulping without hesitation. Ilya squints and waits for the inevitable, for him to be sick on himself, teaching himself a lesson. The sip steadier than expected. He wipes his mouth and hands it back. His expression barely changes. He must be too drunk to taste anything.
Ilya raises a suspicious brow and sips himself. “Better than the cinnamon?”
“What?” Hollander hiccups and tries to smother it behind his hand. “Cinnamon?”
“The whiskey,” Ilya waves a hand. "Red bottle. Disgusting. From before."
They’re closer now, elbows brushing. Ilya leans back against the iron, glancing between him and the moon. He can smell the liquor sweat on him, mixed with whatever he's showered with.
If he stands here much longer, he’s going to start thinking more seriously about fucking him. The only thing stopping him is that Hollander is too drunk to decide anything and remember it.
A calm quiet drifts in. An autumn wind carries the weed smell from the living room and onto the porch. Ilya tips his head slightly, studying Hollander’s flushed face from the side. He wakes him up from a distracted shroud, nudges him with the base of the flask. When he has his attention, he gestures under his own eye, dragging his thumb along the skin beneath his lid.
“How many of these, do you think?”
“Huh?”
“These.” Ilya motions near his eye again.
Hollander pinches up in confusion, scraping his toes into the porch wood, his body probably crawling with his drunkenness. His foot is sometimes brushing Ilya’s sneaker. “How many what?”
Ilya drops his hand from himself and drapes near Hollander’s face instead. He makes a small circle in the air near his eyelid without touching him. “Your little spots.”
He probably knows the English word, but he can't find it right now. Hollander tenses slightly, and then his eyes nearly cross as he tries following the hovering finger.
“What? You can’t see them from there?”
"Shut up. I don't know." Hollander shimmies his head away with a laugh. Too busy, probably, to ever count them.
Ilya almost says something else, or puts his thumbnail against them, but he doesn't. He catches Hollander’s heavy eyes a moment longer before rummaging for his lighter again. The tilt of his vision makes him pause, taking a ragged breath and then sniffing. He should have eaten more before he ran and then drank so much.
“You can sleep downstairs,” Ilya offers as he digs in his jeans. “No walking.”
“It’s not a long walk,” Hollander argues but he doesn’t move.
“No walking.”
“Why?”
Ilya flicks unsuccessfully at his lighter. “You are too drunk.”
Hollander huffs. “No I’m not.”
“Is not only you staying here. Everyone.” Ilya lights his cigarette and aims his smoke away. “You break your leg and your coach burns my house.”
Hollander snorts and straightens, wobbling enough that their elbows knock together. "I’m not going to break anything.”
He gives him a skeptical look through a drag.
“Okay,” Hollander gives in that easily. “I’ll stay here.” He rubs the back of his neck then looks at his palm, probably at all the sweat there. “Sorry.”
“Stop with sorry.” Ilya stretches an arm overhead and yawns into it, then glances down at Hollander’s shoes pointing inward, fidgeting.
“Okay. Sorry.”
Ilya bumps his elbow teasing into him. Hollander laughs and bumps back, harder.
The quiet that follows is calmer now, not all the nerves baking over there. Hollander relaxes against the railing beside him. Ilya chain smokes and watches him stare out at the yellow, haunted moon. His own eyes feel damp with exhaustion. That’s when he knows he needs sleep. It feels good every time he blinks.
Time starts moving in choppy blurs. One blink and Hollander is beside him. The next blink and he’s in front of him, nudging him in the stomach and asking something. Another blink and Ilya is holding his cigarette between his teeth so he can dig for his phone. It's over there in his chair, he realizes. He pulls from the railing to grab it. Hollander is holding out his own phone when he turns back around.
Ilya smirks and takes it, flashing him a teasing look before he types in his number. “Do you think this will help you? With membership?”
“Shut up. I wanna...” Hollander struggles not to smile. He rubs at his eye. “I wanna talk about hockey.”
“You have teammates for this.”
Hollander looks embarrassed and doesn’t answer. Ilya cocks a brow at him a moment, then instead of texting himself, he pushes his own phone into Hollander’s hand. His glassy eyes drop to the screen. He huffs a laugh at what name Ilya saved himself under but he doesn’t argue. He starts typing. It takes him a while for his fingers to work.
Ilya observes his face instead of his hands. The glow of the screen catches the freckles across his cheeks, sharpening them. While Hollander re-learns how to text, Ilya reaches up and he pulls the black Raiders hat off his own head. His short blond curls fall loose. He turns the hat around and pushes it onto Hollander’s head instead. “You can wear this to bed.”
Hollander swats at him and tries to pull it off, almost dropping Ilya's phone. “No way.”
He catches two of his fingers and twists. “You have to.” They're strong and yank out of his grip. Hollander reaches up with the other hand and he blocks that too.
“Why?” Hollander complains.
“There are house rules," he tells him flatly.
“No there aren’t.” He's right, of course. They swat at each other, forearms tangling over Hollander’s head. Their breaths shorten with laughter and the effort.
“My rules then.” Their thumbs wrestle and bend at each other near Hollander’s forehead. Ilya watches him go cross eyed again, trying to look up at them. He hisses as his thumb gets bent back almost as far as it will go. Hollander's strong, maybe stronger than him. Of course he is.
“This is hazing,” Hollander mutters as he yanks to push back his wrist. He's been biting a smile the whole time.
“No. We are teaching you good hockey.”
Hollander makes one last attempt to yank the hat free from his hand. Ilya guides his hand away in a rough fist and he stops fighting. “You poked me in the eye,” Hollander complains, cupping his face as he laughs through a hiccup.
“Well, yes.” Ilya catches his wrist again when he tries to rub at himself, tugging it gently back. “Your eye is in my way.” It is a little red once he sees it, but not bad.
“Shut up.”
They finally let go. Ilya shakes his cigarette pack and a bent one falls out, onto the porch ground. He tucks the pack away and leaves it there, looking up. Hollander rubs at his face again, yawning, starting to peel himself off the railing. “I think I’m going to...”
Ilya stays put, grinding his back into the railing to stretch. He watches Hollander sniffle, adjusting the backwards brim on his head, and then lift a small wave.
He nods lazily back. “Goodnight, Hollander.”
“Night, um...Roza...Rozanov? Right?”
It’s a question. Ilya doesn’t help him. He tilts his head and he watches him go.
The porch door slams. Through the torn screen Ilya sees him glance back apologetically for the noise before disappearing inside, still wearing his hat.
4:31AM
RAIDERSSUCK😂: Raiders blanket? Seriouosly?
RAIDERSSUCK😂: *Seriousejly
RAIDERSSUCK😂: *Seriously
FUCKTHEMETROS: Yes
FUCKTHEMETROS: I like you in my hat
RAIDERSSUCK😂: Whhaaat
RAIDERSSUCK😂: *What
FUCKTHEMETROS: Sexy
FUCKTHEMETROS: Wear it more
RAIDERSSUCK😂: (...)
RAIDERSSUCK😂: (...)
RAIDERSSUCK😂: (...)
RAIDERSSUCK😂: (Read)