Work Text:
9:41am, February 18th 2025. Seaport District, Boston.
Cliff Marlow called him in.
They were old friends, had known each other since their police academy days. Unlike Ilya, Marlow hadn’t dropped out and gone rogue for the next five years, reappearing only after the death of his father. Instead, Marloq had graduated and worked under Colonel Grigori Rozanov at the Boston Police Department, climbing the rank to Major. His willingness to turn a blind eye to the blatant corruption and abuse of power going on under his nose was rewarded well. Since the funeral and his brother’s consequential promotion to his father’s position, Ilya had lost contact with Marlow. They didn’t approve of each other’s methods.
So, Ilya was surprised to receive the call from Major Marlow on a cold February morning, asking if he could come down to the station after lunch. At the time of the call, he was waiting to pick up his regular coffee and breakfast bagel from Dunkin’s. He must have been pale when he slipped the phone back into his pocket.
“Is it bad news?” Luca, who worked Thursday mornings, gave him a look of concern as he handed over the steaming cup and paper bag.
Accepting both with gratitude, Ilya shook his head. He hoped not. He bribed or threatened Boston officers to keep their mouths shut when they caught him lurking around crime scenes. And he was good at both. So, he doubted news of his presence at any of them would have made it back to Marlow. Regardless, Ilya rationalised anybody would have felt uneasy about being called down to Boston Police Headquarters. But, if the reason was linked to the countless laws he had broken, they probably would have taken him in wearing handcuffs. That made him feel better.
He gave Luca a tip, partially to cover his tracks but mostly because he liked the kid. Then, Ilya went out to the parking lot and ate the bagel with one hand as he drove to work. In the forefront of his mind, he couldn’t stop worrying he had gotten sloppy. Maybe he had stopped by one too many crime scenes or earned a reputation for meeting with shady figures at night. Even if he caught more bad guys than Boston Police did in a year (which he did), they wouldn’t like him acting alone. Especially since, technically, it was illegal to be a vigilante.
“Everybody is a critic.” Ilya muttered.
-
4:37am, February 17th 2025. Dorchester, Boston.
Hockey players were well known for being superstitious.
Some always wore their lucky socks or got dressed in the same order for every game. Others favoured a particular workout routine before they played. Nobody shaved during the playoff season, a tradition introduced by the 1980 New York Islander team which stuck like superglue. Montreal’s star centre Shane Hollander regularly attributed his three decades of success to yoga when reporters and journalists asked.
The truth was darker and, he suspected, far less palatable to the press.
“Fuck.” He stripped off his pair of bloody gloves carefully and deposited them into the trash bag.
It sounded ridiculous, Shane knew, but he began his ritual of taking a life before every hockey game when he was a teenager. By now, the murder was more of a daily chore than an art form. Like any lucky charm, he often wondered if his play would be affected if he dropped the terrible habit. There was no way Shane was willing to find out. He was in too deep now.
Today’s victim, ahead of the Canada vs Finland game he was playing tonight, had been a real bleeder. Throughout his career, Shane had gotten better at cleaning up the mess and disposing of the evidence. Nowadays, he rarely left a sign he had been at the scene. But that would be impossible today, given the puddles of blood and mangled body. It was his own fault for hitting an artery. Rookie mistake. He wondered if this was a bad indicator for this afternoon’s game.
Leaving the body buried in the dumpster, Shane slipped away from the crime scene as stealthily as a cat. He would dispose of the remaining evidence elsewhere.
Things had gotten more difficult over the years, something he was reluctant to admit to himself. Since his rookie season, homicides in Boston had dropped from around 100 per year to about 25. The police department and government were celebrating the lowest rate they had ever seen. This was bad news for Shane, who was playing twice in Boston before flying to Ottawa. Maybe he should’ve declined ‘the honour’ of representing Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off.
But he had accepted. And here he was, spending the next four days in Boston, where the police seemed capable of sniffing out homicides specifically.
Shane needed to lay low.
-
13:02pm, February 18th 2025. Roxbury, Boston.
Inside the headquarters was exactly the same as Ilya remembered it being. The smell of floor cleaner and old carpet made him feel queasy, probably from the time he spent here as a child. Being under his father’s eye always caused him to squirm. Ilya was grateful when, after his poor mother’s death, he was sent back to Europe for boarding school. It was better than home.
