Chapter Text
December 2011
A knock on the door. It’s ajar, and Maurice Denier, team doctor for the Montreal Voyageurs, peeks in. “Shane Hollander is here, adductor sprain from last week, can you see him? I have that meeting over lunch.” Ilya nods, he was about to head out for food himself, but it can wait. He’s not seen Hollander before, not for an exam. He’s seen him on the ice of course, and on TV, and on many many billboards around town; there’s no way around him. But Hollander, like many of the rookies rarely comes in with an injury. They’re so young it’s like they’re made of rubber. They throw their bodies around the rink like heat-seeking missiles colliding with each other and collecting bruises for sport, and yet they bounce back so easily; muscles, joints, and tendons all in good shape, no doubt feeling like they’re invincible.
Though Hollander would be 20 now, Ilya thinks. Not a rookie anymore. And anyway, no one’s invincible. He gets up and stretches a stiff knee, crisscrossed with a thin lacework of scars attesting to a series of failed surgeries meant to get him back on the ice. Some players are like expensive sports cars, fast and powerful, but fragile and plagued with all sorts of trouble under the hood. Their careers are short-lived. He hopes Hollander will never learn the pain and disappointment of having your ambitions sabotaged by the weakness of your body. Up on his feet, he waves the patient in.
For all his 20 years, and especially in comparison to some of the adverts he’s seen him in (Rolex, CCM) Hollander looks more boyish in person. It’s his full face, his kissy bottom lip, and his spiky hair, damp still from post-practice shower, that reads as youthful. Today though he walks in with a slight limp, like an old man, wincing as he leans against the examination table, looking a little unsure of what to do.
“Mr Hollander, how can I help? You hurt leg?”
“Yeah, last week. I’ve been resting it, but..”
“But gets boring, yes? You want back out on the ice?”
Hollander smiles and nods earnestly.
“Dr Rozanov,” he starts, but Ilya grins and shakes his head in a self-deprecating way.
“Please I am not doctor. That is Denier. You flatter me, but I am just good with my hands!” As if to demonstrate, he slaps the cushion on the examination table.
“Up you go. We will see if you are ready to play.”
Hollander sits up and dangles his legs. He’s wearing athletic shorts and a black t-shirt. He looks nervous. When Ilya moves to touch him on his legs, he registers a slight flinch, almost too subtle to notice. Aha, so he’s not an expensive sports car, but a skittish race horse. That doesn’t necessarily bode much better. Race horses have been known to hang themselves in their halters out of sheer panic. This requires a different approach.
“Actually, get up for a second.” Ilya’s strength as a physiotherapist, and the biggest reason they took him on at the Voyageurs despite his own relative youth, is his ability to talk to the players like he’s one of them—which of course he was. So he knows what hockey demands and he knows how to navigate pride and vulnerability. He also knows not to be too gentle with the players, certainly not with the type that would jolt at another man’s touch. These guys lean into punches and body checks like they enjoy the pain, but anything softer than that and they freak out. Hollander is little different still, requiring not necessarily gentleness, but patience.
When they’re both stood on their feet, Ilya casually guides one of Hollander’s hands to his shoulder so that he can support his balance while he instructs him to stand on one leg and perform a series of exercises with the other injured one. The hand is hot on his shoulder, even a bit clammy maybe. Hollander avoids Ilya’s eyes entirely, and so Ilya speaks down at their knees, directing his movement: leg out laterally, knee softly bent, knee up, and back, and wide again. And all the time Ilya asks him how it feels. The adductor is far from completely healed, but Hollander has full motion. With manual therapy he could be back on the ice by the end of the week.
This time, when Ilya sits him back down on the table, he settles more comfortably, lying supine as Ilya maneuvers his leg out slightly and exposes his inner thigh. After applying a bit of lotion to his hands, he gets to work, drawing broad strokes first to warm up the skin, from knee to groin. Hollander has closed his eyes and there is a small frown growing between his eyebrows. Ilya individually names all the adductor muscles, in English and Russian, filling the silence, and trying to get him to relax. Then, when it feels ready, he uses his two thumbs as a keel and drives both hands over the tight bands of Shane thigh, over and over until he feels resistance give way.
“Tell me if tender, yes?” Shane grunts, but it’s unclear whether he’s expressing discomfort or just assent. Ilya studies his face. Hollander has a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheek. Ilya continues to put steady pressure on the leg, waiting patiently until he feels the muscle relax. There’s a twitch that draws his eye, but not in Shane’s face. Ilya exhales softly in amusement.
