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“Go lay down,” Ilya says as soon as they’re back inside. The words are authoritative and gentle all at once, maybe Shane’s favorite way for Ilya to sound, but he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t push back just a little.
“Why?”
“Because you are on verge of emotional collapse,” Ilya says with a fond eye-roll. His hand comes up to curve around the back of Shane’s neck. It’s become a thing, like Ilya is holding him in place, steering him, all while keeping him grounded. He fucking loves it; it’s something partners do, an affectionate and proprietary touch.
“I am not.”
“Mmm. If you say so. I have plan, though. You will let me take care of you. Off to bed, clothes off, be comfy.”
The word comfy in his accent is so cute Shane has to stop himself from giggling like an idiot and bouncing up and down on his feet in sheer excitement. Mine. For me, this, always. He can’t fucking believe it.
Instead of doing any of those things he gives an obligatory eye-roll and trudges off to the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt as he goes.
Ilya follows him in, just a few moments later. He hands Shane a glass of water with a couple of ice cubes in it— “here, drink, drink whole thing”— and he stands there studying him while Shane obeys; he’s oddly tingly from the sheer force of Ilya’s concentration. Here, naked and in bed and following orders, while Ilya stands above him fully clothed, it’s— the intimacy of it isn’t only a sexual thing, although it definitely could turn into that. It’s more that he knows, watching Ilya watch him, that they have perfect understanding between them. Of what it means to be together like this, what it means that Ilya wants to take care of Shane and is comfortable enough to say it, what it means that Shane will do as he’s told because he wants to be taken care of.
Ilya takes the empty glass from Shane’s hands and places it on the bedside table, then removes his own clothes, casually and without ceremony, before crawling up on the bed in only his underwear, his head resting against his own palm as he looks Shane in the eye.
“Long day,” Ilya says, oddly solemn. Shane keeps eye contact. He’s usually not great at that, but with Ilya he never wants to look away; he’s always afraid he’ll miss something important. “Lots of talking, lots of… plans, and big words, and big feelings.”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m thinking, you let me give you massage, and then you let me get you off, and then you fall asleep. And you don’t have to say anything else for the rest of the night.”
Shane blinks at him, a smile crawling over his face. “Why do you look like you’re afraid I’ll say no to that?”
Ilya frowns at him, scrunches his nose up. “You are a contrarian.”
Wow, big word, Shane wants to say, but he doesn’t. He gets it, now, having heard Ilya speak more Russian, how hard he works, how fucking brilliant he is, expressing himself in a language still cumbersome on his tongue. Shane wants to learn Russian for him, he wants Ilya to have to work less, sometimes. He’ll start tomorrow.
“I’ve never been contrary a day in my life, how dare you,” he says, because he knows it’ll make Ilya smile. Ilya’s hands are warm and gentle as they reach out, one cupping the side of his face, the other dropping to his chest.
“Shane,” he says gently. “Tell me what I can give you. Tell me what you need.”
“Today was— you’ve given me everything already,” Shane says, a little worried he’ll start crying, thinking about all the things Ilya had said to his parents, so easily, so sure. He’s moving countries for Shane. Shane’s the only person he’s ever loved. Your boyfriend is here. You’re good here. “I want to give you what you need.”
“This,” Ilya says at once. “Let me put my hands on you, let me touch you as much as I want for as long as I want. Exactly the way I want to. You just lay there. That’s what I want, please. If you do.”
Shane leans forward, kisses him, as soft as he can manage, when a part of him wants to bite his way into Ilya’s mouth, curl their tongues together, pull him forward with rough hands. Claw him open, crawl inside, touch him until they’re both screaming.
“Yes, okay. Let’s do that.”
Ilya, as Shane was already very well aware, is amazing with his hands. He guides Shane onto his stomach, and pulls a bottle of body lotion out of nowhere, something he’d fetched without Shane even noticing. He warms the lotion between his own palms before he brings his hands to Shane’s back. Starts with slow, steady glides as he works this moisture into Shane’s muscles, curving up around the shoulder, down to his lower back, over to his hips, working into his glutes, then up again, up the line of his spine.
