Archive of Our Own

Ilya learns about the thirty-six questions designed to make any two people fall in love from, unfortunately, a regular hookup in New York who he is in the process of winding out of his life.

Monica is a decent lay and an absolute smokeshow, and her tits and lips are blessedly real, but she’s started giving him meaningful looks after sex and asking leading questions about whether he sees himself settling down with anyone and having kids. She’s either in love with him or she’s angling to become a WAG for her personal brand; either way it’s Ilya’s cue to go. So he’s already only half-listening, staring at the water stain on her ceiling while she catches her breath on top of him. Mostly he is thinking about the slice of pizza he’s going to get at the place downstairs before the taxi back to his hotel. He’ll probably miss Gionni’s Pizzeria the most about all of this.

Monica has a tendency to talk about weird stuff while she’s coming down from her orgasm—astrology (their sun signs are compatible, Ilya’s moon sign renders him passionate and fiercely loyal) or the Kardashians (Kourtney is her favorite)—and Ilya is always antsy to shower and leave, so he normally tunes this part of the evening out.

“Have you heard about these questions that make people fall in love?” Monica says.

“This is an astrology thing?” Ilya says, because it doesn’t sound like something Kim or Khloe would discuss.

“No, babe,” she says, which is also uncomfortable, but she’s still on top of him, so he puts it out of mind. “It’s this thing from Modern Love. The New York Times?”

“Ah.” Ilya is a little surprised that Monica reads the New York Times. Maybe you receive a subscription along with the keys to your midtown Manhattan apartment. “No, I have not heard.”

Monica shifts to look at him, now that she believes they are having a conversation. In five minutes, Ilya will say it’s getting close to curfew and he needs to head back.

“So, they did this study, apparently, and they came up with this set of questions that, like, make people fall in love with each other. People got married after they did the study! Isn’t that crazy?” she says, eyes sparkling, clearly angling for something.

It does sound crazy, actually, to Ilya. Ridiculous. The kind of thing that someone who believes the horoscope dictates the core aspects of her personality would absolutely eat up. He shifts himself up to sitting, so he doesn’t have to look so deeply into Monica’s searching eyes.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” he says.

“It’s scientific, though. And the person who wrote the Modern Love article did them with her date and they also fell in love!”

And Ilya knows what’s going to happen next, because Monica is not very subtle. She’s beautiful, so she doesn’t have to be. It’s just unfortunate that it’s Ilya she is plying her trade on. He is not going to end up locked down by a fitness influencer whose claim to fame is pretending you can achieve her body by primarily doing yoga poses in athleisure and taking provocative selfies.

Sure enough, Monica says, “We should do the questions together!”

“I have to get back to my hotel,” Ilya says.

“Okay, babe. But next time!”

“Next time,” Ilya says, and kisses her, and blocks her number in the taxi.

The next person he hears about the questions from is, surprisingly, Cliff Marleau. He is dating a nursing student originally from New Jersey, and he’s in love three weeks in, again, and so all Ilya hears about during every bus ride and morning workout is Fatima. Have you heard of acai, dude? Fatima loves this shit. Fatima and I are running a 5k for charity next weekend, you should come!

They’re on their way inside the arena for practice and Marley says, “Did you hear about these questions, dude? Fatima and I did them together. Last night, we spent like, two hours just looking at each other, bro. It was crazy! We didn’t even fuck, but it felt like we had, kind of. You know?”

“No, Marley, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Hold on, man, I’ll show you.”

Marley thumbs around on his phone, and Ilya’s pocket vibrates. He reaches for his phone and sees Marley has texted him a link to an article from the New York Times.

“I didn’t know you could read, Marley.”

“Fuck you, dude. That’s the list of questions.”

The New York Times jogs Ilya’s memory: feeling vaguely panicked and wanting to leave Monica’s twelfth floor midtown one bedroom a few months back, and being leadingly asked about these questions.

“Ah, you believe in this shit?” he says, absently scrolling through the list. There are thirty-six questions in total. The title of the article confidently declares: To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.

“Hey, man, I tried it! I’m telling you, it fucking works. Fatima said she feels like there’s an ‘intriguing and deep connection’ between us.”

“Marley, do you even know what ‘intriguing’ means?”

“Fuck you. Of course I do. Anyway, don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, okay? It’s powerful stuff, man.”

Ilya scrolls through the article at his locker later on. It’s meant to accompany the Modern Love article, so it’s brief and to the point. “Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be exceedingly difficult, so this exercise forces the issue,” it reads. That doesn’t sound particularly magical to Ilya. And the first set of questions don’t seem like the sort of thing that would make you fall desperately in love with someone. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? That’s the kind of thing he occasionally gets asked in oddball interviews.

He’s still reading—skimming—the article, half in his gear, when he gets a text from Jane.

[Jane]
You’re disgusting. I’m not doing that.

Ah, yes. The last thing he sent Hollander was a text late in the evening, long after Hollander’s elderly bedtime, asking for a video of Hollander riding his dildo and crying. This is more or less the response he expected back. Hollander is far too paranoid to even send a photo of himself from the shoulders down. Ilya will keep trying, though, in case it pays off one day.

[Ilya]
but you always cry on my dick (( is not the same when you are all alone?

He’s sure he’ll get another scandalized response once Hollander finds a safe place to text back. He always freaks out when Ilya drops the very thin veneer of heterosexual plausibility in his sexts. Someday, Hollander might realize that this is exactly why Ilya finds it so irresistible to text him about riding his dildo and crying on Ilya’s cock, and stop getting so flustered, and Ilya will be very sad when that day comes.

Ilya doesn’t get a chance to read through all of the questions before practice. He’s still going through them at lunch, listening to Marley chew loudly on his sandwich. No response from Hollander since the morning, but that’s all right. Ilya can imagine him anyway, red all over, huffing all through practice, chewing a bruise into his bottom lip because Ilya’s made him think about his dick.

“You’re blushing, Roz. You talking to your Montreal chick again?”

“Fuck you.”

“Dude, harsh. Get off your phone, then. Fatima says technology is ruining our ability to engage intentionally with each other.”

Ilya thinks he might pray for this one to end sooner than usual. “I am looking at stupid questions Fatima told you about.”

“Oh, yeah? You think you’ll try them with your Montreal girl?”

Jesus. That’s definitely not happening. None of these questions are the sort of thing they ask each other. What hotel room are you in? How many times can you come in an hour? That’s more like it.

Ilya scoffs. “Maybe I ask you, instead?”

“You know I already love you, brother,” Marley says sincerely. “You should take that shit seriously, though. It’s pretty cool.”

“I am taking seriously. See?” Ilya picks a question at random from the first set. “Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?”

Marley considers this, slurping his extra large soda. “Bears,” he says eventually.

“Bears?”

“Yeah, like, eaten by bears in the woods.”

“Marley, what the fuck? You live in Boston. When are you going in the woods and meeting bears?”

