Work Text:
Ilya wakes to the scent of Shane Hollander’s shampoo. He thinks he remembers the ad—Timber Wolf scent or Tropical Tiger or some other tangle of manly English words. It’s familiar in a way it shouldn’t be. All of his teammates avoid Hollander’s brands like ex-girlfriends, so there’s no reason why the chemical-heavy pine and spice reminds him of a dream he had. His arm is numb, but he’s not planning on moving until Hollander does.
It doesn’t take as long as Ilya hopes. It’s probably a miracle Ilya woke up first, all things considered. Hollander is the type of guy to wake up at five AM to make a boiled chicken breakfast for his boiled chicken day. Ilya’s stomach flips at the thought of the containers in the fridge. He wonders when the last time was that Shane put something in his mouth for taste.
Maybe last night.
Ilya smirks to himself. Hollander would have liked that joke, but instead, Hollander’s heartbeat is slowly getting up to a canter. He’s turning his head, and Ilya is faking a jerk, furrowing his brow as if they’re both fresh to the day.
“I was expecting you to snore,” Ilya says, even though something about it feels wrong in his mouth. He’s hungry, and he wants to get that over with, but something about butter seeping over his fingers, vinegar across his tongue—he’s not ready to give this up yet.
“Why?” Shane asks, the ghost of a laugh on his breath.
“You are perfect at everything else. Perfect hockey boy. Perfect underwear model. Seems only fair that you snore.”
Shane rolls onto his back to look at Ilya. He doesn’t try to hide his smile; he doesn’t do that much at all around Ilya anymore. He likes the praise even if it comes out through a nonchalant sneer.
“You snore enough for the both of us,” Shane goads, and Ilya jostles him with the arm still slung around his waist.
“No, no. I only snore when I have had a lot of vodka. This is how I know you are liar,” Ilya says.
Shane’s eyes dart down to the space between them. To where Ilya is soft but stirring. When he looks back up, he’s so pretty it hurts. Ilya’s never seen the sun on his face like this.
All Ilya can do is kiss him.
It’s what he wants in that moment, and he’s tired of yanking the chain on his desires. He doesn’t know if it’s what Shane wants then, but Shane wants it quickly enough, rolling over to face him, fingertips skimming up Ilya’s stomach. Ilya grabs his hand. Pins it to his chest.
“What do you want?” Ilya murmurs.
It sits too delicately in between them, so Ilya tries a little alchemy to coax steel from porcelain. He curves forward, pushing his thigh against the seam of Shane’s legs.
He claims Shane’s mouth again, and then he says, “You want my dick? Want me to fuck you?”
Shane whines, mewling and catlike as he accepts Ilya’s thigh between his legs. More than accepts—he grabs the back of Ilya’s knee and pulls so they slot together like pins in a lock.
“I can still feel you from yesterday,” Shane says, and fuck, if Ilya’s cock isn’t throbbing just hearing that.
“Mmm, so that is yes?” Ilya presses his advantage. He rolls himself on top of Shane, so he’s braced around Shane’s head. Boxing him in. Keeping him right where Ilya wants him.
“I’m gunna be sore—”
“You want to think of me on the ice,” Ilya rumbles, kissing down Shane’s jaw. “Do you think you will still be loose when you lace up your skates? When you give your team speech, hm?”
He has to stop to play with Shane’s pec before dragging his hand down to check how much Shane likes the idea. And he does. Something curls inside of Ilya like a match burning down, and he hunkers over Shane, predator over his kill.
“Maybe I forget a condom this time,” Ilya muses. “How hard would I have to fuck you so that you are still wet for your game?”
“Fuck, Rozanov,” Shane turns his head into Ilya’s arm, rubbing his lips along the flex of Ilya’s tendons.
“Yes?” Ilya puts himself between Shane’s thighs, holding Shane’s legs apart, rubbing his cock next to Shane’s and spreading their mess between them.
“You are so—” Shane moans as Ilya bends forward, as Ilya folds him in half to press open kisses along his jaw.
“So what? So handsome?” Ilya chuckles breathily into Shane’s ear. “So sexy and so good at making you come?”
“Such an asshole,” Shane mumbles, and Ilya wants to bite him for it but—
No marks. Unspoken rule in a world where Shane Hollander gets almost naked on TV for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Youtube won’t stop showing Ilya his stupid ads.
“Okay,” Ilya says. He drops Shane’s legs, and he twists, sliding away until Shane hooks his ankle against Ilya’s hipbone.
“Just do it, already,” Shane says, and his hands follow, tugging on Ilya’s body. “Fuck me.”
“Like cheap whore?”
“With a condom, asshole,” Shane snaps. Ilya shrugs.
“Condom in your asshole, got it,” Ilya says, just because it makes Shane scoff, and that’s always fun.
“If you won’t do it, I can do it myself.” Shane curls up, angling away from Ilya, and Ilya pins him with a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Sh—Shhhhh.”
Ilya’s jaw slides forward; he bears his teeth. He almost said Shane’s name. What the fuck is he thinking?
“No more empty threats,” Ilya murmurs. “You try to leave my bed. It never works.”
It’s too close to what he almost said, but he thinks Shane forgives it or forgets it when Ilya grabs his cock. He tends to do that.
Ilya doesn’t go searching for the lube and condoms; he remembers where they got left. Tidied up in a pile on Shane’s nightstand. The nightstand on his side of the bed. Ilya’s not afraid to admit he took some decor inspiration from Shane’s designer, so it really could have been his.
