Work Text:
Ilya lived his life submerged in chaos. He willingly held his head under a waterfall of relentless stimuli, letting the rush drown out the yawning abyss inside his chest.
Hockey worked best. Cold crystallized the adrenaline in his veins, heart pumping to power a machine honed for winning. His skates cut cleanly into the ice; the rip of his edges a controlled version of the violence squirming under his skin. Violence he let loose in short bursts when he drove his body weight into his opponents, the electric force of impact rattling through him. The shock of pain that felt like inhaling a lungful of cold, crisp air after holding his breath too long. The ache that lingered afterward was a reminder of screaming crowds. Proof of a job well done.
Because he couldn't always be on the ice—couldn't always be winning—the clubs came next. Heat and sweat and the kind of noises that only rang out under the cover of darkness.
He'd been like this almost as long as he could remember. Since he'd nudged open the door of his parents' bedroom, saw his mother's hand hanging limply off the edge of the bed, and knew. If he kept his nights busy enough, loud enough, then there was no room to think about the empty pill bottle on the floor or the smell of vomit or the glassy, blank look in eyes that were the same exact shade of blue as his own.
When Ilya danced and drank and found a girl to pour his focus into for a few hours, he didn't have to think about the father he would never be good enough for or the brother that resented him for existing.
The abyss followed him to Boston, but Boston had more hockey, more clubs, and more women. Enough chaos to keep Ilya from thinking about all the things he needed, as a matter of survival, to avoid thinking about.
Boston had more men, too. Men who looked and smiled in the careful, curious way Ilya was not supposed to notice. Ilya had shoved looks and smiles like that into a dark, dusty corner of his mind when he was seventeen, and Sasha had told him he was going to Paris for school. Ilya had hated him, then. His own escape had been on the horizon—hailed as inevitable by every hockey pundit in Russia and abroad—but it didn't soothe the ache of being left behind.
Wanting to fuck men was no more acceptable for Rozanov, NHL star forward and captain of the Boston Bears, than it was for Ilya, the wayward Russian teenager. Ilya couldn't stop himself from noticing, but wanting was another thing altogether. Being with women felt good; he liked the attention and the touch and the pleasure. So he relegated wanting men to the abyss in his chest.
Shane Hollander was the only exception. A weakness Ilya hadn't been able to shake since that freezing day outside a rink in Saskatchewan. Wanting Hollander was less of a choice and more of a reflex, triggered over and over by his devastatingly handsome features and the careful, controlled way he held himself when the world was watching.
Ilya couldn't help but be fascinated by him, unable to reconcile Canada's Golden Boy with the awkward teenager who shook his hand twice but wouldn't look him in the eye. Immediately, Ilya had wanted to know more about him. Had wanted to find out if the flush beneath those beautiful freckles was from the cold or from the weight of Ilya's stare.
Now, almost eight years later, Shane Hollander knew Ilya's body better than anyone else, except maybe Sveta. Ilya couldn't be sure, but he suspected that, in return, he was the only person Hollander allowed to see him desperate, wanting, and utterly unrepentant about it. Vulnerable and trusting for Ilya. Breathtaking and so unlike anyone else he'd ever met.
It fucking terrified him.
~☪~
Ilya knew sleeping with Hollander was dangerous and stupid. Probably more dangerous and stupid than any of the other highs Ilya chased. He tried to cut things off a couple years ago, had channeled all the wanting into hockey and come away with the Cup and a loneliness deep enough to make his bones ache.
It was hardly a surprise that he folded almost immediately when he saw Shane again in Vegas. Ilya had foolishly thought that not kissing him would preserve some of the distance he'd painstakingly put between them. Instead, they picked right back up where they'd left off, and Ilya accepted that he wasn't strong enough to stay away from Shane. Not as long as Shane still wanted him.
Which was fine. Still sort of dangerous and stupid, maybe, but uncomplicated. They had a system. They knew how to make each other feel good, and Ilya figured he could let himself have this until it got boring.
They met up to fuck a few times a year, and Ilya did not wish for more time. It was mind-blowing—different from being with anyone else in ways he chose not to examine—but it was just sex. Eventually, they would stop. Ilya would be fine.
~☪~
The real trouble started with a vending machine in the hallway of a Montreal hotel.