He was initially driven to join the police force, like his father and brother had before him, due to his mother’s tragic passing when he was twelve years old. Convinced his abusive father had murdered her, Ilya wanted justice. He wasn’t a fool, he knew how corrupt the police were — particularly his own family members. Stupidly, Ilya thought he could change things. When he realised he was wrong, he dropped out of the police academy and went soul searching.
Accepting his mother’s suicide had been hard. But it had changed his course in life, prompting Ilya to pursue psychology instead. Now, he had several fancy degrees from Harvard hanging on the wall of his office, where he ran his own therapy practice. Mostly, Ilya worked with men. Young gay men were his specialty. He thought his mother would be proud of how he had turned out.
“You want coffee, Roz?” Marlow asked.
“Does it still taste like shit?” Ilya responded, making him laugh.
Thankfully, his brother wasn’t working today (if Ilya had to guess, his lazy brother probably didn’t work a lot of days). This afternoon, he wasn’t in the mood to deal with Andrei.
It transpired he was here because Marlow needed a favour. He had a potential serial killer on his hands, but he didn’t think anybody was going to take him seriously. The links between crimes were tenuous. The evidence was circumstantial. Needless to say, Ilya was intrigued. A series of murders over the last twenty years, possibly longer, and nobody had ever been caught. Now, Marlow was suggesting they were committed by the same serial killer. That was big.
He showed Ilya some of the case files and they went over them together. Ilya spotted the patterns suggestive of a serial killer: they took place in same few months of the year, the perpetrator never left a weapon (although a knife was likely used), and the victims were always nobodies. Unconnected. There was no vengeance or recklessness here. This was careful, measured killing by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing. It was methodical. It was clinical.
“Why are you telling me this?” Ilya said, finally.
Leaning back in his cracked leather desk chair, Marlow exhaled a heavy sigh. He seemed to have aged twice as fast as Ilya and now resembled a much older man.
“Let’s not fuck around here, Roz.” He lowered his voice, “I know what you get up to at night, sneaking around Boston like a second-rate Batman. I know you’ve busted crooked officials and drug lords. You’re a pain in the ass, but Boston owes you a hell of a lot.”
Ilya tried to keep his muscles lax and his face neutral. He raised his eyebrows.
“Are you going to arrest me?” He tried to make it sound like a joke.
From his desk drawer, Marlow took out a manila file and tossed it across the desk. A peek inside revealed it held copies of documents from the homicide cases they were looking at. Needless to say, Ilya was not being arrested. Instead, he stood up and slipped the file discretely under his arm. The conversation seemed to be over.
“Bag this fucker.” Marlow said, getting to his feet, “And I’ll keep my mouth shut about you running around in a cape.”
“I don’t wear a cape.” Ilya replied, tersely, “Detectives don’t wear capes.”
His irritated tone didn’t deter Marlow from reaching across the desk to shake his hand. In fact, it made the corners of his mouth curl up in amusement, as if he had made a joke. Ilya decided to let it go. Still clutching the file, he shook Marlow's hand.
“Godspeed, Batman.” The police officer quipped.
-
5:02pm, February 18th 2025. Downtown, Boston.
His lucky charm had worked.
They defeated the Finnish team 5-3 and would be facing the USA in the final. Simultaneously, Shane felt the palpable relief from winning and the anxiety about what he would now have to do on Friday. It was the cocktail of emotions he regularly experienced after a win.
Because it was a special occasion (and Shane was a pushover), he joined the rest of the team at a bar to celebrate their victory. For the NHL Face-Off, it was seasoned players only, so there weren’t any overexcited rookies. No kids allowed, pronounced Hayden Pike, who would probably be retiring next season. His game was slipping and he had been pushed back to the fourth line. Shane was determined to remain centre until he retired from hockey, five or six years from now. He knew he had plenty of Stanley Cups and Olympic Medals left in him.
Hayden had plans for retirement, taking vacations with his wife and kids. The idea of stepping back from the sport terrified Shane. Hockey was his entire life. He had nothing else.
Well. He had one other thing.
“Get us another round, Hollander.” Troy Barrett urged.
He wasn’t about to do what the cocky loudmouth demanded, but the others joined in with the plea. Given how infrequently Shane went out, he likely owed most of his teammates a beer or two. There was a cheer as he got up from the table and sidled over to the bar.