Marley shrugs. He looks kind of annoyed, like Ilya is being unreasonable. “It’s a hunch, bro. It’s just a feeling. I don’t need to explain it.”

“You tell Fatima you think you will get eaten by bears in the woods?”

“Yeah, obviously.”

“This will be, where? Alaska? Russian wilderness?”

“I don’t know where the bears are, dude. But yeah, like, someday.” He thinks for a moment. “Or maybe lions.”

Ilya laughs.

“Shut the fuck up, man. You’re doing it wrong. What about you? What is your hunch about how you’re going to die?”

Ilya looks at him. “I am one asking questions.”

“No, Roz. Read the fucking article. You ask each other the questions. You have to answer, now.”

Ilya’s first thought—an empty bottle of pills, a bathroom floor—is obviously not something he is going to share with Marley in a Jersey Mike’s on a Tuesday afternoon. He shrugs.

“I will die at age ninety-five of heart attack while beautiful woman is bouncing on my dick.”

Marley laughs. “You’re so fucking bad at this, dude.”

Ilya does come away from lunch having learned a few things about Cliff Marleau. The bears thing, obviously, and maybe the fact that Marley doesn’t know where on earth lions live. He’s also learned, from question number nine (For what in your life do you feel most grateful?) that Marley is most grateful for his family, and then they talk about his little sister for a while, and Ilya does feel like he understands Marley’s protectiveness and guilt over being so far away from her for work a little better.

Ilya gets his long-awaited answer from Hollander when he’s back home, lounging on his couch with the Admirals game on.

[Jane]
Shut the fuck up, Lily, seriously

A few minutes later, an unexpected follow-up:

I do not cry on your dick

Ilya smiles at his phone. He can suss out Hollander’s version of flirting by now. An unnecessary double text, with a reference to Ilya fucking him is a wide open invitation.

[Ilya]
ah your memory must be going

I remember very pretty tears

my Jane begging for it on hands and knees

maybe you need reminder?

Ilya glances at the clock. It’s nine-thirty. And Hollander has the schedule of a grandpa.

you are in bed?

He touches himself idly while he waits for an answer.

[Jane]
I’m watching the game, asshole

[Ilya]
you are touching yourself?

[Jane]
Do you want me to?

[Ilya]
obviously I want you to

Ilya pushes his sweats down his thighs so he can snap a photo of his hard dick in his hand to send Hollander. He makes sure to capture the television in the background of the shot, so Hollander will see they are watching the same thing. He’ll probably get some of Hollander’s pitiless commentary after they get off, now that he knows Ilya is watching too.

[Ilya]
see? it misses your pretty mouth

and your tight hole

[Jane]
Fuck

[Ilya]
come on Jane

do you miss it? tell me

does you miss being filled up with my cock

do you miss gagging on it

[Jane]
Yeah

Yeah I fucking do

Fuck Rozanov I want your dick

[Ilya]
what would you do if I was there right now

[Jane]
Suck your dick

Hold it in my mouth

[Ilya]
no you wouldn’t

because I would bend you over right there on couch and give you all nine inches before you had chance

pump my cum deep in your ass and watch it leak out of you after

Talking about fucking Hollander raw is a little risky, even for them, even just for sexting. Hollander might freak a little, might pull out of the fantasy and text something idiotic back—Rozanov, we have to use condoms!—and Ilya will feel obligated to assure him that they are still wrapping it up in this completely hypothetical fantasy, because the alternative is looking stupid with his dick in his hand while Hollander stops replying entirely.

But Hollander must already be close, because he sends a flurry of enthusiastic texts back. It’s more than Ilya normally gets out of him.

[Jane]
Yeah fuck

Please

Fuck

Fuck Rozanov I’m gonna come

Ilya pulls his shirt up hastily to finish on his bare stomach, striping his abs with his own spunk. He snaps a picture and sends it to Hollander, panting, his heart still racing and making his texts sloppy.

[Ilya]
foryou pretty Jane

fcuk it is a big mess, look what u do to me

He catches his breath with his phone in his clean hand and waits. It is just as likely that Hollander never responds, now that he’s gotten off.

[Jane]
Fuck that’s so hot

Then, in an uncharacteristic display of bravery, Hollander sends him a photo of his hand resting on his naked lap, his fingers and thighs wet and gleaming with his cum. Ilya groans, briefly overcome with regret that he can’t get hard again so quickly.

[Jane]
Delete that please

Okay, Ilya texts back, when he has the capacity to, and promptly saves it in his private album. No way is he going to delete that photo without getting off to it at least a dozen times.

Ilya uses his shirt to clean himself off. He stares at the ads on the TV for a while. He wonders if Hollander will text him again, or if he’s well and truly over it now. Ilya flips through his open apps, because he isn’t about to wait around, pathetically, with Hollander’s texts open in case he does message again. Ilya’s gotten what he wanted, too, so. Nothing more to say.

He lands on the open article with the thirty-six questions that lead to love. He has a brief urge to tell Hollander about Marley’s weird hangup with bears, but then he’d have to explain the questions, and he’d have to explain who Marley even is as a person, and it’s just not worth it. What would Hollander say? Does he think about dying? Probably he doesn’t. Ilya isn’t sure Hollander thinks about anything that isn’t meant to optimize his game, except when Ilya fucks him hard enough to stop thinking about anything.

So Ilya won’t ask him that one.

He doesn’t think about it too deeply. He highlights one of the questions and copies it into his text messages with Hollander and presses send, before he has a chance to decide against it.

[Ilya]
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Hollander responds right away.

[Jane]
????? What?

Where did you get that from?

[Ilya]
that is not answer

[Jane]
I don’t know

Time travel, maybe?

[Ilya]
you do not wish for improved backhand?

[Jane]
Fuck you, Lily

They aren’t really doing it right, according to the article and Marley and his intriguingly connected girlfriend, Fatima. You are supposed to ask the questions in person, and you are supposed to take turns asking each other. Ilya is the only one asking, over text, and Hollander doesn’t even know what the questions are for. Well, they’re not for anything. Ilya isn’t trying to do anything, certainly not trying to accomplish the stated intention of the questions. He’s just curious.

[Ilya]
for me, I think time travel also

[Jane]
Really?

What would you do?

Ilya doesn’t want to say what he would do. He’s seen enough time travel movies to know he probably can’t change the past, probably can’t take the pills out of the house before his mom gets to them. That isn’t how these things go, at least in movies. But he still thinks it would be worth it to try, even if he failed. Even if all he ended up doing was just visiting her for a while, and then returning back to his time. Even if he couldn’t change anything.

[Ilya]
go back to 2010 International Prospect Cup and beat Canada second time

[Jane]
Fuck off!!!

[Ilya]
what would you do?

[Jane]
Go see Gretzky in his prime

[Ilya]
such a boring answer, Jane )))

[Jane]
Okay? Then don’t ask me any more weird questions!

