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The billboard was on corner of Houston and Lafayette. It was for Miu Miu, apparently, some high fashion brand that Shane had never heard about, something he would’ve never even paid attention to if it weren’t for Ilya in the shot, looking down at everyone crossing the street in designer spectacles. They weren’t even sunglasses either, but the full-blown reading type: there Ilya was, laying across the expanse of the ad in an open fur parka, the hard lines of his abdomen peeking underneath, and an index finger hooked between his gnashing teeth, but what got Shane was the way the glasses perched, low, off the bridge of his nose, playfully on the verge of not being useful for seeing at all. The narrow oval frames, which would have been deeply un-alluring if it weren’t Ilya sporting them, like something a mean librarian would wear, suddenly made all the sense in the world.
It occurred to Shane that he was looking at art, which is to say that Ilya looked like a masterpiece in his tortoise shell glasses. Shane tried his best not to gawk, turning with a tight jaw to the very real, bare-faced Ilya next to him. But he was sporting a shit-eating grin regardless, like he knew he’d have this effect on Shane and all the unsuspecting residents of Manhattan.
“Surprise,” he said, because this was apparently what Ilya had been working on for weeks, a hush-hush venture between him, Yuna, and their agent Farah; Ilya had been underutilized in terms of brand deals and sponsorships throughout his whole career, so he’d wanted to make a splash and this was apparently it.
“It’s not just this billboard, right? Probably print ads, and digital, too,” Shane guessed, which made him feel like his mother.
Ilya shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the details. “What? Are you afraid of everyone looking at me? Your very sexy husband?”
“They can look all they want,” Shane countered. “I see you enough as it is.”
“Ah, but that is the difference, yes?”
“What?”
Ilya leaned in, closer to Shane, and let his pinky trail up Shane’s arm, tracing what felt like an infinity sign, or more maddeningly, a pair of glasses.
“Everyone else can see,” he said, so close his air of his words reached Shane’s nape. “But only you can touch.”
Shane could barely pretend this didn’t send the blood rushing up the base of his spine, like his body suddenly needed a bed and not for sleep. They had some time off in the city before their game with the Admirals in a few days, and they had planned for a stroll and some hard-to-get dinner reservation, but suddenly all Shane wanted to do was call a taxi, book it back to the hotel, and sink onto Ilya’s lap without their clothes on.
In full understanding, or perhaps a specific kind of newlywed telepathy, Ilya took Shane by the hand and hailed for a taxi that would not come soon enough. Shane stifled a laugh, glancing back at the billboard, as a car pulled up to the curb and Ilya was hauling him into the backseat.
It was strange: Shane had the real thing in front of him, but he couldn’t deny the mystique of Ilya in glasses. He allowed himself another look at the billboard as they drove away. The glasses made Ilya’s bright stare seem like a thinly veiled secret, a mystery solved if you only looked past the glare in the lens. They were a barrier, but not for the person who could see right through you, who knew you were hiding in plain sight.
Or maybe Shane had just gone nonsensical with lust. He cleared his throat, looking back to his Ilya in flesh and bone, and did his best to settle.
“Those glasses,” he said, his voice low under the car engine. “Did the brand let you keep them, after the shoot?”
Ilya turned back to Shane and keep a straight face. He let his mouth hang open slightly, like drawing in air for the answer, and let it stretch into a cheeky, ambiguous smile.
“Are they prescription?” Shane managed to ask breathlessly later, though he knew the answer as much as when Ilya’s next dentist appointment was, and when he had to refill on his meds next. Shane knew Ilya probably didn’t need them for seeing, but he couldn’t be completely sure; he also couldn’t keep his eyes off of those stupid Miu Miu glasses, which was perfectly fine because here he was, straddling Ilya in their hotel bed, taking in their closeness like they weren’t going to come out of this with two bodies by the end of this. If they did manage to become one, so freakishly conjoined, he figured Ilya’s eyes were his eyes now too, and that it was his every right to worry about them.
“I am inside you,“ Ilya could barely manage, “and you are asking about my eyes.”
“It could affect your game,” Shane huffed out, before Ilya thrust up into him and made him lose his next train of thought. Shane pressed back into Ilya too, swiveling his hips so they met for the rhythm, that familiar pressure of Ilya prying him open every time, without fail. Only this time: Shane was moaning against Ilya’s cheek, their faces close, which left the lens all fogged up by his breath.
The lopsided glasses made Shane giddy, which then made him want to work harder, because the sex hair and the fucked up sheets and tilted glasses meant that none of it was in order, none of it was tidy, which was fine, because there was a time and place for this kind of mess and that usually involved sex with Ilya. And god, did he love it. Primarily it was because he loved Ilya that the sex was so good, but as a not-so-distant second he loved that he got to unspool and unfurl and all those other words that meant open open open.
“Is this what you see too?” Shane asked. “When I wear mine?”
Ilya frowned, his grin not matching the more troubled part of his face. “Fuck, Hollander,” he could only mutter, already blissed out, enough to throw his head back and nearly hit the headboard.“Don’t ask me to think right now please.”
“But I get it now,” Shane continued, relentless, ever the rider. “Why you love me in—mm, glasses.”
“Do you?”
Shane nodded, shivering into the fullness of taking Ilya to the hilt. He closed his eyes, even if it cost him a moment away from this view; but on the bright side, this meant he could open his eyes again and pretend he was looking at Ilya all over again, for the first time, because his brain was in that kind of haze anyway, like all his personhood had fallen away aside from the place where he and Ilya had come together. He even dared to slow his rhythm into nothing, lifting off a bit, which made Ilya crunch up from the bed, clamoring at Shane’s ass with both his hands to push back down on his cock.