“Fuck,” Shane says on a breathy exhale as Ilya’s slick fingers trace around his hole. It’s a gorgeous hole, frankly, and Ilya would know. He’s had years to compare it to elsewhere, and Shane Hollander has the prettiest hole in the goddamn northern hemisphere. Ilya sits back to admire it, teasing one finger in and out. He really is still loose from yesterday. Not much, but enough for Ilya to tell. To know that Shane isn’t hopping from someone else’s bed into his.
“I love watching you take me,” Ilya says, and Shane presses his head back into the pillow. “When scoreboard is not in my favor, I just think about how hungry this is for me. Cheers me up.”
He leaves a smacking kiss on Shane’s stomach, sliding his finger in deep.
“Yeah, well get ready for a lot of that—Fuck!”
Ilya times it sometimes. He hits Shane’s prostate right when he’s chirping the loudest, and it always turns into something much sweeter.
“Jesus, right there,” Shane pants. Ilya twists another finger in. Shane is ready.
“You think I don’t know this? You think I need help making a mess of you?”
Shane throws his arm over his eyes, and Ilya really does bite him then. Just a little bit of teeth, enough to jerk Shane’s arm out of the way. His hands are busy.
“Look at me,” Ilya demands, and he hits Shane’s prostate again just to watch him struggle to keep his eyes open.
“Fuck, c’mon,” Shane whines.
“Ready for me so quick?”
Shane glances down between them, trying to catch a glimpse of Ilya’s hand against his ass. He slurs, “How many..?”
“Just two.” Ilya quirks his hips to rub his cock against Shane’s thigh. “You will need more to take a cock like mine.”
“Put it in,” Shane challenges.
“Ooh, Shane Hollander getting reckless,” Ilya purrs. He sinks all the way in, stretching Shane’s rim around the threat of his knuckles. The ones that hit the face first when he throws a punch.
“I want—” Shane breaks off with a humiliated groan, but there’s blood in the water now.
“What do you want?” Ilya asks, fucking Shane on two fingers faster, harder. It’s the only way to get Shane to admit to anything, appealing to that cockhungry whore he keeps in some dingy basement of his brain. Or more accurately, the youngest Captain in Montreal’s history with the weight of the league constantly resting on his shoulder pads.
“I want—hng. What you said earlier,” Shane manages to get out between his teeth. “Want to feel you.”
“Fuck,” Ilya swears, and then he adds one in Russian for good measure because the occasion certainly demands it.
Shane Hollander wants to feel well used during his game tonight.
It’s a blessing Ilya doesn’t come then and there. It’s a miracle he manages to get the condom on as fast as he does.
“Yeah, yeah,” Shane says senselessly, hands fluttering around Ilya’s blur of a body. “Let me feel you.”
“Oh, you’re fucking going to,” Ilya says, and it’s supposed to be more of a warning, but it comes out like a promise, maybe a prayer.
“Oh, fuck, Rozanov!”
Ilya breaches him slow, forehead pressed into Shane’s cheek. Shane is still so tight, but it’s like his body remembers Ilya from last night. It’s easier to work himself inside, and then it’s just fucking amazing.
“Wow,” Ilya breathes. He tongues underneath Shane’s jaw.
“You’re still holding out on me,” Shane says tightly. Like his gorgeous asshole around Ilya’s dick.
Fuck, how can Shane not know how many fingers but know Ilya still has a couple inches to go?
“I’m trying not to actually break you, Captain. Someone will notice if you limp—”
Ilya breathes out through his mouth when Shane clenches down on him with a whimper. He pushes himself in all the way, Shane’s ass soft and plush against Ilya’s hips, and he rolls the pleasure around in his mouth.
“Captain,” Ilya says, and Shane ripples around him again. “Oh, you like that, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” Shane mumbles.
“I never do,” Ilya replies, and he rolls his hips leisurely, keeping himself nice and deep. He says, “You like being called Captain by sweaty, naked men?”
“Don’t, Rozanov,” Shane says, and there’s enough of a threat there that Ilya hums.
“Was speaking of myself, of course. No one has sexy accent like me, Captain.”
It’s fun to tease, but Shane gets bored very quickly. They both do, and maybe that’s why they work so well together.
Ilya stops teasing. Mostly.
He gets to work.
“Fuck, Roz!” Shane’s whole body is wound tight, and Ilya carves his way into it, thrust after thrust until he’s sure no one will ever be able to scrape off what he’s etched into Shane. Ilya is breathing hard, up to their usual crescendo, and Shane is holding his cock, too incoherent to even stroke it.
It’s not like he needs to.
Ilya is everything he needs. Ilya has the right angle, the right speed, the right luck to get him there to the edge without even needing a hand. And Shane is absolutely gorgeous when it happens.
“Come on my cock,” Ilya says, and then he demands it—“Come on my cock, Hollander.”
“Yeah. I’m—!”
Shane spurts onto his own chest, hitting as high as his chin, and Ilya darts down to lick it off, tumbling over his own cliff’s edge.
“Fuck,” he growls, elongated and gutteral. Coming inside Shane is life’s greatest gift. He palms Shane’s pec, smearing Shane’s come around his chest, as he tries to hang on to those fleeting starburst pleasures. It always goes away, though. Too fast.
“Fuck,” Shane agrees.
Ilya pulls out of him to deal with the condom. Someday he’ll make Shane do it. He’ll just lie back and enjoy himself.
“I think…” Ilya slings the tied off condom into the trash can with pinpoint accuracy. He cleans off his fingers with his mouth, Shane’s nose wrinkling. Ilya likes the taste of lube and spunk.