Ilya puts his phone down. It’s the second period, and the Admirals are up. Hunter must have some new regimen, or a new trainer, because he’s doing better this year, but. The Cup was Ilya’s last year, and it will be his again this year. He wonders if Hollander is thinking the same thing, right now, in Montreal.

[Jane]
Hunter is looking better

Do you think he got a new trainer?

Ilya laughs. He might not know any of Hollander’s answers to these supposed love-inducing questions, but there are some things he knows about him very well.

“If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?”

Connors, huffing hard on the exercise bike, takes a moment to think. “Body of a 30-year-old, dude. I’d bang chicks all day.”

“You aren’t thirty years old now, Connors, and you don’t bang chicks at all,” Ilya says.

“Man, fuck you.”

“I’d pick body, too,” Marley says thoughtfully. “My grandma lived until, like, ninety-five, and she was sharp as a tack.”

Ilya nods. “I agree. Brain is wasted on you, Marley.”

“Roz, you’re body, too, right? Yeah?”

Ilya thinks about his father, nowhere near ninety, whose mind is already full of holes and leaking like a sieve. He knows he would pick his mind. He knows if he was somehow guaranteed a sharp and working brain for the rest of his life, he would trade an aging body for it in a heartbeat. But he can’t explain that to Marley and Connors, who know at most that his dad is “sick”, and aren’t even grateful for the barely-working brains they do have.

“Yes,” Ilya says. “Body. Is shame, that world will not have Ilya Rozanov to look at in his prime for ninety years.”

He texts Hollander question three after he showers off the gym sweat.

[Ilya]
Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

His answer arrives over lunch.

[Jane]
Yes?

Do you not?

Is that a weird thing to do? I thought everyone did it.

You do it too, right?

It’s obvious why. I want to be confident in what I’m saying. Why wouldn’t I prepare for a phone call?

Ilya’s answer is, honestly, that it depends. He has been living in the United States for four years; somewhere in his second year on the Raiders, he stopped feeling a cold chill come over him whenever he had to conduct a conversation over the phone in English. Before that, he did rehearse what he planned to say. Once, he even asked Svetlana, proverbial hat in hand, for help with pronunciation, afraid to be misunderstood. But he rarely feels nervous about English anymore, and his most difficult conversations are still conducted in Russian, with his agent or his family.

[Ilya]
I used to practice english, but I do not do this anymore ))

now I just go off the cuffs

[Jane]
It’s “off the cuff”

You really don’t get nervous talking on the phone to anyone? What if your GM or the Commissioner called you?

[Ilya]
I am not afraid of GM or commissioner Jane ))

[Jane]
I’m not afraid either! It’s about being prepared.

[Ilya]
okay

yes if it is very important call and I know it is coming maybe I rehearse

What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

[Jane]
Where are you getting these questions from? They are so weird

My perfect day would be winning the Cup, obviously.

[Ilya]
winning the cup and

?

[Jane]
Just winning the Cup is enough

[Ilya]
not winning the cup and then being fucked through the mattress

?

winning the cup and then getting on your knees for big, strong man

?

[Jane]
Shut up, Lily

You wouldn’t be anywhere near me after finals.

[Ilya]
I did not say it was me but thank you ))

I am flattered you think of my dick on your perfect day )))

[Jane]
I didn’t even say that.

You’re so annoying.

I suppose your perfect day involves a gangbang with models or something.

[Ilya]
of course

and also expensive vodka and nice caviar and Stanley Cup on bed the whole time so it can watch

or maybe it involves just one model with perfect ass up in the air for me as present for winning

I hear rolex has very pretty model in particular who likes this very much ))

[Jane]
Really?

You’d rather have me there than a bunch of girls?

Ilya is suddenly aware that he has said a little too much. He’s surprised at himself, actually. That the first thing he thought of was not some debauched orgy, everyone falling all over themselves to impress him and tell him how fucking fantastic he was for leading his team to victory, but just Shane Hollander, spread out beneath him on a bed, flushed and jealous and maybe a little mean as a result, telling him all the things he still managed to fuck up on his successful playoff run in between punched-out moans that Ilya fucks out of him. Why is that his idea of a perfect day?

Ilya doesn’t respond. That night he has a game at home, and then Svetlana comes over after, and they drink Sveta’s too-sweet wine and order expensive sushi to the house, and Ilya wonders absently what Hollander is doing tonight after his own game. He is probably asleep, or talking himself through visualizations of his next win. Montreal won 4-1 tonight. Ilya wonders how close that feels to Hollander’s idea of a perfect day.

“What do you value most in a friendship?” he says to Sveta. This is question number sixteen, one of the first questions in the second set, so it’s a little less surface-level, and it is significantly more probing than anything he’s ever asked Sveta before. She looks at him with open confusion and then laughs.

“What the fuck, Ilyusha?”

“It is a question from this New York Times article. You are supposed to fall in love with the person you ask all of the questions to.”

“Oh, you are not already in love with me?” Sveta says, pouting theatrically. She swings her long legs over Ilya’s lap, lets them rest heavily there.

“I don’t really believe in this,” Ilya says. “They are just questions.”

“Who else are you asking these questions?” Sveta says, her eyes too probing. Ilya shouldn’t have said anything. Now Sveta will dig and dig and try to find out why Ilya is unusually preoccupied with a set of questions meant to make you fall in love.

“Guys on the team.”

“Oh? And Jane from Montreal? Have you asked her?”

Ilya decidedly ignores the way Sveta pauses, for just a moment, before saying her. “No, I didn’t ask her.”

Sveta looks at him flatly. “I value honesty most in a friendship, asshole,” she says, kicking him.

“And I value loyalty. And not being fucking kicked,” he says, and pulls her, laughing, down to the couch.

He asks Hollander, Would you like to be famous? In what way?

Hollander says, I’m already famous. So are you. The question is moot.

Ilya says, What the fuck is moot? Don’t make up words. We are both famous, but do you like to be?

Hollander says, I like to be good at hockey. If I could do that, but guarantee that no one ever stopped me in public to ask for a photo, I would do that instead of being famous.

Ilya says, I do not mind being famous. The positives probably outweigh the negatives. We do not have to try to get girls home with us, yes? ))

Hollander says, I don’t do that. That’s gross.

What is gross? Girls?

Hollander says, Using your fame to pull puck bunnies. That’s gross to me.

Sticks and stones, Jane ))

Hollander goes silent for a while, before he says, Do you think things would be different if neither of us were famous?

Ilya stares at his phone. He wonders if Hollander meant that to sound the way it does. Or if Ilya is the one reading into it too much, if he is the one turning it into something. The safest thing to do, probably, is deflect entirely. Find a way to make it a joke.

Instead he writes, What do you mean?

Hollander replies right away.

I don’t know.

I didn’t mean anything.

I’m going to bed.

Ilya wonders, later, if the results can skew because he’s doing this wrong. Asking questions over text, and out of order, and skipping the ones he knows he will not answer. Maybe that’s why it kind of hurts, why his chest feels strangely flooded, why it takes him so long to fall asleep.