Ilya grinned, like he’d suddenly regained some semblance of sense. “Tell me,” he panted out, while letting his hips work up into Shane again. “What were you going to say?”
Shane could’ve sworn he had an answer, but it occurred to him that his head had dissolved into a pure, thoughtless heat, capable of only breath and wordless sound and contact. He let himself lay on Ilya like this, faces close, which Ilya took as a sign to wrap his arms around Shane’s waist and flip him back onto the mattress.
“Use your words,” Ilya goaded Shane, insisting on this with his mouth against Shane’s ear. “What do you love about me in glasses?”
But it was all too close and too late. Ilya began to chase his own pleasure before he could get an answer, which was Shane’s pleasure in the end too. They continued like this, until both of them were too close to the edge to form any more questions or taunts. Shane smiled into it. Wasn’t this just another form of love? This incoherency? Sex so good it made you dumber than dumb? Before he came, Shane let himself empty of all his outside worries: any logistics about the game they’d play tomorrow against the Admirals; another ad he’d have to shoot in a few days; that they’d be late to dinner at this rate. He just looked at Ilya in his glasses, and then through them, at the crinkle in his eyes and the love bruising his cheeks all pink under the tortoise-shell frames. Ilya’s gaze wandered down Shane’s body before returning, always returning, to meet him in the eye.
With what was left of him, Ilya gripped Shane’s chin and breathed the question close: tell me, he whispered, so thick with the exhale that Shane couldn’t even be sure he was asking something audible, tell me, which Shane found himself mouthing along with too, if only because they really had done it this time, blurring all the borders of one body versus another.
Either way Shane wanted to answer, because he was not one to leave a challenge unanswered, and not when it was Ilya posing it—but in the end he found himself coming, all his nerves snapping apart, which left him slack-jawed and sputtering and plummeting into his own release. Ilya followed not long after, draping his dead weight on top of Shane, and soon the both of them were laughing, incredulous, because this was the kind of life that found them and it was as a very good one.
Shane looked up, still unbothered enough to not fix Ilya’s glasses. He stifled a smile, realized how little use it was to try to hide it, and decided he would just have to give Ilya all the happiness he could muster.
“Beautiful,” Shane finally answered, gathering all his strength to kiss the bridge of his nose. “I think you look very beautiful.”
The problem: everyone else found Ilya gorgeous in glasses too.
Shane first noticed it when they rushed to dinner after their romp in the hotel room. The both of them were still too obviously tender to deal with the outside world, which Shane felt when he fumbled with his credit card for the taxi, and then saw in Ilya when he pushed on the restaurant door instead of pulled. They were clumsy in the aftermath, strangely breathless, hair matted in odd spots, their clothes all rumpled and constantly needing to be rearranged, like suddenly the fabric made no sense on bare skin. Ilya couldn’t help his knowing smile, which made Shane sport his too, and soon they looked like fools in the packed vestibule of the restaurant, bumping arms out of some need for closeness.
“We look like idiots,” Shane muttered to him.
“Fucked out idiots,” Ilya revised, kissing his husband on the cheek. “Idiots in love.” He still even had his glasses on, at Shane’s request, which he pushed up his face like a college professor. Shane took notice of the people waiting along with them in the lobby, suddenly self-conscious of their giggles, their whispers, and shuffled closer to Ilya regardless.
“Rose says she couldn’t even get a reservation here,” he tried distracting himself. “And she can get a reservation anywhere.”
“And?” Ilya shrugged. “We have one of those.”
“Sure, but we’re forty minutes late. There’s no way they’ll seat us.”
“Is this place even that good?”
“It’s supposed to be,” which Shane knew because he had looked up a fair share of reviews, and scanned the menu no less than a dozen times. “There’s this ceviche I saw on the appetizer list that looks nice. And I hear they do miracles with chard. And the key lime pie at the end doesn’t look so bad either.”
“So, yes, then,” and Ilya looked at him with so much warmth for some reason. “It seems like you really want to eat here.”
“No.”
Ilya tipped his head downward, with a look that amounted to the name, Shane. Shane could hear the softness in it, even without the voice, and felt some need to concede the tightness he was beginning to hold in his shoulders. Shane thought about cutting his losses right then and there, that it would be far too embarrassing to go up and ask about it at the front desk, but Ilya took his hand in his and led him to there, anyway.
“Hi,” he said to the host flatly, who seemed to startle at the sight of Ilya altogether.
“Oh,” the host said. “Ilya.”
Ilya blinked once, twice. “Uh, yes?”
“Dana, from Boston.” She leaned in. “Don’t you remember? We…”she trailed off, before letting herself linger on the sight of his glasses. “I’m sorry, those glasses—god they look good on you.”
The host possessed that kind of bewildered, smiling face that overcame someone when they found themselves completely and utterly gone. Shane felt himself shifting right next to Ilya, suddenly territorial, mashing his lips together if only that would bring attention to the swollenness Ilya had caused in the first place. The host, a beautiful off-duty model, kind of woman, continued to drink Ilya in shamelessly. Shane found himself sharp in his glare, like that itself could sever the moment in half, before he did his best to stifle the feeling.