“What?” Shane prompts. He looks around for something to wipe the come off his chest, and Ilya contemplates licking it off. He’s tired now, though. And hungry. For real food. Ilya tugs the sheet up and offers it to him, and Shane has long stopped questioning it.
“I think that,” Ilya says solemnly, letting it hang in the air until Shane stops mopping at himself and looks up. “I think that you are crazier than me.”
Shane breaks into a grin.
“Fuck off,” he says, elbow tapping Ilya’s stomach.
“No, seriously. I like sex, but you?” Ilya whistles. “You are freak, Hollander.”
“Shut up,” Shane murmurs, and his smile dims like he’s trying to stand in front of a bonfire to make it less noticeable. He’s always really proud when Ilya compliments his sex.
“No, you are good at it,” Ilya says, sidling up to rest his head on Shane’s shoulder. Shane’s arm goes around his back without a thought.
“At being a freak?”
“Yes.” Ilya kisses Shane’s clavicle, tongue laving over the jut of the bone. “Very good. Is very… hm. Compelling?”
“Out here calling me a freak when all you do is talk kinky,” Shane mutters, and then louder, clearly directed, he says, “You were the one who brought all that stuff up.”
Ilya noses under Shane’s jaw until he’s up in Shane’s face, and Shane is looking at his lips. With that rapt attention, Ilya says, “But you were the one who liked it.”
Shane’s top lip twitches. His head tilts a hairsbreadth.
“You didn’t like it?” He asks. Ilya sighs, and he wonders if he’s going to have to go and get the condom to wave it in Shane’s face.
“Maybe I am a freak too.” Ilya shrugs.
“Yeah, you fucking are.”
Ilya smirks, but he’s back against Shane’s shoulder, and Shane doesn’t see it.
They breathe together for a while. Their evacuation plan has gotten more relaxed over the years. Once upon a time, one of them would have made their escape by now, but Shane traces idle patterns over Ilya’s arm, and Ilya lives here. Not just this house, but he lives on Shane’s chest now, he’s decided. He’s going to get lawyers involved if anyone tries to evict him, and yet, inevitably—
“I should go,” Shane says.
“Wait.”
Ilya shifts like his joints are filled with sand. He lifts himself off of Shane’s chest, frowning at him.
“I have too much food in my fridge,” Ilya hears himself say. “Is going to go bad when I leave. Are you hungry?”
“I mean—”
He thinks Shane is about to agree. It doesn’t matter, though, because Ilya’s phone rings.
Fuck.
It’s his father.
“Hold,” Ilya says like they’re on the ice, and he’s the Captain.
He lunges out of bed, taking his phone with him somewhere Shane won’t see. The only problem with modern design—no fucking doors to shut between him and too much vulnerability. At least there’s a linguistic ocean between them.
He’s had this conversation before with his father. He’s sure of that. Maybe not with his dick out, though.
And of course.
Shane is fully fucking dressed once he’s exorcised the demons that will inevitably come back to him.
“So, I—I actually forgot. Um. Thanks for offering food, but I’ve got this team meeting.” Shifting his weight side to side like Ilya is going to body check him and he has to stay sharp.
“You forgot team meeting,” Ilya says, the words oddly familiar in his mouth.
“Yeah, sorry. I—”
“Hollander,” Ilya says because he’s standing here like an idiot with his dick out, and the morning did not go as he planned.
“I can’t do this,” Shane says, which is a lot more than a ‘forgotten’ team meeting.
“Hollander?”
“Sorry.”
Shane brushes by him, and Ilya is too stunned to do anything else. In fact, he’s dizzy like he’s been out with Svetlana all night. He’s hungry, and his head is spinning, and his door is clicking shut with Shane Hollander on the other side. It happens with such a dreamlike finality, Ilya almost expects a red curtain to fall in front of his face.
Except, no. He remembers it differently.
…
Not a dream.
Ilya is breathing in manly shampoo, and his arm is numb, and he’s lived this day already. At least once, but he thinks it could be more. The panic hits him first, slamming him into the scratched plexiglass of his own body. He pushes off of it, and he ends up on the other side of the bed.
Hollander makes a noise like a creaky door, and Ilya swallows.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “I am getting call.”
He snatches his phone and books it. He’s outside before he realizes he’s still naked.
“Fucking fuck,” he swears, and he strides to the other end of the patio to obscure the view from the road.
He clutches his phone like it’s going to say something to fix all this, and then he taps it hard against his forehead.
Shane’s nervous speech.
He used the same lie both times.
Ilya is in hell. Someone finally checked him hard enough that his brain turned to soup in his helmet, and he is in hell.
Though, hell would not include such a perfect ass like Shane Hollander’s. A perfect ass that’s all alone in Ilya’s bedroom, maybe getting dressed as Ilya contemplates his mortal soul.
Well, first thing first.
Ilya texts his brother to go home and do his fucking job. Maybe he could save his father a little bit of grief and save himself an interruption. God, isn’t he selfish? Praying that his ailing father doesn’t fuck up his hookup—whenever he starts to doubt that he could be related to a drunk parasite like Alexei, there’s always something to remind him of his poisoned stock.
Ilya darts back inside. Shane strides out of the bedroom to meet him in the kitchen. He’s already dressed, of course.
“Hey, I’m gunna get out of here,” Shane says, and Ilya tries not to look desperate as he marches forward.
“I said I am not done with you,” Ilya says lowly.