Question nine: For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

Connors is most grateful for the city of Boston. Bullshit response. Upon closer examination, he’s most thankful for Dunkin’ Donuts. Ilya thinks that might be his honest answer.

Question twelve: If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Marley would take the ability to travel instantly, because he hates airplanes and he gets carsick on the bus.

Question eleven: Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

Connors gives Ilya the four minute rundown of his life’s story. Originally from the midwest. Two brothers, one of whom now plays for Seattle. His parents still live in Ohio, far away from any relevant teams. He played in college, skipped the AHL, straight to the Raiders after graduation. Ilya hadn’t known Connors had even gone to college.

Question five: When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

The last time Marley sang to himself was in the shower: the Pina Colada song. Ilya actually knew this already; Marley did it in their hotel room on their last roadie, and even the volume cranked on the TV could not fully drown him out. The last time he sang to someone else was Fatima. Apparently, for their two-month anniversary, which Ilya doesn’t think is a thing, he sang her an Ed Sheeran song. She might really be in love with him, to stick around after that.

Ilya has not fallen madly in love with either Marley or Connors as a result of these revelations. But he does feel like he knows them a little better. And, if he really digs down, he could maybe admit he likes both of them. Maybe more than before he asked.

He calls Hollander the first night home after his week on the road, even though he’s beat, even though they’ve never talked on the phone before. He’s asked Hollander the complete first set of questions, the least invasive ones, entirely over text. He knows that isn’t how you’re supposed to do it. You’re not supposed to do it over the phone, either, but Ilya is in Boston, and Hollander is in Montreal, and they will not be in each other’s cities for a couple more months. And Ilya is not about to get on a plane just to ask Hollander some questions. And anyway there is no reason to be so concerned about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Ilya’s methods of interrogation. Because he’s not asking these questions to the specific end the article suggests. He’s just curious. He is just wondering what Hollander will say.

“Hello? Rozanov?”

“Hello, Hollander.”

“Um, is everything okay?”

“Yes, why would something not be okay?”

“Well, it’s just… You never call me.”

“I am tired. I text all day with your mother and now my thumbs hurt.”

Hollander sighs, exasperated.

“Fuck off, Rozanov. What do you want?”

Ilya puts Hollander on speaker, so he can read the questions off his phone. He isn’t sure if the exact wording is critical or not, but if they are he doesn’t want to butcher them with paraphrasing.

“If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?” Quickly, Ilya adds, “Don’t say that you want to know if you win the Cup.”

“Why not? What if that’s my answer?”

“Is so boring, Hollander. Of course you want to know this. But Ilya Rozanov and Boston Raiders exist in this world, so crystal ball says, so sad, but no.”

“Fuck off. What are these questions even for, anyway? Are you interviewing me for something? Wouldn’t you have to, like, tell me if you were?”

Ilya is quick to assure Hollander before his paranoia takes him right out of this phone call. “It is not for interview, Hollander. I am just wondering. Answer the question.”

“And I can’t say that I would want to know whether I win the Cup.”

“Yes, other than that.”

“I guess… I guess I would want to know, like, am I happy?”

If Ilya expected any one answer, it wasn’t this. But why not? Does Shane Hollander strike him as a particularly happy person? Ilya sees him laser focused on the ice and tense in front of cameras and blown apart and blissed out in bed underneath him. Actually, maybe Ilya has seen Hollander happier than most other people have.

Hollander pauses, like he’s expecting something else to come up, another thing he might like omniprescient knowledge of. Ilya waits, and hopes he does think of something. There is a strange spark of concern blooming in Ilya’s chest, and he would like it to be extinguished by something flippant, like Do I become the first billionaire hockey player? But Hollander does not throw him a bone.

“Uh. Yeah. Just that. Am I happy.”

“Are you not happy now, Hollander?” Ilya says quietly.

“I don’t… I’m, um. It’s not something I think about all the time. Like, am I happy, am I not happy? I have goals, and I’m in a good place to achieve them, and I am satisfied with that.” Hollander blows out a breath. “Are you happy?”

“...No.”

Hollander seems a bit shocked, briefly silent. “Oh. I’m, um, sorry?”

“Is not your fault, Hollander, why are you sorry?”

“No, I mean, I empathize. I’m sorry to hear that. You seem happy. You seem like you have a lot going well in your life. Like, you won the Cup. I think I’d be fucking ecstatic if I won the Cup.”

It would be very easy to chirp Hollander. Yes, I did win the Cup, thank you for reminding me. I think I will go kiss the picture of myself holding it right now. That always makes me feel better.

Instead, he says, “Yes, well. Now that is old news, yes? That is last season. Now it is ours to lose, and it will be a big story, if we don’t win again. It will be a fluke. Raiders cannot maintain dominance, Rozanov cannot lead his team to victory a second time.”

Ilya’s choked voice is so blatant and pathetic. He scrubs a hand over his face and wonders what else he expected from this exercise. The purpose of the questions, stated right there in the article, is to make yourself vulnerable. Roll soft belly up for the gutting. Ilya has sprung a trap on himself, doing this so cavalierly, just because he wanted to know more about Hollander. He thought he might reach in and pull out a few interesting things from Hollander’s steel trap inner life. Now here Ilya is the one pried open, instead.

“Back to back Cups is pretty rare,” Hollander says, because he seems to think Ilya needs to be reassured. Because Ilya sounds like he needs to be, and worse maybe really does. “I don’t think anyone is expecting you to do that.”

“You would expect it of yourself if it was you.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m insane,” Hollander says, and laughs. “And I just told you I’m not even happy.”

“I would also like to know if I am happy, in future.”

Which is true. Or at least, that is one way to say it. The other way to say it might be, I would like to know if I am still alive.

“Fuck. I hope we are,” Hollander says. “Both of us.”

“What is your most treasured memory?” Ilya says.

“That’s your next question?”

“Yes.”

Hollander sighs. Ilya can hear rustling, like he’s shifting in bed. Ilya wonders if he’s also on speaker. If Hollander is lying in the dark, his phone on his chest or resting on the pillow next to him, and if Hollander is pushing off his sleep just to humor him. Maybe Ilya should just let him go. Maybe Ilya should stop doing this entirely.

Hollander says, “I think my most treasured memory might be my first faceoff in the MLH. To really be there after dreaming about it my whole life. That was so fucking crazy.”

Ilya’s first time on MLH ice as a first line center is also one of his best memories. Hoisting the Cup over his head last summer, too. He holds onto those, and thinks he’ll remember them clearly forever: the breeze off the ice against his wet forehead, the sweat he blinked out of his eyes when he screamed in victory to the cameras. Another perfect memory: Ilya sinking into Hollander’s body for the first time. Hollander losing himself in pleasure because of what Ilya was doing to him. His lovely face shifting, eyes closing, mouth parting. The soap-sour taste and the tension of him as Ilya’s tongue breached inside. Hollander’s hands sinking into Ilya’s hair and pulling him down to breathe his gratitude out into Ilya’s mouth. That is another memory that Ilya hopes he can conjure up, down to the last detail, forever. But even that is not his most treasured.