Ilya didn’t seem interested in rekindling this torrid love affair anyway. He gave the host his usual excuse when his too-good sex with Shane led to late dinner appointments, which is to say their poor cat so-and-so was very sick.
“Poor Dmitri,” he decided on a Russian name this time, though his voice had an extra buoyant quality to it, almost mocking, which Shane was sure would break the host out of his love spell.
But the host, lingering at eye-level with Ilya, typed something into the computer before saying, “oh, yes, of course, Ilya. Someone actually cancelled their table last minute. It’s by the kitchen though, if you don’t mind.”
“Ah, no. My husband doesn’t really like sitting around there,” Ilya said, which wasn’t a lie. Shane hated the coming and going of waiters, the swinging of the door, the sizzle of the fire and the screaming chefs and the many mixing aromas. Ilya glanced at a spot towards the window instead, quiet and dim-lit, and smiled in a way that meant he was about to try his luck.
Shane shot him a look, Ilya, don’t, but it was too late. The host seemed to pick up on what Ilya wanted, before shiftily typing something into her computer again. She whispered something about breaking the rules, before winking and showing them to their table anyway.
“Well, please let me know if you need anything,” she said, before dropping Ilya and Shane off at the table. “And Ilya.”
“Yes?”
“Seriously, great look,” the host said, tracing the vague space around her eyes. “You’ll have the world eating out of your hands, if you keep those on.”
She left, and Ilya seemed to mull over the idiom as he sat down. He looked like he was about to ask Shane the meaning, before he put two and two together himself and spread into the most impish, shit-eating grin.
That was the night Ilya learned he could get anything he wanted, if he kept the glasses on.
At this, Shane shuddered. The world had no idea what was coming.
The next time Ilya wore his glasses, it was to show off. They were back home in Ottawa, having dinner at Shane’s parents’. Mostly, it was to commemorate an endorsement deal well done, and the not-so-modest bump in Instagram followers, but Ilya also wore the glasses because he thought it meant he’d get spoiled more, which Shane thought was silly since they spoiled him rotten enough as it was.
Over a glass of white wine, Yuna bemoaned that the percentage of first-time donors had fallen year-over-year, and that she was having trouble getting those numbers back up. Of course the Irina Foundation prided itself on their hockey program, and the mostly-serious (but earnest) tone of their social media presence, but she dabbled with something lighter for this newest campaign, citing that it might inspire younger donors.
“The New Yorker gives out tote bags with every new subscription,” David offered.
“Everyone does tote bags these days,” Yuna waved away. “But swag isn’t a bad idea.”
All of them started ideating casually over pasta and breadsticks. Shane suggested stress balls at first, which made Ilya sing-song the word bo-ring like it was a ballad. David thought of some kind of commemorative coin, which was even more boring than the stress-ball idea, while Ilya was outlandish enough to suggest raffling off a Maserati. Yuna thought of signed jerseys, pucks, posters. It was a storm of ideas, until Ilya unexpectedly sat back in his chair and looked down at his chain, crossing his arms.
“Hey,” Shane reached over, running a palm over the back of Ilya’s neck. “Are you all right?”
Ilya cleared his throat. “Yes, just.” His voice was thick with feeling, always too many to name. “It is nice that we keep growing the foundation. With all these new ideas. She would have liked that.”
There was a moment of silence at the table, not too weighted but still blanketed, somehow, in a particular warmth. Yuna reached across the table, where Ilya found her hand right in the middle, grasping it with his own.
“You know what else she would have liked?” Yuna asked softly, cutting the quiet down carefully.
She waited for Ilya to raise his head a bit.
“You in those glasses.”
“Mom!” Shane tried to chide, but even Ilya had broken out into something of a gushing smile, nodding along like he agreed.
“What? I mean, yes, they’re supposed to be high fashion,” Yuna remarked, “I get that, but you look, I don’t know—like you just won the Nobel Peace Prize, or something.”
She shot David a look, but he tilted his head, studying Ilya, as if he had a different interpretation.
“I was thinking more like an Oscar winner, maybe. But not for acting. Maybe for something more background like…cinematography?”
“Very artsy,” said Yuna.
“Distinguished.”
Shane didn’t understand where all of this was going. Ilya was Ilya, always gorgeous, glasses on or not.
“The hostess at the restaurant the other day,” Ilya added with a mouthful of pasta, “she wanted to leap at my bones.”
“Jump your bones,” Shane corrected, even though saying that in front of his parents was mortifying enough as it was.
“She even gave us best table in the whole place. All because of…” Ilya waved vaguely at his face.
Yuna considered this for a moment. “You’re having an effect on people, to say the least, which gives me an idea,” she said, before leaving the table for her personal office.
“And, Shane,” she called, from down the hall. “Do you have your glasses, too?”
“No, because they’re on my nightstand, and they’re just for reading,” he rolled his eyes, but he knew it wouldn’t matter when it came to his mother’s ideas.
He looked back towards Ilya, who just seemed glazed over with fondness at this point, something that still happened once in a while even after years of time with his parents. Still, Shane understood. He reached over and held Ilya’s hand in his lap, while David served Ilya another serving of pasta and extra grated parmesan on the side.
Yuna got the idea together in rapid time. She’d taken a Polaroid camera from her home office, instructing Shane and Ilya to take as many as they could of each other in the middle of mundane happenings, whether this meant washing the dishes, or grocery shopping, or taking Anya on a walk. It was simple, but ingenious: people were always clamoring for glimpses of Shane and Ilya, especially those domestic little scenes, and so why not package it in a series of randomized trading cards, free with at least a $20 donation to the Irina Foundation? She even mapped out how many Polaroids they’d need, and rarity level tiers, potential holographic printing for the most elusive snapshots.