After a brutal twenty minutes of ice time against the Metros, all Ilya wanted was a blue Gatorade. He'd already gone through the works—taking a proper shower, styling his curls, and changing into clothes he'd only show off for about ten minutes before they ended up on Shane's floor—but Shane would be stuck finishing post-game media for at least another half-hour.
Ilya hesitated, eyeing the drinks on offer. Considered getting a Coke, but settled for the responsible, electrolyte-filled option he'd originally come for. He waited impatiently as the machine let out a long and loud series of thunks.
The machine had ginger ale, too. A familiar brand he'd seen Shane nurse when everyone else around him was drinking. Such an old man drink. So boring. Ilya's lips twitched into a smile.
Without thinking, Ilya pressed the code for ginger ale and swiped his card. Retrieved his Gatorade and ginger ale from the slot and retreated back to his room. Would Shane smile if Ilya gave it to him? Not his media smile, but the small one where his eyes brightened and he looked a little like happiness had snuck up on him.
Maybe Shane would save it for after they were done, sweaty and spent and tangled up in each other. Sip it with trembling hands and a post-sex flush still on his cheeks. Linger a little longer, looking adorable and awkward in the way only Shane was capable of as he tried to make small talk.
Ilya retreated to his room, mentally cycling through a reel of freckles overlying flushed skin and pink, kiss-bitten lips that he'd committed to memory by accident. The door snicked shut behind him, echoing through the empty room. Without warning, the anticipation thrumming through his veins solidified into an anxious slurry, sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach. Frozen by the sudden, momentum-killing weight of standing alone in a room that was only a holding cell until he could escape to what he actually wanted.
Ilya felt like an idiot, staring down at the can of ginger ale sweating into his palm. What the hell was he thinking? It would be weird to show up at Hollander's hotel with this. They didn't give each other things. They didn't look for reasons to linger. They didn't notice and catalog favorite drinks—favorite brands.
Ilya shouldn't know, let alone care about Shane's drink of choice. And he didn't care. He just bought it as… as a joke. A chirp. That was all. An excuse to call Hollander boring and watch his nose scrunch adorably in irritation. A stupid joke and nothing else.
Ilya slid the can of ginger ale carelessly across the hotel nightstand; a futile attempt to banish it from his mind as he focused instead on cracking open his Gatorade and downing half of it in a handful of long, deep gulps. He took out his phone, killing time scrolling through Instagram and not thinking about how Hollander would text him any minute. When the phone buzzed in his hand, his heavy exhale was not a sigh of relief.
Jane: Text me when you're on your way.
Ilya sent back a winking kissy face, and within a minute, he had a car booked to bring him to the creepy back entrance of Shane's condo.
The ginger ale still sat on the nightstand, dripping condensation onto the wood. Ilya imagined Shane was the kind of person who always used a coaster, and got pissed if his guests didn't. He did a double-take at his own thoughts. When did he start imagining what Shane was like outside of their stolen nights together?
It wasn't like he cared. It was just… one of those curious things about Hollander. The man was practically built in a lab to capture Ilya's attention with idiosyncrasies that were easy to chirp, and the delicious, irritated reactions that were even easier to draw out of him. It was Ilya doing what Ilya did best: sussing out details to use to his advantage.
He bought the ginger ale as a joke. To give to Hollander as a joke, so Hollander would get mad. Pull Ilya's hair a little harder, kiss him with a little more teeth. A tool to get a rise out of his rival before Ilya would unwind him until nothing was left but his basest desires.
It was just a joke. It didn't mean anything at all.
The can stayed on the nightstand. Abandoned but not forgotten; the way things were when you refused to think about them.
~☪~
Ilya kissed Shane lazily, running his fingers through sweaty hair at the nape of his neck. His limbs were heavy with hazy satisfaction, wrapped loosely around Shane's bare body. Shane's cheeks were flushed a pretty, post-orgasm pink, and he blinked sleepily at Ilya when they parted from their kiss. Ilya wanted to bite him.
"Was good?" he mumbled instead, because biting was off limits. Not because Shane wouldn't like it, but because Ilya didn't trust himself to let go before leaving an imprint of his teeth on Shane's lovely, sweat-damp skin.
"It's always good," Shane answered, wearing the crooked, candid grin that only came out after an orgasm or two or three. Depending on how tightly wound Shane was beforehand.