“Skating with my mama on my twelfth birthday,” Ilya says.

In the winter, when the lakes froze, he made her take him every good day she had, to see her spin in graceful circles around him like a naiad of the ice. Ilya was born in the summer, but that was still the present he asked for, as close as they could get at least. She took him to an indoor rink and they spent the entire day together. Ilya was already a prospect by then, a terror on the ice, but Mama was just as fast, and more elegant, more beautiful. Ilya learned all of his much-lauded edgework from her. Ilya, newly teenage, craved competition in everything. She raced him around the rink after he begged, desperate to prove he was finally faster. He thinks, because it was his birthday, she let him win.

She killed herself a month later. A different race, one she beat him at.

Ilya does wonder if he would remember that birthday at all, if she had stayed. Maybe by thirteen he would have been rebellious and surly enough to want nothing to do with her. Maybe he would have done at thirteen what he did anyway, go out and fuck someone, and twelve would be meaningless, and his mama would still be here. But she isn’t, so he remembers it as the last perfect day before the cloud came down over everything.

He doesn’t explain this to Hollander, and Hollander doesn’t ask. Maybe he can tell Ilya won’t say anything more than he already has. Maybe he isn’t interested in hearing about it. Ilya glances at the next question on the list. What is your most terrible memory? Well. Looks like he’s gotten ahead of himself.

“Rozanov?”

“Sorry, I think I am tired. I will go to sleep now.”

“Oh. Yeah, me too. Um.”

Hollander draws in a breath. Ilya can hear the quiet sigh, after. Sometimes he does this in hotel rooms too, takes a big gulp of air to steel himself before he says something like, So, Boston in two weeks, right? Hollander has all sorts of tells Ilya is not meant to catch. Ilya is not meant to be paying such close attention.

So Hollander steels himself and says, “You can call me again, if you want. I don’t mind.”

They are doing the experiment all wrong. The questions are out of order and there is an international boundary in between them. That is probably why what Ilya feels, most acutely, is the distance. Hollander breathes on the other end of the line, and Ilya races and races around the rink, his mother’s golden hair growing farther and farther away.

He isn’t going to do this again. He isn’t going to ask Hollander any more of these questions.

Ilya says, “Okay. Good night, Hollander.”

“Good night.”

Ilya calls Hollander on the road. There are tons of questions he still hasn’t asked. He’s barely asked Hollander any of them. A good one to ask might be, why the fuck am I doing this? But instead, here he is again with his phone balanced on his lap and Hollander’s soft breathing filtering through the tinny speakers. He scrolls up and down the list and lands on question nineteen.

“If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?”

“Rozanov…”

“Well?”

“I mean, yeah, obviously. Who wouldn’t change things?”

“What would you change? Would you still play?”

“Of course I’d still play. I’d win the fucking Stanley Cup if I had to kill myself to do it. I’m already going to die, so who cares?”

“What if you are dying on the ice at the Cup presentation ceremony?”

“Okay? Then I guess it’ll be a crazy story. I’m still winning it.”

“What would you do differently, then?”

“Fuck, I… I don’t know. I have all this money, I guess I would try to do something with it? I’d cancel all my sponsorships, like, the day after I found out. I’d never do another fucking ad campaign again.” Hollander sounds almost wistful.

“What would you do with your money?”

“Charity, I guess. No, first I’d throw everything into finishing my cottage. That way at least I’d get to spend one summer there before I die.”

“Cottage?”

“Yeah, I’m having a cottage built in Quebec. I’d probably sell my other properties and just focus on that.”

Ilya tries to imagine a Hollander cottage. Surely he doesn’t mean a hovel out in the countryside. All that comes to mind is Hollander’s luxury modern condo in Montreal, the bed crowded with pillows he didn’t choose, like he might have a sleepover for twelve and needs to be prepared.

“So you will spend last year of your life winning Stanley Cup, and sitting alone at your cottage.”

“Why are you saying it like that?” Hollander says, familiarly prickly.

“Because that is what you are telling me. Do you think you would be happy with that? On last day of your life, you would be perfectly content with cottage and your name on Cup and nothing else?”

“You didn’t ask me if I’d be happy, just what I would do. And yeah, I think so. I mean, I hope I’d be happy. I would have accomplished everything I set out to do.”

Ilya thinks of those ridiculous pillows, the overstuffed bed. Probably, whoever else Hollander fucks there is fawning, awed by his fame and wealth, complimenting the decor Hollander didn’t even pick. He imagines it would be more of the same in Shane Hollander’s cottage, Hollander leafing through catalogs of shams and duvet covers in some stylist’s office. Would he think of Ilya, then, and picture how all of it would look thrown carelessly to the floor?

“Will you fuck anyone in your cottage, when you finish it?”

“I… I don’t know if I’d even be worrying about that, if I’m going to die.”

“Why not? Last I checked, your dick works fine.”

“Shut up.”

Ilya says, “You could call me. Say, Rozanov, I just found out terrible news, I need you to fuck me every day until I die tragically, I don’t want to go with any regrets.”

“I don’t think that’s a regret I would have… But fuck, sure, fine. You would come? Like, if I said there wasn’t a lot of time, you would actually come to see me more?”

Ilya hasn’t seen Hollander in months. Hasn’t kissed him or sucked his dick or pressed him down into a hotel bed in months. Why is that? Ilya is rich, and Montreal is five hours by car, two hours by plane. If he found out that Hollander had a year to live, and that the handful of times a year that they fuck would be the last he’d ever get, Ilya thinks he’d be on the next plane to Montreal. Ilya would probably be trying to see him every chance he got.

Why isn’t he doing that right now, then?

“Yes,” Ilya says.

“Oh,” Hollander says, and then goes quiet, and it spreads out too long. It lands in Ilya’s chest like knuckles digging into a bruise. Surely doing the questions the right way, face to face, must not ache like this. Maybe Ilya would still feel fucking naked, but surely it wouldn’t hurt. That can’t be the way to make people fall in love with one another.

Ilya can’t see Hollander’s face, though. He can’t tell if Hollander is quiet because Ilya said something he wanted to hear, or something that makes him hold his breath like a rabbit tucked into a burrow, waiting for danger to pass. Either way, it was probably the wrong thing to say. Either way, Ilya should move the fucking conversation along.

Ilya says, “Okay, my turn. If I found out I was going to die in a year, I would quit hockey and sail around the world on a yacht.”

Hollander laughs. “No you wouldn’t. Shut up.”

“Yes, I would. And I would kidnap you and keep you on my yacht as my sex slave.”

“Fuck you, I would definitely not go on your yacht with you.”

“You would, Hollander. I would just tell you my sad story and you would spend whole year sucking my dick to make up for all the time we’d never have together.”

“Now it sounds tragic.”

“Yes, you will give me so many tragic blowjobs. And say how much you will miss me when I’m gone.”