The shift is incredible to watch, as always.
Like something inside Shane pushes his better judgement in front of a bus, and he shapeshifts into something that can want Ilya. That can want Ilya provides him.
Shane’s eyes go heavy-lidded, his fingers curling into his palms. His chin tilts up, a wordless submission, but it’s cocked. Incomplete. Ilya saunters up and puts his hand over Shane’s throat, evening out the tilt, forcing Shane’s head back more.
“Now, take out your dick,” Ilya orders.
Shane does.
“Stroke yourself for me, nice and slow.”
“Fuck,” Shane breathes.
He does it. He wraps his thick fingers around his own cock and starts to give himself a few calculated yet leisurely strokes. Ilya rewards him with a couple fingers in his mouth, pumping in and out.
This is how he keeps Shane, Ilya realizes. The weight of it crushes his soul into the cold polished concrete floor, and all that’s left is his body on autopilot. Shane’s eyelashes flutter as he moans, and he’s going to see the grotesqueness Ilya’s face has become. A study in fury and despair.
Before that can happen, Ilya turns him around.
“Bend over,” he demands, and he slides his hand into Shane’s hair so he won’t get any ideas about glancing over his shoulder. Shane folds himself over the kitchen counter.
Ilya is lucky.
In not many ways, but this one, yes. Shane brings his own lube because he is picky. Even though Ilya has long since started stocking Shane’s preferred brands, he brings his own condoms because he’s always prepared. He takes them with him when he goes. They’re in his pocket, and Ilya fishes them out before sending Shane’s pants down to his ankles.
“No practice, no team meetings, and you expect me to let you walk out that door without fucking you first?” Ilya growls.
“Rozanov,” Shane moans, as Ilya sinks one finger into him.
“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya says back.
Fuck.
This is the only way to keep him. Ilya bites his tongue and makes sure he doesn’t say anything else while he’s taking Shane Hollander apart.
Shane does not stay for a tuna melt. It’s possible he can feel something is wrong, and it is, but Ilya can fix it. He won’t fuck up again.
…
He laughs at himself as the door clicks shut. He fucked it up so fast—
…
Ilya makes a fire in his fire pit outside. They don’t entirely need it; it’s not that cold, but he and Hollander have fun getting the little twigs and things. Ilya has kerosene, but Hollander wants to start it with one match like he did in scouts before he got good at hockey.
That was a long time ago.
He lets Ilya use the kerosene after ten matches shrivel up without success. They don’t sit on the same plastic wicker seat, but they use the same ottoman, and Shane is the one who tangles their feet together. Like they’re wrestling or something.
“Can I say something weird?” Ilya asks, and Shane shrugs. “Do you remember first time we fucked?”
“Jesus,” Shane mutters, edge of his mouth kicking up. “Of course I do.”
“I think I met your mom in the elevator.”
“What?”
“Seriously,” Ilya says. He takes a sip of the sparkling water Marly got him hooked on. It tastes like metal and the color red, desaturated. For some reason, he can’t stop fucking drinking them. It’s probably some American sugar sorcery. What the fuck even is sorbitol.
“She was with me on that trip, yeah,” Shane recollects.
“She was going down. I was going up. The doors closed before she could ask me if I was on my way to defile her son,” Ilya says, and Shane kicks his ankle.
“She fucking hates you, man.”
Ilya rolls his eyes to deflect the sting of it, saying, “Her and half the world. Is hard being this handsome. Makes people jealous.”
Shane scoffs, but as always, there’s something underneath it. A curiosity like a young flame reaching out to dry tinder. His socked foot rubs against Ilya’s bare one.
“Do you really not care what people think of you?” He asks. Ilya wonders how many behavior contracts Shane has signed. If Rolex doesn’t want to see him drunk and Under Armor doesn’t want to hear him say fuck on TV.
“If I care what they think, does it change their opinion?”
Shane shrugs.
“It could change how you act, and then that would change their opinions,” he says, and Ilya turns to look at him fully, Russian to half-Asian. It is nowhere near the same, but it’s all the same in the end, people assuming things about you because their fathers assumed things about you because their fathers did too.
“Do you really believe that?” Ilya asks. Even now, Shane still holds some of his innocence like a bird egg he’s carrying back to the nest. It’s part of the reason Ilya is obsessed with him. He likes to defile innocent things, he supposes. But this would not be innocence. This would be cruelty.
“No,” Shane admits.
“Besides, I like the way I act. I do what I want,” Ilya says, pumping his eyebrows. “Like making Shane Hollander come on my dick.”
“Fuck off.” Shane kicks Ilya’s foot from the ottoman, and Ilya slumps forward, elbows on his knees.
“Come here,” he says evenly. His head drifts to one side as Shane loses his breath.
They battle like this, and just like in the rink, Ilya’s never sure who’s going to win. Shane, a marionette painted with discipline and mastered by shame. Ilya, reaching over to tug on his strings.
And oh, how Shane dances for him.
Slowly, like he has to convince each muscle, Shane slides out of his seat. He pulls his shirt off over his head, leaving it behind on his vacated chair. He kneels on the patio, right in front of Ilya’s knees, and he looks up with a glitter in his eye, the phantom reflection of something splendid that certainly isn’t in front of him. Ilya parts his legs.
“Did I tell you to get on your knees?” Ilya asks, brushing his fingers at Shane’s nape. Shane flushes, and his mouth fishes open.
“You always—”
“Hush,” Ilya soothes, running his knuckles around Shane’s jaw to prod at his lips. “You anticipate my needs. Is very thoughtful.”