“Turn around for me please.” Shane flips himself over, gratefully. The backs of his ears are turning pink. With Shane on his stomach Ilya continues to massage the inner hamstring, though he doesn’t move his hands much higher than the hem of Hollander’s shorts. Instead he pulls and kneads length back into the muscle. After another couple of minutes he’s decided that’s probably enough. And with a gentle pat on his meaty thigh, he announces that Shane can sit back up.
“Um, I’ll just stay here for a bit if that’s alright.” Shane mutters, lying prone, his face turned to the wall, voice muffled. Ilya exhales again, more audibly this time, and he punctuates it with a chuckle.
“You have boner. Is ok, is natural. Manual therapy increases blood flow. In fact, is good sign.”
Shane groans deeply in frustration. He rolls on to his side, still facing away, and crunches his legs up slightly, as if to nurse a stomach ache. But it’s his pride that’s wounded.
“Fuck, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so sorry.”
“Sit up Hollander. I have seen many boners. You are not special.”
Shane sits upright, knees still drawn protectively. He is mortified, bringing his hands up to cover his face, a deep red blush radiating out over his cheeks and throat. He looks through his fingers, to see Ilya wipe his hands with a towel, shaking his head, grinning with delight. The man looks kind of pleased with his work, if you can believe it, if that’s even allowed for a health care professional.
“This has never happened before.” Shane argues.
Ilya lobs the towel into a bin by the wall and sinks down leisurely into his deskchair crossing his fingers over his broad chest.
“Guess I am just that good huh?” He grins, with maddening confidence.
Shane is now looking red with embarrassment and anger. Time to de-escalate.
“Hollander relax, is ok, there is patient doctor confidence thing. No one will find out.”
“Confidentiality.” Shane corrects him snappily, “and I thought you weren’t a doctor?”
“Ah, so I can tell everybody? Is good chat for Christmas party yes?
Shane exhales through his nose. He’s annoyed, but also, getting a hold of himself. Ilya is good at navigating this. Maybe it really isn’t that uncommon. (Is that what he meant? ‘I have seen many boners’...)
“Don’t tell anyone, asshole.”
Ilya laughs and takes the insult like a goal scored. He pivots to his desk and opens Shane’s file in order to update it. “Like I said. Is good sign. Adductors are healing. I will write down that patient shows … spirit. You can join full practice tomorrow and game this weekend. But take longer time stretching. Don’t rush. See me if there is pain ok?”
“Ok”
“Bye bye.”
—
The Voyageurs Christmas party is in fact, the week after, on a Friday. It’s in the Bell Center's private lounge, overlooking the rink. Shane’s strangely never been here before, since he’s always down there on the ice. He’s leaning on the balustrade imaging how small the game must look from the lounge, how clean, and how orderly. When he was a boy they always sat much closer to the boards.
Shane’s already shrugged off his suit jacket. It’s an older one that was tailored to fit him at 19, but it’s too snug for him now. His arms and chests have bulked out more, and he doesn’t know what to do with them, except of course use them as a battering ram while chasing the puck. The party has only been going for about an hour. It’s a pretty casual thing, not scheduled to last very long. It’s mostly an excuse for management to interrogate the coaching team while they (the players) are conveniently filing past for inspection. Already Shane’s been called up two times by coach Theriault to meet this or that partner of the club. That’s why Shane is hiding out here in the shadows. It has been nice to chat though with the equipment guys and the folks from PR, especially since, when he’s not wearing 8 kilos of gear and covered in sweat, he feels like he can make a better impression. I’m not just a meathead, hockey robot, ice gremlin, he wants to say. I watch the same shows as you. We probably listen to the same music.
The medical team is also in attendance.
Hayden returns to him with two beers in his hands. He picks up where they left off their conversation about this girl he met called Jackie. There are stars in his eyes as he explains how smart she is, how she’s studying to be a nurse, how she can name all the bones in the human body.
“Hayd this is a beer. I can’t drink this”
“Shit buddy. I forgot.” He doesn’t look very remorseful as he sips his own bottle of Molson. “Shane it’s Christmas, have a drink.”