Shane thought it was a clever idea, and certainly low lift enough, though he still wasn’t exactly comfortable with letting the public in like this; in the end though, it was for a good cause, and he loved how they were able to take pictures like this now, without having to trash them.
Ilya got right to work that night. His face was giddy behind the camera, cheekbones high in his smile, where he captured most, if not all, of the pictures in pairs. Shane and Ilya, eating popcorn on the couch, face lit up by the movie they were watching. Shane and Ilya, cuddling Anya on the floor. Ilya orchestrated shots of them taking out the garbage, and meal prepping for tomorrow morning, and brushing their teeth, which even Shane found too boring to fathom; but Ilya was all too happy to do it, and Shane was happy to see him happy.
“Hold still,” Ilya said, when he was straddling Shane in bed next, his finger pressed over the trigger of the camera, his naked eye stuck to the pinhole. Shane laid under him in his glasses, squirming, until Ilya stilled him with no other than a shift of his hips.
“The pictures have to be family-friendly,” Shane complained, but his smile was too big and dopey to really betray concern.
“Does it look like we’re having sex? Should I take a picture of your dick instead?”
“Fuck you.”
Ilya grinned. “Yuna should let us keep the camera when we’re done. Because we could really start a private collection if you wanted and—”
“Just shut up and take the picture already.”
But Ilya lowered the camera from his face, if only to take a better look. Shane had come to learn what Ilya’s favorites were over the years, like which side of the bed he preferred, the kind of tea leaves he liked to steep (oolong, sometimes earl grey). That no amount of styling or designer labels could compare to Shane’s shower-dried hair, or the sweatshirt with the slightly too-loose collar that showed off a single collarbone. And not to mention the glasses. And Ilya had never really verbalized these preferences, but showed it in his usual way, inhaling Shane just below the neck and carding his fingers through Shane’s hair. He tossed the camera aside, running a hand up Shane’s shirt, so sudden in his adoration that Shane got nearly forgot what they were here for.
“Hey,” Shane giggled. “Come on, we’ve got to get the shot. Mom says they’re the most important ones.”
“I still don’t understand why.”
“She says they’ll only print, like, a hundred of those cards. You know, of us in glasses. It’ll be a rare collectible sort of thing.”
Ilya groaned with the utmost dramatics, though he’d been the one most excited about taking the pictures in the first place. But he sat back up anyway, a good as son as he could be, and took the camera back in his hands.
“Skazhi izyum,” he said, which was some Russian equivalent of say cheese, though instead of cheese it was, oh, what was it again?
“Raisins?” Shane asked, a small frown knit in his face.
But Ilya took the picture anyway, looking proud as hell for the surprise.
“No, wait, retake that! I wasn’t ready!” But soon enough, the two of them were wrestling for the camera, laughing between kisses, the inevitable tangling of limbs. Shane decided he didn’t care if he was smiling or not in his picture, and let himself succumb to the usual pleasures of marital bliss. Shane reached under Ilya’s waistband to work on his forming erection, grinning, while Ilya reciprocated in the touch.
“Mm,” Ilya huffed out, already enraptured. “And what about my picture? I want a rare trading card, too.”
Glancing over at the nightstand, Shane saw Ilya’s glasses. He shook his head at this, too needy to endure another interruption, and whispered, “later,” as he pressed their bodies closer. Ilya didn’t seem too pressed about this, obliging with another peck on the lips, and then a longer, headier kiss. He yanked off Shane’s glasses so he could get both eyelids, and then settled on resting against his temple.
Shane took his turn straddling him next. In truth, he didn’t want to take Ilya’s picture for the trading card. Not like this, anyway. It was enough that people got those gorgeous views of him on the billboard, and those other photos of him, but Shane felt suddenly overcome with a need to keep at least some of Ilya all to himself, which included any view of Ilya like this against the sheets. Shane decided, glasses or not, that some things were better kept private. Tomorrow, he would take proper pictures of them in glasses in the daylight, under a proper blue sky, if that’s all his mother wanted. He would take photos of them in cereal aisle, driving home from practice, packing for away games. Shane could offer this kind of opening. He could let the world bear witness and not feel it was about to end.
But anything here, in this bed, like this, was off-limits. Before they could go any further, Shane found the polaroid Ilya took of him, holding it up to show him the developed result.
“I don’t hate the idea of a private collection actually,” Shane told Ilya. “Maybe this could be the first one in it?”
Shane half-expected Ilya to say it was too tame for anything like a secret stash, but Ilya just nodded along, panting hard and open-mouthed, before kissing Shane back down onto the mattress.
“Skazhi izyum,” Ilya whispered, “Skazhi izyum,” and all Shane could do was beam at the command.
As it turned out, everyone loved the Hollander-Rozanov Domestic Scene Trading Card Series. At first, Shane thought it’d only be a modest success at most, because who even wanted a photo of him, cleaning out the sink drain, but people seemed to love the concept, and the fact that the cards came as a matching set—if you had a card of Shane, washing the dishes, then you were missing Ilya doing the same; if you had Ilya, eating chicken breast, then you were missing the photo of Shane, cutting neatly into his. A whole subreddit even opened up in their honor, with posts looking for the Ilya to their Shane; i have sitting-in-the-lawnchair-ilya but does anyone have sitting-in-the-lawnchair-shane? one redditor wrote. i will even trade you my coffee-making-ilya if you’re willing to part ways.