Shane opens up wordlessly. Even after all this time, he still gets so embarrassed, and it’s become a bit of a kink for Ilya if he’s being honest. Which he usually doesn’t do on principle.
“I think you are the one who needs this though, hmm? Such a good mouth, shame to waste,” Ilya rumbles.
His fingers glide over Shane’s tongue, parting to rub at his molars. Shane makes a noise around him, and Ilya can feel it in his cock. With his other hand, he shoves down his pants and underwear.
“This is what you want, yes? Say it.”
He takes his fingers out to smear Shane’s spit over the head of his cock, and Shane sways forward like there’s an accompanying magnet in his hard palette. Ilya angles his cock away, pursing his lips and shaking his head, and it breaks Shane from his stupor.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Shane says, and Ilya is impressed he’s able to draw in enough breath to speak.
“It is the only thing I know how to be,” Ilya replies flippantly, and he tilts his cock back down, holding it in place for Shane. “Now, say you want it, and you get it.”
Shane gets a gleam in his eye, and Ilya has to give himself a stroke as Shane says, “Are you really gunna leave me here if I don’t say it? I’m on my knees, Roz.”
“Fuck.” Because he can argue with that, but he doesn’t particularly want to right now. He cups his dick, shielding it from the outdoor furniture, and he leans down to claim Shane’s mouth. His other hand is clumsy when it grasps Shane’s face, thumb digging into that vulnerable place underneath his chin. Shane arches his back, rubbing his chest against the slick head of Ilya’s cock.
“What if we—?” Shane shuffles forward on his knees, giving Ilya a closer surface to work with.
“You want me to fuck your pretty tits?” Ilya growls, and he rolls his hips forward to paint Shane’s pecs with precome and his own spit.
“Yeah, I want you to fuck my tits,” Shane says back.
God, hearing that filth out of Golden Boy Hollander’s mouth—
“Your pretty tits,” Ilya corrects him.
“My pretty tits,” Shane says with his stupid little self conscious smirk.
It would be easier on the bed, but Ilya might go up in smoke like the wood still crackling away over Shane’s shoulder if they separate right now. Besides, despite all his protestations, he’s not lazy when it comes to a good fuck.
“If I’m going to give up your mouth, you should make it worth my while,” Ilya says as he grasps Shane’s hair and guides their bodies into a better position.
“I’m letting you—” Shane scoffs and gestures to Ilya’s cock nestled between his pecs. Ilya arches one eyebrow.
“Letting me?” He keeps a firm grip on Shane’s hair, and his whole body rolls to slide his cock through the valley of Shane’s tits. It’s not his mouth or his hole.
But it’s definitely not nothing.
“What do you want?” Shane breathes.
“That is more like it.” Ilya lets his head fall back, testing out this new pleasure. He hums and says into the mostly overcast sky, “Talk to me, Hollander.”
“Talk to you,” Shane repeats.
“Yes. And maybe squeeze your tits a little. Could be nice.”
“Such an asshole,” Shane mumbles, but then he sighs because he’s going to do it. Ilya takes pity on him, keeps his eyes staring up through the branches as he feels Shane’s perfect tits compress to cup his cock.
And then he glances down.
“Jesus Christ,” he says because Shane is a strong linguistic influence, and because he’s staring down at the head of his cock between Shane Hollander’s tits that Shane Hollander is pushing together for him.
He really can’t be more eloquent than that.
“Look at me,” Ilya says.
It’s fucking obscene. Shane’s freckles stand out sharply against his high blush, and he can’t hold Ilya’s eye for more than a second, but he knows he looks good.
“Well?” Shane says, and if not for the situation, someone could mistake him for being miserable. Perhaps it is true, in a way. Miserable that he is enjoying himself so much.
“Next time you are at the rowing machine, you should think of this. Think of getting your tits nice and big for me,” Ilya decides.
“Fuck you, now I’m actually going to,” Shane grumbles, and it makes Ilya laugh.
“What a good boy.”
Ilya takes the first few glides slow, pausing to spit over his cock and then fold himself in half to kiss a desperate Shane. He can’t keep that up for long, but he gives Shane something, using the grip on his hair as a counterbalance. It’s really clumsy, but it’s really hot, and Shane starts making these pitiful little sounds—come on, fuck, Roz. Following Ilya’s orders. And Ilya rewards him for it, murmuring out a strained string of Russian compliments before his eyes slam shut and he’s coming.
All over Shane’s neck.
His chest.
Shane is panting, and he surges upward as soon as Ilya lets go of him. His pants have apparently been on this whole time, but they don’t last long, Ilya shoving them down to get at Shane’s red, leaking cock.
Shane doesn’t make it halfway down Ilya’s throat before he’s going off like a shot, and every time Ilya does this, he thinks of the first time. Of Shane trying to pull him off, of stubbornly swallowing like he had something to prove. He’s always had something to prove.
Ilya swallows because he likes it now.
“Oh my God,” Shane says. He has ended up straddling Ilya in the cheap plastic wicker chair. Ilya isn’t quite sure how it happened, but he takes his gifts without question. He pulls Shane in closer. The fire crackles behind Shane. Ilya can feel the vague heat of it on his knuckles as he splays his hands on Shane’s back.
Some asshole revs his engine and speeds the rest of the way down Ilya’s street.
“I can’t believe we fucked outside,” Shane whispers. “I can’t believe we’re outside right now. What about your mailman!”