“Holy shit,” Shane says, sighing and relaxing himself further into the mattress.
“Good?”
“How are you so annoyingly talented at everything?”
“That’s my line,” Ilya says, but he sounds pleased.
At some point he swings his legs around so he’s straddling Shane’s thighs, his hands working slow circles across his back, massaging down his arms, scratching up into his hair and into the back of his skull.
It feels so good Shane thinks maybe he could fall asleep like this, except that he’s hard— of course he’s hard, because it’s Ilya, his hands, his body resting atop Shane’s, a warm and familiar presence. All their years of doing this, and it’s always felt like a risk, an uncertainty, but— somewhere along the way, being alone and naked with Ilya Rozanov has become the place Shane feels the safest, the most secure, in all the world.
“You are hard?” Ilya asks eventually, almost conversational, as his hands work down the flanks of Shane’s torso, a long stroke with the heels of his palms, almost like he’s petting an animal. Shane has no idea how long it’s been, maybe five minutes, maybe twenty.
“Mmm,” Shane says, which is about as much of a coherent answer as Ilya is going to get; he had promised he wouldn’t have to say anything for the rest of the night, hadn’t he?
“You want me to do something about that?” Ilya asks, still in that gentle, nonchalant tone of voice. He’s talking to Shane almost like he actually is a masseuse, a professional, checking in about the pressure. Like, oh, would you like me to jerk you off, sir? Would that assist with your relaxation?
There’s a kick of heat in Shane’s belly at the thought, and he grins, smooshing his face further into the pillow. Something to discuss later, perhaps. He nods his head, shifting a little from under Ilya, who keeps his hands steady and firm as they reposition, Shane curling over onto his side and Ilya tucking up behind him, spooning him, hands pressing against Shane’s belly and chest.
And then he wraps a hand around Shane’s cock, nuzzles his face into the back of Shane’s neck. “So wet for me already, god, you’re perfect.”
And then he gives Shane the sweetest, gentlest hand job of his entire life, his other hand rubbing soothing little circles against his collarbone, petting down his arm, thumb brushing against his face, his chin, while the hand around his cock pumps steady, slow at first and then quicker, his wrist flicking, playing Shane like an instrument.
Sex with them is so often about a push and pull, a tease, holding back and then release— it’s a game, a competition, a challenge.
But this— this is not that. Ilya doesn’t expect anything of him right now. Ilya doesn’t want him to do anything but lay there limply and let his body feel it, his hips shifting up into the pressure, his breath coming in gasps as he gets close. He doesn’t have to decide anything. He has to lay there, he has to let his boyfriend touch him exactly the way he wants to be touched. When he comes, he doesn’t even give Ilya warning, he just lets it happen, the shivery sensation rolling up and out of him, and Ilya kisses the back of his neck so, so gently, working him through it as his other hand presses warm and steady right over his heart.
Ilya pulls back after a few seconds but doesn’t go far, his hands back on Shane with a cloth to wipe him up, laying soft kisses against his shoulder blades as he works. “That was so good, Shane, that was perfect.”
It takes a long, fuzzy moment for Shane to remember how words work— he’d been vaguely aware during the massage and the subsequent orgasm that Ilya was hard too, his cock pressed against Shane’s hipbone.
“What about— you didn’t—”
“Was for you,” Ilya says simply, holding him close. He’s still hard, Shane can feel that, but he feels weak and exhausted and helpless to do anything about it, and Ilya isn’t asking for anything, he really isn’t. “Time enough later, okay? Do you think you could sleep?”
His limbs are too heavy to lift, his body soft and amorphous and formless. He tries to blink his eyes and open them wider, and after several seconds realizes that somehow they’re still closed.
“Sleep,” Ilya repeats, and his lips land on Shane’s forehead, breath tickling against the slightly sweaty skin. Shane decides to listen to him. He has such good ideas.
“I love you,” he says, because it feels important, and because he’s still not used to being allowed.
“I love you so much,” Ilya echoes, and his hands are gentle as they touch him, rearranging him slightly so Ilya can tuck himself in and throw an arm over Shane’s waist, pulling the blanket up over them both with his other hand. “I can’t believe how much I love you.”