The Centaurs locker room was not immune to the frenzy. They took to forming their own club of sorts, where they spent a lot of their time heatedly exchanging trading cards. Wyatt Hayes was leading the charge after practice that day, because of course he was, but mostly everyone had gotten involved, if only because they considered it a delight to see some glimpses of the Ilya and Shane’s marriage.
“I got Hollzy at the grill!” Evan Dykstra shouted, as he sorted through his newest pack. “Say, Bood, don’t you need that one? I’ll trade you for Hollzy-doing-laundry, I’m missing him.”
Bood considered the trade before shaking hands with him. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” Turning over to Troy, who was still unwrapping the foil of his pack, he said, “hey, if you get Rozy-making-buttered-toast, you better tell me.”
Ilya and Shane just stood by the door, surveying the commotion. Only Wyatt seemed to zero in on them, his hands mindlessly flipping through the cards as if he were a seasoned casino dealer.
“Say,” he said to them, eyes narrowed. “There’s gotta be some rare ones in the mix. What are they?”
“That is a secret,” Ilya answered.
“Are they nudes?”
“Yes,” Ilya deadpanned at the same time Shane said, oh fuck no.
Just then, Troy finished flipping to the last card and said, “oh shit, this one’s shiny.”
A gaggle of Centaurs gathered around him immediately, gawking at the trading card. The photo was of Ilya under that blue sky that Shane had promised before, looking straight ahead at camera in his Miu Miu glasses. Luca looked like he was about to cry. Chouinard applauded. Tanner Dillon just clicked his tongue, like he was offended by the sight, before Shane glanced at his phone and saw him searching: do girls dig guys who wear glasses?
“Ilya has plenty of those fashion ads circulating already,” Shane chimed in. “And he’s wearing glasses in those.”
“Yeah, but that’s editorial.” Wyatt took a closer look at the card. “Distant. This,” he said, pointing, “like, that’s just Rozy, you know? Stripped down. Boy next door. Au naturale.”
“He’s not even nude!” Shane threw his hands up.
“Well, he might as well be,” said Bood. “God, cap, you pull off those glasses like no one’s business.”
“You just look so human,” Dillon exhaled.
“What, like I am normally a lizard person?” Ilya asked.
“No, like some kind of Renaissance muse, or something,” Chouinard answered for all of them, with Luca nodding aggressively in the background. “For a fucking oil painting or something.”
“In the nude?” LaPointe suggested. “Well, everything except the specs…”
“No!” Shane was in hell. “No one is getting naked!”
Troy made an L-shape with his index finger and thumb, like suddenly he was a movie director and Ilya was his newest muse. “You’re like one of those rom-com heartthrobs. Harris and I watched one the other night, where this campus bad boy is actually a huge nerd. You know, secretly pounding textbooks in the library.”
“Yes, exactly!” Wyatt said. “You’re like the opposite of the girl that takes off her glasses in a movie and everyone realizes she’s hot. You put them on, for that effect.”
Ilya looked mildly offended. “Oh, so you did not think I was hot before?”
“Eh, on paper, I guess.”
“On paper,” Ilya repeated back, grimacing. “Like taxes? You think I am as interesting as doing your fucking taxes?”
The room devolved into chaos after this, and Troy was absolutely subsumed. Chouinard offered his whole existing Ilya collection, plus a few of his Shanes, while Wyatt offered this plus some offer to front a month’s worth of beers. Bood said he’d give up some of his long-held secret grill recipes for it, claiming that Cassie would kill for it for her collection. And then there was Luca, who didn’t even want the card per se, just a chance to use the photo for a drawing reference, while Dillon was still on his phone, now looking up Moo Moo Glasses for Sale Near Me.
Shane began to feel a headache come on, some sudden sense that everything was too loud and too much. Practice was done for the day anyway, so he thought about stepping out and waiting in the parking lot, but Ilya took Shane by the hand and led him out of the locker room first, like he knew. Ilya always did. They walked through the hall in silence for a bit, before Shane exhaled and said, “sorry.” He wasn’t even sure what he was sorry for.
“That card isn’t even so impressive,” Ilya mused. “I like Shane-drinking-ginger-ale. Or the one with Shane and Anya.”
Shane looked up to find Ilya already smiling at him, in that inescapably sincere way that Shane could never help but return.
“Well, I like Ilya-napping-on-the-couch,” he said, feeling somewhat embarrassed.
“Oh? What else?”
“Ilya-driving-us-home. One hand on the steering wheel.”
“And?” Ilya drew Shane closer, letting himself bump against the wall.
“I also like Ilya with Anya.”
“Maybe Anya is the one who needs her own holographic card, then.” Ilya tapped his forehead to his. “I do have a favorite one, though,” he said, which did pique Shane’s interest.
“Yeah?”
“It’s this one of Shane Hollander, under a blue sky, wearing glasses.”
“No fucking way,” Shane grinned. “You pulled that?”
“I think I was always meant to have it.”
“Not sure if I’ll have the same luck, though.”
Ilya hummed, before rummaging into his gym bag. He pulled out his glasses again, putting them on, before telling him, “ah, but isn’t this better? Having the real thing?”
Shane couldn’t disagree. He leaned in for a kiss, a rare show of such open PDA, before a gasp came from the other end of the hall.