“And that’s it. Just blowjobs on your yacht.”

“No, there will be other things. I will bring a year’s supply of lube on board.”

“Oh my god. I mean, like, that’s all you’d do with your last year?”

No, of course it isn’t, but no one knows about any of that, least of all Hollander. He doesn’t know how Ilya learning he had only a year to live might feel like someone loosening their grip on a leash around Ilya’s neck, one that stretches all the way to Moscow. And he will never know, if Ilya never tells him.

“I would open a trust for my niece, and then cut my brother off entirely,” Ilya blurts out. He manages to surprise himself. The words are out before he’s even realized he’s going belly-up again.

“You don’t get along with your brother?”

“Is complicated.”

“Cut him off, like, monetarily?”

Ilya is hunched in the stairwell of a Radisson in Washington, DC. His legs and back are sore, his temple burning where the phone is resting against it. That alone is a good enough reason to hang up. He pulls the phone away from his face and sees he’s been talking to Hollander for almost thirty minutes. He has never intended to talk about this with anyone. Yet here he is, doing it anyway.

“Yes. Cut him off.”

“Is it… a lot of money?”

“I don’t know. What is ‘a lot’? It is expense. Like sports car. Probably, not even as much as that.”

He doesn’t know why he’s giving Hollander the same justifications he has given himself for the last five years. Plenty of rookies blow their signing bonuses on bullshit. That’s what he told himself at nineteen, as he was sending Alexei his next month’s cocaine budget. He told himself he would be making four million a year, and Alexei would still be a jackoff washout loser relying on his baby brother to provide for his family. Ilya could afford it, that month, and the next, and the next. And he knew then it was bullshit, what he was saying to himself, and he knows it’s bullshit now, hearing it come out of his mouth, knows Hollander won’t buy it. Knows Hollander won’t understand why Ilya does it, anyway.

“Like a sports car? Rozanov, how much money have you given him?”

“I am not sure. Maybe two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Two hundred thousand—holy shit.”

“It is supposed to be for my father and my niece,” Ilya says. He’s just saying everything now, apparently. “But I do not know where money is really going. Probably is not going to them. Probably it never has.”

“Do you want it going to your father and niece instead?”

Hollander has such a knack for asking questions whose answers are extremely obvious, but with such sincerity that they hit Ilya as if he is asking himself those questions for the first time.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Why don’t you do the trust now, then?”

There are reasons, of course, but they are more humiliating than giving Hollander the impression that Ilya has never considered it before. Ilya can’t tell Hollander that he might so desperately desire any relationship with Alexei, that he will take one consisting solely of paying for his brother to snort his niece’s future up his nose while Alexei sneers at him. Ilya can’t imagine justifying this to Hollander, when he knows it is not justifiable. Hollander won’t understand. Trying to even piece it together now, Ilya can feel his own inner commitment to it crumbling.

“I should do that, yes. Fuck. I should not wait until I am going to die, first.”

“You should. If you don’t, like, trust him with the money. If he’s not even doing what you want with it.”

Ilya feels like anything might come out of his mouth next. He’s said so much already, too much. Maybe he’ll tell Hollander about his father’s dementia and his mother’s suicide, too. Ilya supposes he’ll get to that, in due time, when they get far enough down the list of questions.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Hollander says. “I’m sorry he isn’t using your money to take care of your family. That must be really hard.”

Ilya blows out a breath, digs his knuckles down into his thigh. It’s okay. He will get off the line, and stop all of this. This will be the last time.

“Thank you, Hollander.”

“And… and I really would be sad, if you told me you only had a year to live. I really would, um, miss you.”

Ilya’s chest aches, hot and bright in the center of his ribcage. He scrubs a hand over his face, covering his treacherously stinging eyes, though Hollander can’t see him, can’t see that he’s suddenly on the verge of being overcome.

“Me too,” Ilya chokes out. “I would miss you. And I would be very sad.”

“Rozanov…”

“I have to go,” Ilya says. He hangs up before Hollander can respond.

“Talking to your Montreal girl?” Marley asks, when Ilya slinks back into the room.

“Shut up,” Ilya says, and ducks into the bathroom, where he stands under the shower for a long time, the water turned up terrifically hot, until he can’t tell the burning of the shower spray from the burning in his chest anymore.

Ilya resolves not to call Hollander again.

He comes back from his roadie and doesn’t call. He gets angry texts from Alexei, demanding fifteen thousand dollars “for Natalya”, and he doesn’t call Hollander. He goes out with his team, and a girl runs her hand down the front of his pants and offers to suck his dick, and he politely extricates himself, goes home alone, and doesn’t call Hollander.

There are twelve questions in the final set, which are meant to be the most intimate and revealing. Ilya hasn’t asked anyone these questions. He’s read them enough times to almost have them memorized.

Question twenty-nine: Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.

Question thirty-two: What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?

These seem rather superficial, but they must be so far down in the list for a reason. Ilya supposes that it’s more about finding out what someone has strong feelings about, deep down, but still these aren’t really things he wants to know about Hollander.

And they aren’t what he ends up texting him, in the middle of the night, so that he knows Hollander won’t respond right away.

[Ilya]
If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

He’s woken up too early in the morning by his phone ringing. He grabs blindly for it on his nightstand, stares blearily at the screen for a few seconds without comprehension. The caller ID says Jane.

“Hollander?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hollander says. “What the fuck is this, Rozanov?”

Hollander is angry. His voice is tight on the phone, like he’s trying to keep himself from shouting. Ilya blinks, still half-asleep and knocked off-kilter by Hollander calling him to, apparently, chastise him for something.

“What are you talking about? I do nothing.”

“I looked up where these questions are from,” Hollander hisses.

Oh.

“What is this quiz? What are you trying to do? Are you—are you, like—”

“Is nothing,” Ilya says quickly, unconvincingly. “Is just stupid thing Marley told me about. They are stupid questions, Hollander. You do not need to freak out.”

“These are supposed to, like, make you fall in love with somebody. That’s what it fucking says. Why… Why are you asking me these?”

Ilya doesn’t answer. He listens to Hollander breathe too quickly on the other end, inhaling too sharply and exhaling without it settling him at all. He could say, Sorry, it was a stupid joke. I was just fucking with you. He could say, I do not even really believe it. I don’t think you can fall in love with someone just from asking them questions. He doesn’t say anything, because none of those things would be true. He just waits, instead, for Hollander’s panic to coalesce into some final, furious blow.

“I can’t,” Hollander says. “That isn’t… I’m not… I can’t.”

The line goes dead.

The next time Ilya sees Hollander, it’s on the TV screen in the Raiders gym. Marley’s favorite morning show idiots blabber on about Shane Hollander and Rose Landry looking so perfect together in Montreal. Ilya’s last text to Hollander is still unanswered. Question thirty-three of thirty-six.

Ilya stares at the photos on the TV, sure there must be some mistake. But there is Hollander, and there is Rose Landry, and there are their intertwined hands, their sparkling eyes, their private smiles.