Shane sleeps.
***
The next day, Shane feels a little bit like the playoffs have just ended, his body sore and wrung out, a gaping sense of anticlimax after the emotional highs and lows of terrible effort and desperate hope.
Only— he’s not alone in it; he has someone by his side who feels the same way. They talk about it, over a slow breakfast. How surreal it is to have the truth out there after so long of hiding it all away. How euphoric but also how sad it makes them, to feel as if they’ve found the life they want to live and to know that almost nobody else in their lives will know they’re living it. Not yet, anyway. Slow and steady wins the race, is what Shane keeps thinking. Just keep things quiet, and calm, and don’t let anything bad happen, don’t let anybody hurt them, this precious bubble of peace they’ve created.
Ilya’s leaving in six days, and Shane tries not to think about it.
Out by the fire pit in the early afternoon, his head rested on Ilya’s shoulder as they look out towards the water, he plucks up the courage to ask a question he’s been wondering since yesterday. “So, when was it, then, for you?”
“When was it what?”
“That you knew you loved me.”
There’s a pause, and Shane thinks, heartsore, about all the times over the years he’s tried, clumsily and desperately, to have a conversation with Ilya, only for Ilya to shut it down before it could go anywhere. It’s different now. Of course it’s different. But those rejections live under his skin somewhere, agitating his perfect calm.
“Oh, you’re here fishing for compliments, are you?” Ilya says at last, turning to press a kiss to the top of Shane’s head.
“No,” Shane says, poking him in the side in retaliation. “No! It’s just, yesterday, when my mom said that, about us being in love since the beginning, it just— made me wonder. When it was, for you. When it changed.”
“Is… confusing question to answer,” Ilya says. “I think I worked very hard not to admit it, what I felt for you. Because it could never, we could never… so to love you would be pointless. Painful and stupid. I didn’t want to be stupid.”
“Yeah,” Shane says, a physical ache in his chest. He reaches for Ilya’s hand and tangles their fingers together, still staring out at the water. “That sounds pretty familiar. I tried really hard for this not to happen.”
“Mmm. We are both stupid, then. At least that is comforting.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“You tell me.”
“It’s fucking embarrassing,” Shane says, realizing the trap he’s walked into far too late. Of course he’d need to reciprocate, of course Ilya would want to know.
“Embarrassing?”
He sounds delighted at the prospect. Shane has fallen in love with a very annoying man.
“I just mean… um. It’s been a long time. I’ve loved you for a long time.”
And then Ilya’s fingers are beneath his chin, lifting his face, leaning in to knock their foreheads together. “That’s not embarrassing. I’ve loved you for a long time too.”
“Tell me. Please? I wanna know.”
Ilya sighs, an exaggerated expression of dismay on his face as he flops back on the bench. “Fine. Okay. You will not tease me for my bleeding heart, will you?”
“I won’t,” Shane says, and his own voice surprises him, coming out oddly low and solemn. The two of them, the story of them, the way they started, it had been something Shane had carried on his own. There was nobody to talk to about any of it but Ilya, and he and Ilya hadn’t talked like this. It’s new. It’s terrifying and it’s perfect.
“In the beginning…” Ilya sits back up and looks at him, tilting his head as if considering. “I wanted you badly. Because of these—” he pauses, draws a thumb gently across Shane’s freckles, under his eye. “And because you were so good at hockey. Annoying, perfect. When we were hooking up, or when I was planning for the next time I knew I would see you, I was eager for it, more eager than I should have been, I didn’t want you to know how much you were on my mind. But it was just… exciting, I tell myself. And the sex was good. Very good, fucking amazing, even that very first time. So. Of course I was eager for more. And then…” he pauses, swallows.
Shane finds he’s holding his breath. “And then?”
“And then you, it was so, we were, together, it was…” he trails off, mutters something in Russian, turning his face away.
“What?”
“You’re right, this is sort of embarrassing.”
“Oh my god, now you have to tell me, I’m dying here.”