Luca Haas was standing there, flabbergasted. He dropped his gym bag, blinking, before declaring, “Captain, I’m sorry, but I have to draw you.”
And Ilya laughed. He declined as kindly as he could, while Shane saw the firsthand effects of a world going mad.
10 THINGS ILYA ROZANOV HAS GOTTEN AWAY WITH IN HIS FUCKASS MIU MIU GLASSES
A Mental List by Shane Hollander
- Late Dinner Reservation #2 (On the road, on an off-day in Boston. Ilya had seemed extra keyed up after a Dunkin run, so they spent all morning in bed, which turned into an afternoon, and then one more spirited session at sunset. They were only thirty minutes for their reservation this time, and Ilya used the name “Munchkin” for their fake cat emergency. The host practically swooned.)
- A Traffic Violation (But Ilya was only going a little over the speed limit! Promise! It had also been Shane’s fault, partially. They were at home in Ottawa, and he’d made the unfortunate error of talking about the excellent snugness of his new boxer briefs. The officer was mesmerized, and let Ilya go with a warning.)
- Nearly Killing the Very Mean Equipment Manager, Terry (But not in a way that was like, homicide, or anything. Ilya had just noticed that he wasn’t particularly kind to Shane out of all the players, which he thought was for some more nefarious reason at first. It turned out that Terry just really hated the Voyageurs, and still hadn’t forgiven Shane for the many years he’d terrorized the league. Shane found this immensely fair, honestly, but Ilya had come up to him in his glasses, already some lecture personified. “Do you see that pretty man, sitting on the other side of the dressing room?” Ilya had asked. “Doesn’t the sight of him make you want to be nice to him all the time?” Terry merely nodded at Ilya in his glasses, so infatuated he’d gone pale with it, like his body was about to shut down. From then on, he was only ever pleasant with Shane, smiles on all the time.)
- Late Dinner Reservation #3 (Toronto, and they were a whole hour late that time. Ilya used the name Mildred for their fake cat, while Shane tried his best not to think of how Ilya had blown him to the moon and back in the shower.)
- A Broken Vase (They had been tasked with watering the plants at Yuna and David’s house while they were away for a long weekend. Ilya joked that they had never tried anything in the solarium, which led to Shane initiating a heavy makeout session right then and there, which then led to a vase falling off a side table. Shane had freaked out, knowing that his mother had procured it in some small artisan shop in Kyoto, but Ilya explained the situation calmly over FaceTime that evening, and his mother took the news with amusement. “You know,” she’d even said, “those glasses make you look like you’d be so good at pottery. So sage. Have you ever tried picking it up as a hobby?”)
- Torturing Hayden Pike Within A Centimeter of His Life (During lunch with the Pikes at their residence in Montreal. Ilya had gone on a relentless spree of torturing Hayden as usual, but Hayden seemed distracted as all hell, nodding along like Ilya was suddenly his father, and he was receiving some life-changing advice. It was disturbing, to say the least, and Ilya found it all a hallow victory. He took his glasses off, if only to get in a proper fight, and Shane watched as Hayden’s face scrunched up in its usual Ilya-induced scowl, like he’d been freed from a magic spell.)
- Insane eBay Resell Prices (Which wasn’t to say that Shane’s trading card was doing that badly on the resale market; since he was hockey’s golden boy, his cards were always fetching high prices by default, but he had to admit that Ilya’s card had inspired a different kind of animal altogether, often resulting in the most spirited bidding wars they had ever seen for a piece of paper. Ilya, on the other hand, had threatened to buy every single one of Shane’s cards. “This will not do,” he even told Shane. “People will be able to put glasses-you in their pocket, and I cannot have that.” Shane warmed at this, feeling too fond for words.)
- Mesmerizing the Entire Centaurs Roster (Around the arena—though not during games—Ilya wore his glasses to tape review, and the locker room, where the team seemed to react with undying gusto; suddenly bag skates had become a pleasurable pursuit, and everyone wanted to get in some extra cardio, like it was a death sentence to let Ilya-in-glasses down. Shane didn’t mind this part of it, not at all, in fact, because it meant the team was doing their best to prepare for games, even if the reason felt like something akin to hypnosis. They didn’t even seem to mind Shane and Ilya’s lively hotel room trysts, which usually traumatized any Centaur that had the misfortune of staying next to them.)
- Even More Public Displays of Affection (Which Shane usually tried to avoid, but even he couldn’t resist. As the rest of the world noticed Ilya in the glasses, Shane found himself feeling more competitive than usual. As one post-game reporter asked him about Ilya and the sudden Miu Miu-mania, Shane resisted the usual urge to deliver some milquetoast answer. “Yes, he’s causing quite the stir, right?” Shane had said instead, with a grin. “Glasses or not, I’m very proud to get to go home with him.”)
- Late Dinner Reservation #4 (And god, was Shane gone. As he did his best to adjust his shirt collar, and cool the heat in his face in yet another restaurant lobby, he knew he would never love anyone more.)
Still, the glasses also had some other effect on the ice. While some people fell madly in love with Ilya Rozanov in glasses, Shane had to remember the thin line that existed, too: players on opposing teams seemed suddenly more incensed by Ilya’s presence, hated him even more than usual, even when he never wore those ridiculous things on the ice.
“Four-eyed fucking freak,” someone chirped at Ilya the other day. Shane rolled his eyes at that one, because they weren’t in middle school anymore.