It’s like Shane has one of those plastic helix slides from kid’s play structures in his brain, but it’s infinite, stretching up into the sky. The longer he can trek up it, the further he gets to spiral down. Ilya would have to figure out how to catch him before he got to the clouds.
“No packages delivered today,” Ilya says. “Except down my throat.”
“Shut up.” Shane pushes on Ilya’s shoulder, and then his gaze drops.
Ilya straightens out his shoulders, presenting his chest for Shane’s wandering hands. Shane drags a firm touch inward, down the planes of his pecs, propping up both nipples with the curve into his thumb. He squeezes, giving Ilya a bit of cleavage.
“Good enough to fuck?” Ilya asks.
“Not here.” Shane’s eyes dart back towards the street which Ilya knows he cannot see from their current seat. “Not when anyone could walk up.”
Nevermind the fact that they’d already done plenty—
“Shane, seriously, do not worry about it. No one ever bothers me here today,” he laughs. At first he thinks it’s the strange syntax that makes Shane pause which he’s ready to blame on the translation.
Then he realizes.
…
He gets very good at making tuna melts. He fucking hates tuna melts now, but Shane makes excuses every time Ilya tries to order takeout. Shane leaves, and Ilya wakes up again. So he makes tuna melts, and he tries not to taste them anymore.
…
“My father is not doing well,” Ilya says because he’s never said it before. He rolls his head against the couch to watch how Hollander’s face twitches. He says, “I pay my brother to watch him, but they are both bigger assholes than I am.”
“You pay your brother?” Shane asks. It’s cute, the way his brow furrows. Like a little squirrel.
“Is he supposed to do it out of the kindness of his heart?” Ilya’s thumb presses over his mother’s cross. He wishes he had a cigarette, even just to fiddle with.
“Yeah, that’s kind of how family works,” Shane says, and it’s astounding how naive he still is. People with that much money also should not believe in Santa Claus.
“Not all families,” Ilya replies.
“Couldn’t you get a nurse or something?” Shane offers. It wheedles at the tired structure of Ilya’s heart, and like an old alley cat caught in the rain, he lets the kittenish affection burrow underneath him.
“Yes, but then I would be paying my brother and the nurse, see?”
Shane’s silence is enough. Ilya wonders what Shane thinks happened to his mom. He heard once that some guys from the LA team had a betting pool going. Most of them figure Ilya killed and ate her when he was a baby. Other popular bets are she left him to continue whoring, that she left him to become a spy, and that his father wasn’t his real father either; his mother sold him for coke.
All the guys in LA are assholes, though.
And Ilya has definitely said worse about their mothers.
“So, uh, does he still watch your games?” Shane’s fingers drum across his knee.
“Who?”
“Your father,” Shane says.
“Yes, he does. My brother Alexei likes to take notes on which profanities my father uses to describe my game, but I can always tell when he’s lying,” Ilya shares, and he’s never said any of this to anyone. Not even Svetlana.
“Why’s that?” Ah, poor Shane. He’s not ready for it, but Ilya says it anyways because it doesn’t matter. Shane will leave, and Ilya will get another chance.
“Because my father would never call me a cocksucker. Is too horrible for him to even insult me with. Is my brother’s favorite, though,” Ilya says, watching Shane’s face.
“Oh,” Shane says. His eyes flutter, and his forehead relaxes until it’s illegibly smooth, and his lips press together.
“Yes. Oh.” Ilya sucks his lips against his teeth, and then he grabs the remote. He flicks to a channel he knows is playing one of Shane’s favorite movies. It’s the only things Shane watches—hockey and action movies. And his animal videos, of course. It’s so boring, Ilya could cry, but X Squad: Origins will keep Shane around longer than the hockey game Ilya has memorized at this point.
“Oh, this movie is awesome,” Shane says, and he scoots just a little closer to Ilya.
Ilya knows he’s asking for trouble, but maybe if he doesn’t bring Shane to him…
Carefully but with a boyish nonchalance, Ilya lays down, pillowing his head on Shane’s perfect thigh. Shane’s body is still, his hand stuck to the back of the couch, but Ilya grunts, adjusting himself again to get comfortable.
“So who the hell is that?” Ilya asks when a masked woman appears in the back of the frame. Behind the hero, about to pounce.
“Oh, that’s—”
Shane stays the longest this time, Ilya thinks. He really has no way of keeping track.
…
Ilya is up the moment he’s awake. He’s going to bulldoze this house. He’s going to yell at his brother and at Shane and at himself for those scant few moments he’s alone before the world rights itself.
This is perfect, the world is telling him. See how quickly you mess up what is perfect?
He’s learned his lesson, hasn’t he? So why does he keep trying? Every time, he tries, and he tries, and he wakes up, and he still doesn’t hate the smell of Shane’s shampoo. Every day he’s reminded that this could be his life. Waking up behind Shane. Doing a million different things.
If only he could figure out how to stop fucking it up.
Shane eyes him groggily as he paces at the foot of the bed. He’s spent too many mornings in bed. He wants to do something. He wants to see someone other than Shane fucking Hollander. Fuck, he might not even remember how to play hockey.
He misses the rain.
It’s always partially sunny.
He tries to keep the itch from crawling out of his skin, but Shane keeps watching him like he’s about to burst. Ilya can’t keep still. He makes it to the couch, oil smeared across his fingers and most importantly, Shane fed. It’s the secret sauce to getting him to stay the longest.
“I am bored,” Ilya declares, staring at the hockey game that never ends.