He considers writing a letter to the Times. Maybe they’ll publish it in Modern Love.

Dear New York Fucking Times,

These questions are supposed to make two people fall in love, but it seems they can do the opposite. It seems they can scare people into running away, right into the arms of someone else, someone beautiful and perfect just like them. It seems these questions can cause people to fall in love with someone else entirely, not you. Not with you. Maybe consider a warning next time. Maybe if I knew what the consequences would be, I would have been more careful.

Weeks pass. Ilya talks to an attorney in Russia about setting up a trust, about putting his father’s care in the hands of an agency that he can wire directly. He asks Marley how his sister is doing. Marley says she might go for a Masters in Boston. He plays it cool, but Ilya can tell he’s really excited, really hopeful, that they might be living close to one another again. Marley wants to introduce her to Fatima the next time she visits.

I did ask Jane the questions, he texts Sveta, because she said she values honesty.

And? Sveta replies.

And now she isn’t speaking to me.

Ah. Did you tell her what the questions were for?

Ilya doesn’t answer, which is enough of an answer, anyway.

Shane Hollander and Rose Landry are a very popular couple. Ilya can’t seem to go ten minutes online without discovering a new picture of them holding hands on the street. They must have been photographed smiling and ogling each other outside every single restaurant in Montreal by now.

There is a game coming up against the Metros. Ilya considers, for the first time in his life, faking sick so he doesn’t have to play. He feels sick, anyway, so it wouldn’t really be that much of a lie. He can’t do it, of course, because he’s the captain of the 2014 Stanley Cup champions, and the only thing he can do from now on is meet everyone’s expectations or fail to do so. There is no room for feeling hollowed out, empty where he used to feel almost too warm, too full. Where his ribcage used to feel so tight that he thought it might crack, and now it feels barren.

A week before the game, Ilya wakes up, and reaches for his phone, and there is a text waiting for him.

I would regret dying without ever telling anyone the truth about me. I would regret not telling someone how I actually feel out of fear. I haven’t told them because I was scared. I’m still scared. But I don’t know if that’s worth dying with regrets over.

He calls Hollander, even though it’s early, and it seems like Hollander was up very late, to have sent that text in the middle of the night. Ilya has to call, though. Ilya has to talk to him.

“Hello?”

“Hollander.” Ilya waits, but the line is quiet, and he tries again. “Shane.”

“Fuck. Okay.” Shane lets out a shaky breath. “Um. Hi.”

“Hi.”

Shane says, “Listen. I was thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

“Shut up. I was thinking, we’re playing each other next week, right?”

“Yes.”

“What if I came up a night early? To, um, talk.”

“To talk.” Ilya wonders if Shane can tell he’s holding his breath. “Talk about what?”

“How close and warm is your family?” Shane says. Ilya’s chest fills with that familiar sweet ache. His eyes suddenly feel itchy and sharp. “Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?”

“Shane…”

“When did you last cry in front of another person?”

“Shane.”

“What, Ilya? There are still all of these questions. Do you… do you still want to ask me them?” Shane’s voice coarsens, and he sniffs.

Ilya feels too full, too warm. He closes his eyes and all he hears, sees, feels is Shane.

“Of course I do.”

He wants to know everything. He wants to do it right, Shane in his arms, Shane’s body against his. Shane’s breath in his ear. He thinks, if he can have that, he could maybe tell Shane everything, too.

Shane says, “Then I’ll come early. So you can ask.”

“Okay.”

Shane arrives at Ilya’s house, stands in his doorway, looking cautious and beautiful, waiting to be let inside. Ilya closes the door, and wraps his arms around Shane, and Shane explodes into action, kissing Ilya, pushing him up against the wall, sinking fingers into his hair. The way he always does, like he’s starving for Ilya, too. Like he might tear Ilya apart in his desperation to get closer to him.

They stumble blindly toward the bedroom, knocking into doorways, Ilya laughing against Shane’s mouth, tearing at his coat, his shirt, his pants. They fall onto the bed in an ungraceful tangle, and Ilya touches Shane everywhere, puts his mouth everywhere, licks a hot line from Shane’s neck down below his chest, takes Shane’s lovely cock in his mouth and makes him come with Ilya’s name on his lips.

Ilya opens him up carefully, like they’re starting over, like it’s the first time again. Fucks into him with gentle thrusts until Shane is almost insane over it, begging for Ilya to go harder, deeper, more, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. Ilya kisses them away, kisses the spray of freckles across Shane’s cheeks and the bridge of his perfect nose. Kisses the line of his jaw, his pretty over-bitten lips, his furrowed brows.

This is Ilya’s perfect day.

After, they lie together in the ruined sheets, for the first time without a curfew to beat or a plane to catch. Shane has nowhere else to be. Shane looks sleepy and lazy and slowly traces his fingers up and down Ilya’s arm, smiling softly, and it all seems briefly miraculous, that Ilya gets to have this for any length of time. That Shane came here just for this. That he was brave enough to ask.

“So,” Shane says.

“So.”

Shane pries himself out from Ilya’s embrace, shifts off the bed. Ilya is brought unceremoniously back down to earth. Ah, yes. Shane has come to talk. Apparently, that was not entirely a euphemism for getting fucked through Ilya’s mattress.

Ilya scrubs a hand over his face. He feels a little too raw and boneless from the sex and the relief of having Shane beside him again to do a good job defending himself. Shane will probably call him an asshole, for springing those questions on him under false pretenses, and maybe mean it. Then Ilya will hopefully work some alchemy, transform Shane’s anger with the right touch and make him melt into Ilya’s arms again.

Shane returns to the bed, phone in hand, and motions for Ilya to sit up. When he’s decided Ilya is correctly positioned for a serious conversation, he turns the screen to Ilya and passes the phone over. Shane has pulled up the list of thirty-six questions designed to make people fall in love.

“You wanted to do these, right?”

Ilya nods.

Shane says, “Let’s do them, then. For real.”

So that is what they do. In Ilya’s bed, naked, facing each other with their hands in their laps, and occasionally on each other, Shane’s hand on Ilya’s knee or his bicep, Ilya’s fingers twisting around Shane’s.

It is the most difficult thing Ilya has ever done, looking Shane in the eyes and being honest. Question number ten. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Question number eighteen. What is your most terrible memory? How can there be anything left for Shane not to know about him, after this? After question twenty-three, How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s? Ilya’s throat goes tight and he has to look away from Shane’s earnest face and stare hard at the wall to try to pull himself back together a little. Shane crawls into his lap and puts his arms around Ilya’s shoulders and holds him there for a long time.

Question twenty-five, Make three true “we” statements each. Ilya pulls back from where his damp face has been buried in the warm, safe cavern of Shane’s neck. Shane runs his thumbs across Ilya’s cheeks, big brown eyes casting all over his face.

“We are both naked,” Ilya says, just to see Shane roll his eyes.

“Come on, Ilya.”

“What? Is true statement. Let’s see. We are both in Boston.”