Shane huffs annoyed and strides back to the bar without a word. It’s a bit rude, but he’s feeling brittle and Hayden should know better than to try and get him to drink during the season. At the bar he flags down the tender in order to get his beer swapped out for ginger ale.
“Hollander.”
Holy shit it’s Rozanov, dressed much more casually than himself, in a printed shirt and a leather jacket (is that a tiger decal? Or a bear?). Why doesn’t anybody tell Shane about these things? If it was casual wear he wouldn’t have bothered with the suit, he would have just worn a sweater.
“Hello, Rozanov. Merry Christmas.” That was fast. Now he’s all out of conversational fodder. What is he going to say? What else can they talk about except the mortifying physio exam that Shane can’t stop thinking about whenever he has one second to himself. He instantly blushes a deep, ocher red, his body sabotaging any attempt to stay cool.
Ilya smiles, delighted. He intercepts the bartender whom Shane waved over and orders two shots of vodka.
“Have a drink with me Hollander.” Under the warm glowing light of the bar Ilya’s complexion is golden. He hands Shane an ice-cold little shotglass. Shane forgets to say no thank you.
“In one go, ok? Don’t sip it. Do like taking a deep breath.” Ilya clinks the glasses together and throws back the shot, his adam's apple bobs once and Shane gets an eyeful of Ilya as a beautiful orthodox icon of sin, his hair a curly, cherubic halo, his strong hands clutching the little glass in front of the swell of his chest, fingers raised in a holy gesture; his shirt is unbuttoned exposing the dip at the center of his collar bone. Shane gulps. Hallelujah.
Ilya’s smacks his lips as he plonks down the glass. He registers that Shane hasn’t moved an inch and is looking at him like he has glimpsed the pearly gates instead. It makes him smile.
“Ok Hollander, don’t hit that drink too hard. Merry Christmas to you too.”
His eyes then focus on something past Shane’s shoulder.
“I have to go. Meeting a friend. See you around.”
Shane can’t help but stare at his back as he walks away. There’s a young man standing at the top of the stairs, where they lead down to the Bell Center lobby. The man is wearing a down coat, obviously waiting for Ilya to join him, out into the freezing Montreal winter. When he does, Ilya reaches for the man’s waist, but his hand disappears inside of the coat, and not, Shane is quick to notice, over-top of the coat. While you could grab a friend’s waist over-top of their coat, especially if you grew in Europe, where perhaps men are more touchy with each other (and Rozanov is good with his hands), there are very few reasons to grab a friend inside of his jacket, except… except to actually grab them by the waist, possessively, or to feel their heat, or maybe to allow that hand to wander more freely.
Shane is suddenly feeling excruciatingly hot. He wishes he could rip off his dress shirt just like he did his jacket. He slams back the shot of vodka, grimaces at the burn, and wipes his hand, ice cold and wet with the glass’s condensation over his forehead for relief.
‘I have seen many boners.’ That is what Rozanov told him! He said those exact words. For days Shane thought he must have meant as a health care worker. But now he’s breathlessly entertaining the possibility that Rozanov could have meant it differently. That he let slip something he hadn’t intended . Something that Shane is desperately trying to keep secret about himself.
—
After the Christmas party ends, at 1AM, both Ilya and Shane are lying awake in their separate beds. Ilya is watching the rise and fall of a man’s chest as he sleeps. He and Sasha hook up every now and then when the latter calls, asking to be bent over Ilya’s knee because his post-graduate exams are stressing him out. Ilya obliges. Tonight Ilya can’t quite catch his sleep though. Something still stirs in his loins. He reaches down and leisurely strokes himself, closing his eyes, thinking about Hollander. About the way his bicep bulged as he used it to cover his eyes with shame, about his tanned skin and the deep red way it blushes, down the gulping expanse of his throat. He recalls the delicious way Hollander groaned, and wonders if his embarrassment sounds anything like his pleasure. He recalls the outline of his chubbed up dick in his athletic shorts—Ilya comes quietly in his own hand.
Only a couple of miles away, Shane is lying in bed plagued by his own lustful thoughts. He considers Ilya’s words again. This time he’s stuck on whether it was so ‘natural’ that he got hard while Rozanov massaged his thigh. Blood flow be damned, he thinks if it had been Denier palpating his adductors he would remained indifferent. But he’s not—he’s different. He’s weak, and a pervert. He thrusts into his fist on each of those syllables: per-vert. And then again, a couple more times, until he moans and soils the sheets.