“Sure, I mean, I should—”
“There is a place here,” Ilya says. He’s only read about it in popup ads. Some sort of garden; he hasn’t bothered to look up what botanical means. He continues, “I think you might like.”
“What?”
Ilya rolls his eyes. Shane’s walls are tiresome. It might take a few tries for Ilya to perfect this pitch.
“It is like garden or something. You like plants, yes? Or maybe you hate them since you eat so much salad.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ilya’s irritation is hard to keep off his face. After all this time, Shane can’t go to a stupid fucking botanical garden with him.
“I want to go out,” Ilya articulates clearly like Shane is the one who needs to interpret from his mother tongue.
“You want to go out?”
Ugh.
“Yes.”
“Like, together?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Ilya’s fingers curl into fists like he’s about to get himself in the penalty box. “Because I am in love with you, Hollander, but we have to go on date first.”
Wait.
Fuck.
Ilya puts his face in his hands and groans. Shane’s mouth is sputtering around his excuses like an engine desperate to kick on. Ilya turns.
“Just call me a faggot already, and get out,” Ilya says into his palms, and he pads back into his bedroom.
His father’s cold, calculating voice comes to him like it always does. Analyzing, judging—
Your form is sloppy. You forget, this is his first day with you. You have never succeeded, and you never will like this.
He doesn’t expect to hear Shane’s soft footsteps follow him. He’s used to them heading the other way.
“I wouldn’t do that, you know,” Shane says softly.
“Yes, I do. You are polite Canadian boy. You do not even know that word.” Ilya tugs at his comforter. What the fuck is he doing? Making his bed? He’s never done that in his life. Anything to keep from staring at Shane.
“I do know that word, actually. I hear it a lot. In the locker rooms and whatever,” Shane says with one of his little panic-laughs. “That’s why it’s not a good idea—”
“Just go, Hollander,” Ilya says. “I will do better next time.”
Shane’s head twitches back, and yes, obviously that doesn’t make sense to him. It doesn’t have to, though, does it?
“Whatever,” Shane mutters, and Ilya tracks his steps out, the sound so familiar by now.
“See you then!” Ilya calls, but who is he really talking to at this point?
…
He goes back to being careful after that one. He actually enjoys the tuna melt this time. For some reason.
…
Every time, Shane thanks him for the sandwich. Now, it just makes Ilya laugh.
“I just—can’t. I’m sorry.” And Shane’s heels pivot like he’s wearing skates, and Ilya’s tired of the bullshit, so he says—
“Why?”
Shane stalls like he always does when there’s something unexpected.
“What?”
Ilya hoists himself off the couch, but he doesn’t approach the skittish animal that Shane is embodying in his living room.
“Why can you not?” Ilya’s shoulders lift. “You are Shane Hollander. You can do as you please.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t do this with you, Rozanov,” Shane says firmly. Like Ilya’s name is a scalpel meant to peel them apart. He gestures between them and stutters, “There’s just—There’s too much, okay?”
“Okay.” Ilya scrubs his hand over his face. Where is his pack of cigarettes? Maybe he can get a few puffs before he wakes up again.
“Okay?” Shane throws back to him. “You just don’t know what it’s like, okay?”
“No,” Ilya snaps. “No, I do not know what it’s like to have nice, supportive family. I do not know what it’s like to have country of adoring fans. Must be very difficult.”
“See you’ll never get it. Because you’re Ilya Rozanov.” This time Shane is mocking his name. “You don’t give a fuck, but I’ve got all these people looking at me, telling me who they want me to be, and I—”
“We are not seventeen anymore! Make up your own fucking mind!” It’s been years since he’s raised his voice at Shane, and it has the same effect. His face goes blank.
“Fuck you, Rozanov.”
Ilya sneers.
“Fuck you, Shane.”
He doesn’t get a cigarette in because Shane is marching for the door. He’s gone.
…
He lets Shane go after they wake up. He doesn’t offer a tuna melt. It gets Shane back in his arms faster.
…
“Hollander.”
…
“Hollander.”
…
“I am going crazy,” Ilya admits into Shane’s hair. It’s first thing in the morning, but it’s like his hundredth morning, and he’s long since frayed at the edges.
“Crazier than usual?” Shane asks like it’s a joke, and Ilya sighs.
“Shane, there is something seriously wrong with me.”
“I’ve known that for years.”
“How many times do we do this, Shane?” Ilya asks, and Shane’s body stills. “How many do I have left?”
…
Shane Hollander is made of stone, Ilya decides. The rushing river of their fucked up whatever-they-are has worn deep grooves in him, and no amount of begging will break him from his carved paths. Ilya has tried. Just once, he says please like he’s Canadian, and Shane leaves anyway.
Ilya is made of steel. He’s rusty now.
…
…
His face is wet and his dick is hard when he slams into reality. And this time it’s the good stuff—sharp and shredding and someone crying. It takes him a few groping moments to figure out he’s not in the house in Boston, not about to have another fucking tuna melt and watch the love of his life remember why he keeps Ilya at arm’s length.
He remembers Svetlana.
“Sveta,” his mouth shapes out, still getting the hang of itself. He needs water and maybe an IV hookup of Powerade. This is why he doesn’t do drugs anymore, not even in the off season which this definitely is not.
Her car smells worse than it did before. The pleasant skunk of whatever Svetlana had rolled into the cherry papers from home has gone sour and stale, mixing with the new car smell in a way that Ilya thinks might give them cancer in twenty years. Her first big purchase with her first big commission.