After he placed his order (keeping it simple with 19 identical beers and one ginger ale), Shane waited with his hands in his pockets. Eyes wandering idly, his attention was caught by a good looking man seated on a barstool. He was nursing a glass of something clear, with ice, and scrawling in a notebook. It was impossible to read from here. His own eyes were fixed on his work, pen moving deftly across the page, and his curls kept falling stubbornly over his face.
Shane felt an unexpected tingle of attraction. He was alarmed.
It had been years since he last got laid and, truthfully, he had started to suspect there was something wrong with his libido. Even the most attractive and likeable women didn’t do much for him. Briefly, Shane considered seeking a doctor’s advice about it, then decided he was too ashamed. His mother had finally dropped the conversation about marriage and grandkids after he turned thirty without a steady relationship. Shane was married to hockey, his parents told people.
The stranger glanced up from his notebook and met Shane’s eyes. It sent a spark through him.
Oh no.
Oh no.
-
9:21pm, February 18th 2025. Seaport, Boston.
From the moment he saw the man standing there, awkward, overdressed in his blue button-down shirt, Ilya knew he was fucked. He didn’t have a type when it came to men (or women) but when he looked at someone, he either felt a sizzle of attraction or not. Looking at Shane Hollander, whose name he learned shortly after, Ilya felt like he had been lit on fire.
Shane was visiting the city for a tournament hockey because he played professionally and was representing Canada in a NHL game. He had a distinctly Canadian accent, which Ilya found endearing.. He continued to babble about hockey for a good ten minutes before he stopped, blushed, and apologised. By then, Ilya knew he was going to sleep with him. Not only was he incredibly attracted to Shane, the nature of his short stay in Boston meant there were no strings attached. That was the way Ilya liked his hook-ups.
He was grateful he kept his case notes, for both jobs, hidden away. Most hook-ups were uneasy about sleeping with a psychologist, as if he was going to analyse them too. Even harder to explain would be his part-time, unpaid career as an undercover detective. That had started three years ago, when Ilya decided to bring down the drug empire in Boston, which one of his clients had fallen victim to. The police were buyers and sellers. It had to be him.
Ilya liked when he was good at something. He excelled at tracking down criminals.
It was easy to take Shane back to his expensive and well-decorated apartment after a few drinks (though the Canadian was drinking ginger ale) and suck him off in the living room. Shane’s gasped excuse about it having been a long time seemed to be true because it took less than a minute. Then, Ilya carried him back to the bedroom and spread him out on the bed until he cried.
When he woke up in the morning, Shane was already gone with no sign he had ever been there.
-
3:59am, February 20th 2025. Roxbury, Boston.
After the killing was done, he made sure there was no evidence this time. It was bad enough the last one had made it into the papers. Thank god, journalists were speculating about gang crimes.
Shane asked his doctor for a higher dose of Lexapro. Things were stressful at work, he said.
-
10:12pm, February 20th 2025. West End, Boston.
He wondered whether it would be off-putting, buying a last minute ticket to the Canada vs United States game. Shane hadn’t left a phone number when he pulled his disappearing act early on Thursday morning, which suggested he wasn’t interested. Unfortunately, Ilya was very interested in him. And, when he was attracted to someone, he could be a little impulsive.
It was a close game, but Canada snagged the win. As somebody who thought of the USA as his home, despite being born and later schooled elsewhere, Ilya supposed he should have been disappointed. He was, after all, a US citizen. However, seeing the delight on Shane’s face as he pumped his fist victoriously (they showed it on the big screens) made it hard to hold it against Team Canada. Ilya had always liked hockey and, regardless of any potential allegiance he felt, could see Shane Hollander played a damn good game of hockey. Plus, it was hot as hell.
Afterwards, Ilya lurked behind the super fans, who were waiting to get photos and autographs. Patiently, he waited for his turn to talk to Shane. The hockey player spotted him long before he got to the front of the crowd and kept looking in his direction while he was talking to other people. There was a curious expression on his face.
When Ilya reached him at last, Shane said: “If you said you were coming, I would’ve gotten you a better seat. And it would’ve been free. I had two tickets and nobody to give them to.”
Ilya raised his eyebrows, but was charmed by the generosity. Besides, it implied Shane might have invited Ilya to watch him play tonight, if he had the nerve. He got the impression, from watching Shane’s constant anxious fidgeting, he wasn’t brave enough to do something like that. Not yet. It was interesting, given he had no problem talking normally with fans before.
“You should have told me you were coming.” Shane added.