“It was in 2013. The first time, we were in that stupid apartment of yours in Montreal. So many pillows, you hired someone to decorate. I knew it was your first time, like that, with anybody. I wanted to make it good for you so badly. I’d thought a lot about it. I’d planned for it, like I never would have for anybody else I’ve been with. I didn’t expect— I didn’t realize how right it would be. I wanted to stay, I wanted to stay in that bed forever just to hold you.”
“Holy shit,” Shane says.
Ilya sighs, glares at him. “You have got to stop saying that in response to my romantic declarations. Is bad for my nerves.”
“No, sorry, I just— you actually beat me to it. I was so sure I was first.” His heart is beating so hard in his chest. He is so in love, it’s fucking crazy. He had no idea it would be like this, he had no idea anything could feel so perfect. “You were in love with me in 2013?”
“I don’t know,” Ilya says with another sigh. “I think so, yes. Maybe not fully conscious of it, but. Yes. I was terrified. I decided I shouldn’t— that there should be distance. I decided I wouldn’t text you.”
“Oh, I remember,” Shane says. “That… that’s when I knew.”
“What, when I didn’t text you?” Ilya’s eyebrows scrunch down, uncertain.
“When you didn’t text me, and you brushed me off at the Olympics when I tried to check on you, and then you still didn’t text me back, and then you won the cup that season and I was so fucking proud of you I almost cried watching you win the game, and I texted you congrats and you still didn’t answer me, and I just… I think it was that night, I was sitting there thinking it is not normal to be this heartbroken over this, you barely know him.”
There’s a beat of silence, and Shane rushes to fill it— “but I wasn’t, I mean, I don’t think I thought the words to myself then. I don’t think I was ready to admit that how I felt about you was a permanent condition.”
“Permanent,” Ilya echoes. He sounds a little awed about it.
“Uh, yeah. Permanent. As far as I can tell.”
Ilya kisses him hard, holds Shane’s face still between his hands and peppers kisses across his nose, his cheeks, his chin, his lips again. “Wow. I love you. Also permanent. So permanent.”
“Well. Good.” Shane’s face is warm. He feels like he’s on fire. It’s always a little like that with Ilya; sometimes the fire is gentle and banked and glowing, and sometimes it’s an inferno, right on the edge of explosion, but it’s always there, warming him up from the inside out.
“But your answer makes me sad,” Ilya says, pressing their foreheads together for a moment and then pulling back, keeping his hands on Shane’s arms as he considers him.
“Sad? Why?”
“We weren’t talking to each other,” Ilya says. “So you thought, maybe, you were alone in this.”
“I did think that, yeah,” Shane says. “It’s just… that night. The night you’re talking about, the first time in Montreal. It was, uh— special, to me. I guess.”
“Special to me too,” Ilya says at once, and Shane marvels at how secure it all is, how sure he is, how safe it is to say these things, to hear them. He’s not sure what he would have done if Ilya had told him any of this before. Probably, if history is anything to go by, he would have clammed up. He would have run, and then they’d have had to work their way back towards this closeness, skittish and uncertain. Again and again.
“I get that now,” Shane says. “But then, I thought… well, I thought maybe it wasn’t that important to you. You— you fucked me and then didn’t talk to me for six months.”
“Oh,” Ilya says. The look on his face is blank, impossible to read. “You thought… Once I’d had you, I was done with you.”
“I didn’t want to think that,” Shane says, swallowing back the memory of that sadness. “I didn’t know what to think. I was… I guess humiliated, that I’d let myself get caught up in something like that when it was obvious you didn’t feel the same way. I just wanted… I just missed you so much. So much more than it made any sense for me to be missing you.”
“I wanted you too badly, too much,” Ilya says, tripping over the words a bit in his haste to set the record straight. “I was, Russia was bad, the Olympics, my father, I was overwhelmed. I was scared. Scared if I went to you again I wouldn’t leave.”
Shane nods. “I know that now,” he says. “It all makes sense now.”
“I’m sorry,” Ilya says, his brow creasing. “I didn’t take care of you. And after that, the next time we were together I was… cold. We were cold, not good. I was awful.”