“Maybe you should take more pretty pictures in hose glasses,” a center from Pittsburgh tried next. “Might work better for you than hockey,” which was stupid, considering this was Ilya they were talking about. Only Shane had been able to match up to him accolades and achievements, and the whole league had to have known that.
“Hey, Rozanov, are you gonna go crack some nuclear codes in those glasses after the game? Think you’re so smart, huh?” Weird.
The chirps were mostly inoffensive, even erring on complimentary. But where Shane was most concerned was how opposing players suddenly made contact with Ilya harder on the ice, like it was their only way of getting closer to him, of understanding this new and intoxicating need for closeness.
Ilya never engaged with these one-sided affairs, in fact he just looked back at Shane in confusion most of the time; but Shane studied this strange new physicality, like flies attracted to a spot of pure honey, and decided he hated it more than anything. In return, Shane played rougher than he usually would’ve. As he slammed someone hard against the boards, he considered it payback for the unnecessary roughness against Ilya the play before, like it was his way of setting things straight.
They ended up winning that game 3-1. Shane felt a small hitch in his oblique, which Ilya immediately noticed, too. After their press duties were done and they had suited up to leave for the night, he pulled Shane by the arm, tracing his gaze up from the floor to meet him in the face.
“You are favoring your right side,” he said.
“It’s nothing, just a little soreness.”
“It was very hot watching you play, moy lyubimiy, but why the extra force? Don’t hurt yourself for me.”
“I’m not.”
“Shane.”
Ilya didn’t relent, and Shane kept his eyes locked on his bare face, thankful that Ilya wasn’t wearing the glasses tonight. “Seemed like people were on you a lot,” Shane said vaguely. “And I couldn’t have that.”
Ilya seemed unconvinced by this, but said nothing. His sights lingered on Shane, like he was collecting evidence for later, before he rolled his neck back and sighed.
“Okay. Fine. But let’s get your ribs checked before we leave, yes?” though it didn’t really feel like he was asking.
They left hand in hand from the locker room, the last two to leave that night, and Shane was thankful for the grip of Ilya’s care.
The final time Ilya’s glasses caused a stir, the team had gone to a club in Los Angeles. Rose Landry was having her birthday party there one night after some last day game on the road, but Ilya and Shane were a bit skittish to attend, if only because nightclubs and Rose Landry and the pulsating lights always dredged up some reminder of the past. They’d been to the club with Rose since then, and more than once at that, but that time had somehow become some major landmark of memory for the both of them, so they were always visiting it with a kind of somber reverence they found hard to name.
“Oh, come on,” Rose clocked the mood right away. “You two always get so quiet when we go out. We might be in our thirties, but we’re not retirees.”
Ilya sipped on his champagne, letting a lazy index finger trail the small of Shane’s back. “We are old and married and very boring now, Rose.”
“I’ve seen you celebrate a Stanley Cup, Ilya. Like, headstands-on-the-table levels of batshit. You can’t get past me.”
“We’re just tired from the game,” Shane insisted.
“Suuure.”
Shane looked to Ilya, then out to the crowd, and then back to Ilya. He found himself shifting in his seat, as to appear like he wasn’t clinging too close; but in the end he sat himself even closer to his husband, practically on his lap.
At this, Rose laughed. “Oh, right. I forget what it’s like to party with the both of you. How clingy you guys get.”
Ilya blew a raspberry and looped an arm around Shane on top of the booth seat. “Can’t go too far. Some actor will see Shane’s beautiful freckles and fall in love in an instant.”
“I mean, you’ve got to be careful too, Mr. Miu Miu.” Rose looked Ilya up and down. “People are crazy about your campaign.”
“Yeah, and are you one of them?” Shane asked, if only because everyone in his life seemed affected in some way.
“Nah.” Rose shrugged. “It doesn’t really do anything for me. Oh, but do you have them on you? Miles will die if I can get a selfie with you with them on.”
Ilya shook his head. “He’s lying,” Shane immediately refuted. “We were late to a dinner reservation and he needed them to woo the hostess.”
Some telepathy occurred between Shane and Ilya next, an electrical current formed easily, and naturally, upon marriage. Ilya tipped his head forward a little, like a Victorian asking Shane to dance, and all Shane had to do was quirk his lips upward in the most imperceptible smile to say, yes, go take that picture for Miles. By now, Ilya probably knew what effect his glasses had on people, so he wielded his powers carefully, but it also mattered to him—to the both of them—that they maintained their friendship with Rose. Despite everything that had happened at the club in Montreal, Shane loved that all the people he cared for could claim a table with a bottle of champagne to share. Take silly pictures together. He could endure Ilya in glasses, if it meant that.
“You two take your time,” Shane smiled. “I’m going to get us some water.”
He maneuvered past the crowd towards the bar, where he let himself lean over the counter, exhausted in some way that amounted to a kind of dreaminess. Maybe if Rose didn’t seem moved by Ilya in glasses, no one else here would be either. This was the club after all, some specific time and place where glasses were probably some of the least noticeable things you could wear.
Shane watched adoringly as Ilya—now in his glasses—and Rose took their photos together, and as more of her birthday posse joined in on the fun. It was a friendly scene, everyone trying to get into one frame, until Shane noticed one girl sticking too close to Ilya’s cheek, and another man laid across Rose and Ilya’s lap. Another man stood behind Ilya, playing with the handles of his glasses, fingers brushing too close against his temples.