He had changed out of his hockey gear into what Ilya assumed were his normal clothes: a t-shirt, pair of gym shorts, and sneakers. Unfortunately, Ilya couldn’t stop himself from snickering.
“What?” Shane demanded, confused.
“You are wearing shorts in February.” Ilya said.
Nobody was looking and they were around the back of the building. After checking they were alone, Shane leaned in to kiss him. Then, more flustered than authoritative, he told Ilya to drive him back to his apartment. By the time they arrived and Ilya opened the door, they were too desperate to keep their clothes any further than the hallway. They made love on the floor.
Twice, they did it on the bed. Afterwards, Shane was too tuckered out to make it to the bathroom, so Ilya fetched a damp cloth instead. He cleaned the man’s body tenderly, marvelling at the muscles built by years of athleticism and his flawless skin alike. Under the blanket, he wrapped an arm around Shane’s body and pulled it flush against his own.
“I have a flight tomorrow…” Shane mumbled into the pillow.
Ilya shushed him and told him to go back to sleep.
-
6:00am, February 21st 2025. Seaport, Boston.
The trilling of a cellphone woke Shane up from an astonishingly deep sleep. Usually, he slept lightly and stirred at the slightest noise, which wasn’t great when staying overnight in a city like Boston. His body still felt heavy as he struggled to open his eyes. Barely conscious, he registered the ringtone wasn’t the familiar piano music he had set as his own.
Although Ilya shifted beside him to grab his phone, the arm draped over Shane didn’t move. The body wrapped around him was warm. His voice was husky with sleep when he answered the call.
“Marley, what the fuck?” He grumbled.
Despite himself, Shane’s dick twitched with interest. It wasn’t his fault that Ilya sounded incredibly sexy when he was half-asleep, deep and drowsy. Not to mention, the man had delivered the best (and only) sex he had in years. From what he remembered of his more promiscuous years, distant though they were, Ilya was better than anyone else he had slept with.
From the other end of the phone, he heard a man’s voice: “It will only take a minute, asshole. Remember I’m doing you a favour here.”
Shane’s ears perked up too. The phone call sounded important.
“I have a new case to add to your list. Obviously, we’ll be looking into it down here too. But it has all the signature signs of our guy.”
As Ilya’s phone friend went over the details of a body found yesterday in Roxbury, Shane felt his blood turn ice cold. At the bar, Ilya said he worked as a therapist — more of a counsellor, he said, because therapist sounded Freudian — in a private practice. He hadn’t mentioned having any link to the police. Blood pounding in his ears, Shane wondered if Ilya lured him back here deliberately, in the hopes of extracting information out of him. After twenty six years of killing across the United States and Canada, had somebody caught on to what Shane was doing?
To his surprise, his dick was harder now. The thrill of potentially being found out was sending volts of arousal straight to his lower belly. Really? Shane thought. He shifted to find a more comfortable position and Ilya, who had finished his call and set the phone aside, noticed he was awake.
“Did I wake you?” He murmured, pressing a kiss behind Shane’s ear, “Sorry.”
“Was it a work thing?” Shane asked, keeping his tone neutral.
Ilya huffed out a laugh: “No, just a friend. I hate people who get up early.”
There was a subtle accent, which Shane hadn’t managed to place yet. It sounded Eastern European, like the Czech or Polish players he met in the past. Whatever it was, it didn’t help Shane’s morning wood go down. It was his turn to grumble.
“You hate me?” He dared to sound teasing.
“Some things are worth getting up for.” Ilya planted a series of soft kisses down his jaw, “Coffee?”
If he knew the horrible, unforgivable things Shane had done, would he be kissing him like that? No matter how liberal Ilya seemed, it was hard to believe he popped boners for serial killers. Maybe the phone call really was just a friend—
“Fuck coffee.” He said.
Shane had a flight to Ottawa this afternoon. As soon as he got on the plane, he vowed he would cut off his newly formed connection with Ilya Rozanov and pretend he never met the man. Perhaps, the next time they visited Boston, he would fake an injury so he wouldn’t have to play. Make sure nobody was growing suspicious of him.
At this point, Ilya had a hand on his dick. Fuck it, Shane thought.
“When is your flight?” The man purred against his neck.
Rolling over to face him, Shane cupped his angular jaw in his hands: “I have time.”
This would be a final goodbye.
-
9:10am, January 24th 2026. Seaport, Boston.
Text message from Shane (hockey):
Hey. Where do you want to meet after the game? — Shane
Ilya grinned to himself.