“Do you want to do one serious one?”

“We… have both been very scared, I think.”

Shane kisses him, fingers sinking down into Ilya’s hair. “I think so, too.”

Question twenty-eight. Tell your partner what you like about them.

Ilya couldn’t possibly answer with all the things he likes about Shane. He is so beautiful, so guileless, so open. He is so smart and so brave. Ilya’s whole life has been spent trying to find comparisons to Shane’s enormous brown eyes, his irresistible freckles, his needy body, his smart mouth, but there are none. He is extraordinary. No wonder Ilya has never stood a chance against him.

“You go first,” Ilya whispers.

Shane’s gaze on him is hot and wide enough to swallow the universe. It feels like Ilya will never be able to escape it. He doesn’t know why he would ever want to.

“Everything. I like everything about you, Ilya. You’re, like, an incredible person.”

“I have not always been kind to you,” Ilya says.

“Yeah, well. I forgive you. I probably haven’t always been kind, either.”

“Ah, no. Unfortunately, you have. Because you are perfect, Shane Hollander.”

Ilya sighs, like Shane Hollander’s loveliness is an undue burden on his life. Probably, it is. Probably, things would have been so much simpler for him without it. But darker, too. Emptier. Ilya thinks that maybe the complication of Shane Hollander in his life has also been the very light of it.

“Shut up,” Shane says, but he is beaming. A beacon, a shining jewel. He is a precious, beautiful thing.

And then they are at the end of the questions, a gauntlet that they have run together, and Shane has been sitting in Ilya’s lap for thirty minutes of it, which is having its usual effect on him. Ilya’s hands are heavy on Shane’s thighs, Shane’s fingers twisting little patterns into Ilya’s hair, and Ilya leans forward to kiss him, to take some of this poured-out, open-nerve giddiness and make it into something tangible and physical and understandable. He wants to fuck Shane until he feels like all the pieces of him are back in their rightful places.

But Shane pushes back on his chest until he’s forced to settle back into the pillows and stare up at him.

“I read the article,” Shane says. “You’re supposed to look into each other’s eyes for four minutes at the end.”

“Shane. I can do this from inside you,” Ilya says, reaching around to palm Shane’s ass.

“That’s not part of the study, though. Come on, that’s the last thing.”

Ilya groans and Shane laughs like it’s a wonderful thing, like maybe he really does like everything about Ilya. Even Ilya’s stupid antics, Ilya’s weak deflections.

“Okay,” he says finally, because he’s a goner. Wrapped around Shane’s finger since eighteen, lost then in his big soft eyes like he is lost now.

“Okay.”

The first attempt lasts thirty seconds before Ilya laughs, and Shane laughs, and says, “Fucking stop it.”

“Stop what? I did not do anything.”

The second attempt ends at a minute. Maybe nothing has changed since they were nineteen, pretending to sneer at each other in head-to-toe CCM for the cameras, too enamored to sell the lie for long.

“Try to be serious, please, Shane.”

“You’re the—Okay. One more time.”

Shane puts on a serious face, his brows furrowing, his plush lips pressing flat. Ilya pushes his shoulders back, ignores the erection he’s been nursing for a while now, rallies his expression into something neutral, and settles into really looking at Shane.

Thirty seconds pass. Ilya can feel his mouth twitch, and he wants to smile, and laugh, and paw at Shane and pull him down and kiss him. He bites the inside of his cheek, wills himself to concentrate. One minute. Shane pulls a lungful of air in through his nose and exhales it softly out, steadies himself, relaxes his face. His brown eyes dart between Ilya’s, searching and searching. Two minutes. Ilya watches the shadow of Shane’s dark lashes as he blinks, so slowly it looks like he might fall asleep.

Sometimes, Ilya can’t believe Shane is real, that they made a man so gorgeous, and put him on earth, and then placed Ilya in his path to meet him. Shane is like a wish Ilya made, come to unbelievable life. Perfect for him, made for him. Glorious enough to cast his own shadow and not be swallowed up by Ilya’s. Ilya’s greatest challenge and his biggest regret and the sun around which he orbits. Some part of Shane glows in the very core of Ilya, that ache in his chest, that bruise that never heals.

Three minutes.

I love you, Ilya thinks. I love you, Shane. Oh god, I love you.

“Woah,” Shane whispers, when they’re done.

Ilya pulls Shane down to him, forehead to forehead, and then he is slotting their mouths together. Shane makes a soft little noise and melts into the kiss, opening for him. Ilya’s fingers trace over his jaw and brush against his lips and slide down his chest to palm him there, squeeze in, feel his heartbeat pulsing, strong and beautiful and alive, beneath Ilya’s hand.

“Well?” Shane breathes against Ilya’s lips. He curls a hand around Ilya’s, tangles their fingers together, pulls back to gaze down at him.

“Well what?”

“That’s all of it, isn’t it? Did… it work?”

Shane must know. He must. Ilya is so obvious. This love is bleeding out of him, spilling over the bed, rising and rising. He’s drowning them both in it.

“Do you want it to work?” Ilya says.

Shane’s eyes slide closed. He turns into Ilya’s hand and smiles, warm against Ilya’s palm.

Shane says, “I don’t think I needed the questions.”

They go down to the bed together. Ilya twists them, covers Shane’s body with his, presses him down. The rest, he can say this way, the way he knows how to best. With a million kisses along Shane’s burning skin. With fingers gripping and sinking into him. With hot breath and Shane’s swallowed moans and Ilya’s shuddering, blistering devotion.

“Me either,” Ilya says, and gets to work showing him.

Dear Modern Love at The New York Times,

I recently read your thirty-six questions that lead to love. At first, I didn’t believe that you can fall in love just by asking someone questions. Who would believe this is possible? I tried them with Jane, someone I was seeing casually for years. I thought that they didn’t work, because I wrote them in text messages, and then asked them on the phone, because we live far away from each other and usually do not see each other for months at a time. The questions are very revealing and sometimes difficult to answer, and at the time we did not have a relationship where we talked about things like this. She got scared and we didn’t talk for several weeks.

I was hurt and sad and blamed your article and the questions. I was ready to write you and demand an apology! But she came back. And we finally asked each other the questions the way they were meant to be asked. We even stared into each other’s eyes for four minutes, like you say to do. In the end, I realized something. I was in love with her, yes, but it was not from the questions. I had loved her for a long time before. I had loved her maybe from the moment I met her. Maybe that also seems unbelievable, but not for Jane. If you knew her, you would understand why. It is impossible not to love her with your entire heart.

I still do not know if I believe that you can fall in love just from asking these questions. But they did give us a way to admit to each other how we felt. Maybe they work differently for different people, and that is how they worked for us.

I don’t think that I need an apology from you, anymore. In fact, I feel the opposite. I think I owe you for bringing something very wonderful into my life. If the writer of that article is ever in Boston and wants to watch a hockey game, I will make sure they have the best seats in the house. Thank you, for helping us be brave.

— IR