Ilya grunted in agreement and let his eyes fall shut when Shane slid a familiar, calloused hand into his curls. After a couple rounds of sex too athletic to be reasonable following a professional hockey game, Ilya was spent in every sense of the word.
The last thing he wanted to do any time soon was move. Not with the comforting weight of Shane against him and the smell of their sex still hanging in the air. Every so often, Shane made contented little noises against his neck as Ilya pet through his hair.
It felt right to lie together like this. Warm and strangely safe, as if the outside world couldn't possibly reach them as long as they kept holding each other. The abyss in his chest was, for once, crowded out by everything Shane.
Ilya thought, somewhat deliriously, that this was the closest thing to home he'd had since the small apartment in Moscow that'd been filled with his mother's humming and the scent of warm spices. His cross was warm against his skin. Shane fidgeted with the chain sometimes, during afterglows like this.
Ilya wondered if Irina would've liked him. Probably, he thought. Shane was the sort of sweet, polite, accomplished man that impressed parents. Not like Ilya, who would be more likely to give David and Yuna Hollander a heart attack if they ever found out about him and their son.
At least Ilya didn't have to worry about that. He would never be part of Shane's life in a way that mattered. Would never be anything more than a dirty, thrilling secret. That was all they could be to each other.
As if Shane could somehow hear his nihilistic thoughts, he started to squirm the way he always did when the haze of pleasure faded enough for him to realize he was a mess of sweat and cum. Ilya relinquished his hold without a fight, trying not to shiver at the sudden cold that rushed in to fill the space Shane left behind.
"Early flight tomorrow," Shane mumbled, the same variation of what he or Ilya always said when the lingering started to run long.
"You shower first," Ilya answered. His part of their closing dance.
One step closer to leaving. To another month of emptiness. Twenty minutes or so, and Ilya would be back to counting down the days until he could capture Shane's attention for a few more hours. Back to flirty texts and hockey gossip being the only pinpricks of light in the cavernous abyss living behind his breastbone.
Ilya stared at the closed bathroom door, listening to the drum of water on tile. Lying motionless where Shane had left him for longer than he should.
He secretly, cruelly hoped he'd ruined Shane for anyone else. He wanted Shane to think of him during every kiss. To remember the ghost of Ilya's touch, no matter whose hands were on his body. He wanted to haunt Shane the way Shane haunted him.
He never heard about Hollander with girls. With anyone, really. He thought about asking. It would be easy enough to turn it into something sexy or teasing or both. But then, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Just the thought of Shane with some faceless stranger—who couldn't possibly know Shane's body as well as he did, couldn't make him feel as good—made him want to break something.
Ilya tried not to think about Shane outside the clearly defined boundaries they erected around this. He failed more and more often these days. Usually lying in bed at night, staring at his ceiling when he couldn't sleep. Like Shane was an itch he couldn't quite scratch.
If only they had more time, maybe that would be enough. What would it be like to drink his fill of Shane? Maybe if he had hours instead of minutes to bask in the warmth, in the soothing fit of their bodies, he could leave feeling satisfied instead of empty again.
And really, why couldn't they spend a night together? Ilya had stayed the night with plenty of hook-ups, and those nights were still just sex. It didn't need to be complicated.
Of course, Shane would probably get twitchy if Ilya changed things up. He was so paranoid, he would never agree to it in a hotel where they might be spotted leaving in the morning. But Ilya had a perfectly good, perfectly private house in Boston. A comfy bed. A big TV they could watch a game on together. Hell, Ilya could even make them something to eat.
They'd have more time to relax and enjoy the afterglow. Maybe go a few extra rounds. There were things Ilya wanted to do to Shane that didn't fit in a handful of stolen hours. Ways he wanted to take him apart that necessitated patience and soundproofing.
Ilya was nothing if not a thoughtful, generous lover, and Shane was technically his longest-standing regular hook-up. It made sense for him to want Shane to feel as comfortable and looked after as possible. It would probably make the sex better.
By the time Shane emerged in a plume of steam, looking as devastatingly gorgeous as ever, Ilya had managed to haul himself out of bed and pull on his rumpled clothes. By the time Shane kissed him goodbye, in that soft, slightly awkward way of his, Ilya made up his mind.
He had to find a way to get Shane to stay the night. A little experiment. Just to see how it felt; if, despite all the risks, it might make things better than they already were. He had to try, or the possibility would kill him.