Help me break her in, she pleaded until Ilya broke his humiliated vigil and loped after her like a rabid dog, shambling and vacant.
Help me defile her, Svetlana said as she pressed the blunt between his lips. As he pulled her into his lap. As she tasted nothing at all like ginger ale.
He fights off a dry heave, and he rasps, “You said it was just weed. What the fuck was in that—?”
It’s her.
She’s the one who’s sobbing.
Thank God, is his first thought as he scrubs at the salt trails down his own cheeks. Then he thinks this is why Shane Hollander is dating a lovely girl like Rose Laundry. Because Ilya is an asshole who smokes in the back of his best friend’s car while she rides him, and out here in the back of a Walmart parking lot, he still cares if anyone saw his tears.
“Sveta,” he says, pushing off his side of the car. His sweatpants are down around his thighs. The high must have kicked in while they were still fucking. He reaches up to cradle her face, and he begs, “Sveta.”
“I do not want to go home yet,” she grits, getting it all out before another sob overtakes her. “We can go to B2 or MAY.B or Night Flight.”
“You do not have to go home, Sveta. You are in Boston,” he tries to say, but he’s not quite sure if his tongue forms around it properly. It’s like he’s speaking English—the words have to be corralled and sorted before he can coax them out.
“Alyosha can take us, yes? Just a little longer.”
Ilya is suffocating in this fucking Porche. Not just because they’ve hyperventilated all the air out but because there is no universe in which he wakes up behind Shane Hollander again.
He fumbles behind her for the door latch and puts them both into freefall for a moment. She shrieks, ass sliding towards the concrete, before he catches her. Or more accurate, he sort of slumps out with her, so that she lands softly, their feet still up in the car, her back flat to the parking lot.
“Boston,” he says, hovering over her. Her glassy eyes blink, and she looks over to reflect the buzzing blue of the Walmart sign. It’s long since closed for the night, but the sign does not turn off.
“Boston,” she says back. “What a shithole.”
He laughs, a dry, hollow thing, and he slithers the rest of the way out of the car. He only steps on her dress a little bit. He rearranges them, closing the car door so the rest of the world doesn’t get poisoned any further by their bad decisions. He’s got her between his legs, and he’s leaning against the smell of fresh rubber. He’s dizzy, but she doesn’t feel anything like Shane. Like Hollander.
“I am going to kill your dealer,” Ilya says idly.
“Do not be rude to my guests.”
She’s still rolling pretty hard. Ilya supposes all his bulk is good for something. He doesn’t have to spend another thousand years confirming the things he already knows—
That he’s in love.
That it doesn’t matter how many tries he gets. He will always be lacking. There are no pretty words or thoughtful actions to make someone forget that you will ruin their life, top to tail just by standing next to you. Not a single person on the Earth would be happy to see Ilya with his arm around Shane, and that number includes Shane now.
He knows that even after all that, he’s still in love.
“It pisses me off,” he says into Svetlana’s hair. “He should grow up, and then he should tell me he does not want me.”
Mr. Perfect with his perfect family and his perfect cottage and his perfect tits. Ilya’s fingers flex against the disappointing nothing. Mr. Perfect who cannot say no to anyone, unless it’s Ilya.
“He is scared,” Ilya declares, and Svetlana shifts in his lap.
“The lights are prettier here. Thank you, Ilya,” she replies.
“He was scared when we met, too,” Ilya says, tilting his head back to squint at what few stars this stupid city has. “I am not so scary. On the ice, maybe.”
She hums as if she’s part of the conversation. As if he’s actually confiding in her like some fucking movie with a happy ending and an upbeat credits song. Ilya’s documentary would not be as nice as Mr. Perfect’s, but it would probably win awards somewhere pretentious.
“Am I supposed to chase him forever, Sveta?” Because Ilya knows now that he can. He will. He has.
“You are supposed to be dancing,” she responds.
“Alright,” he sighs. “Dance with me, then.”
He hums some pop song he remembers her playing on repeat last summer, and he tucks his face into her shoulder. Arms wrapped around her waist, he sways them back and forth rhythmlessly. He gets by enough in the clubs, but it’s the other bodies he takes his cues from. He’s never had a great sense of a beat.
He wants to dance with Shane.
Why did he never try to dance?
“He likes being chased,” Ilya says. “I think. Maybe he just likes being caught, but not. Kept. Hm.”
The ground is cold through his pants. She has goosebumps even though she’s braved much colder in much less. He’ll have to get her home soon, so she can ride out her high somewhere better than a fucking Walmart parking lot.
“He will call me Ilya again,” he says. Lies. Decides. He doesn’t know.
For now, he urges her up. He finds her keys. He rolls down the windows to air out her car. And he takes her back to her place. He’s had enough of his.
…
“Ilya,” Svetlana says after he accidentally wakes her on his way out. “Who were you talking about yesterday?”
Ilya lets his eyebrows drift up, his shoulders hitch.
“Nobody. I was so fucking high. It is a miracle that we made it home,” Ilya says, and she doesn’t believe him, but he says it anyway. “I am serious though about your dealer. I will knock out his teeth and skate over his balls.”
“Not before I do,” Svetlana says. Her gaze on him lingers, prodding and prodding at the indifference he wears like body armor.
He gives her a wave, and then he heads out.
He’ll go to practice and go to the gym, and in a few months, he’ll see Hollander again. He was punished for years the last time he made Hollander mad, and all he had to do was stay relentless. It’s not hope that wrings out his days like sweat soaked bedsheets, but he doesn’t have any other word in mind.