“No,” Shane says, although he’s thinking of Vegas, thinking of some of the best sex he’s ever had in his life and how utterly, abjectly, miserable he’d felt after it, sick to his stomach and heartsore and lonely. “No, we were both— neither of us have been any good at any of this.”
“Is no fun being bad at something,” Ilya says. “I don’t think either of us are used to it.”
Shane laughs, and he flips his arms over so his hands can grip Ilya’s wrists, tugging him in closer. “No, we’re both pretty good at most things.”
“Sex and hockey,” Ilya says, nodding solemnly, but there’s a lightness to his eyes, and Shane is so proud of himself for putting it there.
“Sex and hockey,” Shane says. “I’ll give you best at sex if you give me best at hockey.”
Ilya laughs, a surprised burst of pleasure, nose crinkling up as he shakes his head at Shane. “No chance, Hollander! You think I am better at sex than you?”
“I think you’ve had more practice,” Shane grumbles.
“Mmm,” Ilya tilts his head from side to side. “We’ve had exactly the same amount of practice, having sex with each other. Only sex that matters now.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You think I am a man who knows how to share?” Ilya says, raising an eyebrow.
“I think you’re kind of a possessive freak,” Shane says easily, and Ilya grins, pleased to be understood.
“Oh yes. Get ready.”
“I am,” Shane says, and he brings a hand up to cup it around Ilya’s jaw. “I’m so fucking ready.”
He leans in to kiss Ilya, and Ilya allows it, the softness of it, for only a moment before he nips Shane’s bottom lip with his teeth. “Being your boyfriend,” Ilya says, nuzzling their noses together. “Is the next thing I’d like to be good at. I will be best.”
“I believe you,” Shane says. “You’re uh— off to a really, really good start. I’ll try and catch up.”
“No, you are already very good,” Ilya says earnestly. “You invited me here. You were brave, you— you told me to be honest about how I felt. You, you… you stayed up in middle of night and planned our whole future in your perfect brilliant brain. You told your parents that you love me, and that you want me forever.”
“Okay,” Shane says, because he doesn’t think Ilya will take it kindly if he tries to argue with him. Maybe this one thing doesn’t have to be a competition. “Okay, so we’re both already good at it. And we’ll— get even better. Together.”
He’s near to hitting the limit with words, and he can tell Ilya is too. This whole week, they’ve spoken to each other more than in all the years they've known each other combined, and it’s been hard, and oddly mentally and emotionally trying, no matter how lovely the outcome. It seems insane that they’ve regularly gone weeks, months, without speaking— since All Stars, the contact has been more frequent, calls and texts almost daily. And now this past week, all this time together, alone, safe…
“I never want to go another day, my whole life,” Shane says, forcing the words out because he feels them and because they’d promised each other honesty— “without talking to you.”
“Our whole lives,” Ilya echoes. “Yes. I want to hear your voice every day. Every single day.”
“Good,” Shane says. “Same page.”
“Same page,” Ilya says, and his eyes are watery, his smile tremulous and fond. Then he blinks and shakes his head. “Okay, wow, enough of that. Let me take you inside, I really need to suck your dick right now.”
Shane huffs, biting back another laugh as Ilya stands and tugs on his arm. “What if I really need to suck your dick right now.”
“Then we take turns,” Ilya says, rolling his eyes. Then he blinks, shooting Shane a look. “Or…”
“Or,” Shane says. And he grins, something sharp and wanting shivering through his chest, his limbs. They’ve never tried before, and Shane takes a moment to imagine the logistics, laid out head to foot on his bed. They’re not exactly the same height, but they’re not too far off… “Yeah, or. Let’s do or. Right now.”
And they race each other inside, to their bed, to try something new. That’s what they get to have now, for as long as they both want it— as many new things as they can think of to try.
“First one to come has to make dinner,” Ilya declares, slapping Shane’s arm out of the way so he can beat him to the bed, launching himself at it as Shane follows, nearly tackling him as they grapple for each other’s clothes, tugging at drawstrings and sleeves in a mad, messy scramble.
Shane’s going to lose that one, it’s almost inevitable.
But he’s not a quitter.
“You’re on.”