And maybe there was nothing ultimately heinous about the whole display. It was all good and vapid L.A. fun, which he could see from Ilya’s smaller smile, like he was using the weakened muscle memory of what used to be his scene. He shifted in place, politely shaking people off, making distance as he posed. But Ilya took another picture and the people glued themselves again, like they just couldn’t help it, like Ilya was meant to be loved like the world was surrounding him at every corner. And Shane knew that Ilya deserved this phenomenon of attention, of adoration. Ilya was so enormous, after all. He was so bright and so wise and so lovely, and Shane wondered, on the outside of this crowd, if he had offered him enough.
But then, there—that telepathy again. This line of vision like some secret tunnel only Shane ever knew how to access. His gaze cut across the club, finding Ilya’s familiar glint. Get me out of here and take me home.
Even behind Ilya’s frames, Shane knew it was the kind of shine that screamed signal flare.
He followed the signs, cutting across all the noise, and held out his hand.
Tonight home was a four-star chain hotel, one the team often stayed in when they played in Los Angeles. It was late—all their other teammates were in their rooms already, tucked away for the night—so Shane closed the door behind them quietly, wound up by some need to say something. It was like this in the cab, too, their hands linked in the middle, eyes searching out opposite windows.
“Your glasses are too much.”
“These glasses are too much.”
Shane blinked hard, realizing they both spoke at the same time. All the tension evaporated instantly, and he let out a strange squeak of relieved laughter. Ilya could only let his mouth hang open in something wry and incredulous.
“Oh, thank god,” Shane said. “I thought you just really liked wearing them.”
“Ah, no. I do not know how you do it. They are nuisance on the face. And the glass gets fucking smudged.”
As if exhausted by the admission, Ilya seemed to lose all the strength to stand. He set the glasses down on the side table, sinking down as he sat on the side of the bed.
“At first, it was fun. They make people crazy, yes? But no one sees me in these glasses. Not really. They just give me whatever I want, like zombies, and it is no fun that way.”
Shane stayed where he stood, letting his fingers massage at a tired head under tawny curls. “Or, they want to beat your ass on the ice.”
“Yes, but that is the difference. I did not even annoy them first. It is bloodlust I did not earn. And then you got angry back at them, and then…” he paused to nip a quick kiss on Shane’s right side, which he was still feeling from that hard hit. “You got hurt because of me.”
“It’s just a little soreness, Ilya.”
“That is still too much for me to bear.”
“Then why did you keep them?”
With nothing but his naked vision, Ilya looked up at him, wincing into the smile.
“You called me beautiful.” Ilya’s voice as small, but sweet. “In New York, the first time I wore them for you.”
“What?” Shane huffed. “So do you think I’ve become a zombie, too? Because of your glasses?”
With some seriousness, Ilya’s lips pressed into some flat line.
“No,” he said. “I know you see me.”
Shane leaned down to press their foreheads together. Saying nothing, Ilya wrapped his arms around Shane’s waist in return, burying his face in his stomach. But he’d told Shane enough. If this were a younger Ilya, one more brash, one more unmoored, he might have welcomed all the attention the glasses gave him, reaped all the benefits of a suddenly fast and easy world. He may have never taken the glasses off and slowed down like this with Shane, the both of them content to hold each other just as they were. It took work to be known. To be seen.
“Just for the record,” Shane said. “It’s not like you weren’t beautiful before. But maybe…” he trailed off, because this was shaping up as one of the world’s great mysteries. “The world just can’t handle you in glasses?”
“What, like great power and responsibility, or whatever the fuck?”
Shane pushed a bit of laughter out of his nose like new air. “Something like that.”
“Okay, so I save them for late dinner dates, then.”
“Exactly.”
“And for when I fuck you in hotel rooms like this, and we are too loud, and we don’t want the team to scold us in the morning.”
“Oh? Did you have that in mind?”
Ilya smiled and raised his head up, expectant in the kiss. Shane obliged, leaning into Ilya with some welcome weight, pressing against hims until they both fell back on the bed, ever-shifting and ever-tangled. In that familiar loss of breath, that mess of relieved shirts and pants unbuttoned and dragged down, Shane pressed a palm to Ilya’s jaw and traced the path upward.
“Glasses off,” he insisted, pressing the words to Ilya’s bare cheek. “Glasses off,” he wanted more than anything, with Ilya more than happy to comply.
In the morning, Shane added a second photo to their private collection. There he was, straddling Ilya again in bed, laughing as he aimed the Polaroid camera at his husband’s bare face. The rest of him was bare too; even Shane had only managed to throw on Ilya’s dress shirt from the night before, because there was something so immaculate about being barely concealed like this, no matter how hard it got, to get out of bed.
“It does not match the one you took before, in your glasses,” Ilya refuted, pretending to hide behind his hands. He still peeked in between the gaps of his fingers though, never too far in meeting Shane where he could find him.
“So?” Shane conquered the fortress of Ilya’s knuckles, one by one. “It doesn’t always have to match.”
Ilya lowered his hands from his face himself, frowning. “What have you done with my husband?”
“Fuck off.”
“You make me sleep on the couch, when I don’t fold socks in pairs.”
“I do not.”
“Moy lyubimiy, tell me, are you terribly sick?”
“No, no, nothing like that! It’s just. I don’t know.” Shane lowered his camera.“What does it matter, as long as I get to see you? And you see me?”
At this, Ilya seemed to have nothing more clever to say. He relaxed back into the sheets, with no need to pose, and nodded softly, clear-eyed, for Shane to take his picture.