Archive of Our Own

Usually, when Ilya Rozanov is touching him, Shane’s brain is little more than desire and white noise. All he can think of is Rozanov’s cock against his and his big hands spanning his hips and the open curve of his mouth chasing his own.

“Gonna cum for me, Rozanov?” Shane pants, meaning it to sound like a taunt, a challenge, but the words come out desperate. He’s always desperate, too desperate, with Rozanov. With Rozanov, his want is deep and fathomless, and he’s always felt it like a riptide; it sucked him under before he realized he was in deep water and he’s long since forgotten how to swim against the current. 

“Fucking make me,” Rozanov gasps back, working his hips into Shane’s hand. He grips Shane’s hips, tight but not tight enough to bruise. They never hold each other tight enough to leave marks, it would be too dangerous, but Shane wishes wildly and suddenly that they would. He wants to feel Rozanov on his skin after this, deeper than a bruise.

Shane twists his hand, feels Rozanov’s hips stutter. He’s close, and Shane wants to see him cum. Wants to feel it. 

“Oh, fuck. Shane,” Rozanov— Ilya moans, low in his throat almost like a whine, almost like he’s begging, and something in Shane cracks in response. His hand speeds up and Ilya tenses, spilling all over their stomachs. Some of his cum ends up on Shane’s sweatpants, which would annoy him if they weren’t actually Ilya’s and if Ilya’s hand wasn’t squeezing his hipbone as Shane came, too. 

“Ilya,” Shane breathes in Ilya’s mouth, feeling brave and dumb and too anxious to hope. Hope for what exactly he doesn’t know, but he feels fuzzy and good and sated. He likes this. Likes being on Ilya’s couch with the low hum of the TV on in the background, like kissing lazily as if the timer that is always counting down every encounter they have isn’t ticking, likes Ilya cooking for him and watching him intently. Likes wearing Ilya’s slightly too big clothes, likes the scent of his laundry detergent seeping into his skin, likes the promise of more to come. God, he likes this so much and he wants it and—

Shane doesn’t even realize what they’ve left slip for another minute, as he’s panting and catching his breath, and Ilya is still pressing messy kisses into his mouth, verging on sweetness. He kisses back, helplessly as he always is with Ilya, and feels Ilya smiling into his mouth. Ilya’s never been cruel with him before, exactly, but he can be cold when he wants to keep his distance. Now, it’s like he’s acting like he wants to be plastered to Shane and his tenderness is suddenly overwhelming. It feels different. Maybe, Shane thinks, it is different. 

It’s such a stupid, flimsy boundary. As if only calling each other by their last names lessens the intimacy of Ilya taking him apart with passionate precision, of literally being inside him closer than any other person has ever been. But Shane hasn’t even let himself ever cross the line in the last seven years they’ve been doing this, and now suddenly his chest feels tight.

Panic starts to wade into his veins. 

Change has always had a habit of sneaking up on Shane. Blindsiding him. Since he was a kid, Shane’s always hated change. Struggled to handle it. Change is unfortunately a feature, not a bug of life. Unavoidable as much as he tries to protect himself from it. 

For better or worse, Shane has always understood what he and Ilya do together. As complicated as it is to have a secret gay tryst with your incredibly public professional rival, the mechanics of it are quite simple. At least for them.  They meet up in hotel rooms or at each other’s places. They fuck. They tell no one. They leave when it’s done. It’s easy, convenient, and safe. All the danger of their arrangement exists outside of the rooms inhabited together. 

Now, Ilya is touching him gently and kissing him and murmuring his name on his couch. It feels just as dangerous as someone finding out about them. More dangerous, maybe.

Ilya kisses with his whole body. Always has. He chases him when Shane pushes back, trying to put distance between them. Ilya’s hands loosen their hold on their hips, and a stupid part of Shane’s brain begins mourning that even as he tries to clamber out of his lap. 

“I should go. I mean, I should—” Shane avoids his eyes like a coward. “I forgot—  Team meeting. Tomorrow."

“Shane,” Ilya murmurs again, quiet and firm. “Hollander. You would not forget a team meeting. You are having panic attack.”

“No, I’m not,” Shane snaps. 

“Okay, no, you are not,” Ilya agrees, easily deflecting. There’s a stubborn jut to his jaw, like he knows exactly what Shane’s doing and has no patience for it right now. 

“Still,” he hedges, feeling his skin prickle. “I need to go. I, uh—  I don’t have all my stuff. To stay here tonight.”

“Okay, we will get stuff. What do you need?”

“You don’t have to—”

“Stuff is stuff, Hollander. I own things. What do you need?”

“I don’t know! Pajamas, a tooth brush, facewash?”

Ilya smirks, his smile curving with a sly kind of humor. “Do you need very special pajamas? Like a little old man? With a night cap? Why not just normal sweatpants?”

“Fuck you, I don’t wear a nightcap, but—”

“But okay. I own extra sweatpants and t-shirts. These are pajamas, yes? And I have extra toothbrushes. I buy mine in three-packs. And I even own face wash, if you would believe this.”

“You own facewash?” Shane echoes stupidly because of course that’s what his brain has chosen to latch onto here. “Also I, uh. I usually do yoga. Before bed, I mean. It helps me relax before bed. Before a game.”

“Naughty,” Ilya purrs. He waggles his eyebrows like he’s picturing Shane folded up like a pretzel in a whole slew of yoga poses. “Okay then. You can do yoga in my gym tonight. It’s downstairs. Maybe teach me a thing or two?”

“You want to learn about yoga?”

Ilya ignores that question. “Let’s shower, yes?” he says finally, like it’s all been decided. “You hate being messy. You will feel better. Come.”

Ilya rises, putting himself nearly nose to nose with Shane. His eyes look hesitant for a second before he leans in, slow and careful. Shane feels rooted to the spot, but he lets his eyes flutter closed as Ilya presses a kiss to his mouth. Slow. Delicate. It reminds Shane of how Ilya kissed him after the first time they fucked, when Shane sat in the back stairwell of his apartment building while they waited for Ilya’s Uber. Shane remembers how badly he hadn’t wanted Ilya to leave, though he’d never say it, and how for a moment when Ilya kissed him goodbye it almost felt like Ilya didn’t want to leave either. 

Shane blinks through the déjà vu to find Ilya still looking at him intently. “Shower, yes?” he repeats, his hand coming up to rest, heavy and solid against the nape of Shane’s neck. Some of the tension drains from him a bit, his shoulders unclenching minutely.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let’s shower.” 

Shane feels sort of like a skittish animal. Ilya practically leads him up the stairs and through his bedroom to the ensuite bathroom, gentle and close. Once they’re inside, he shuts the door and flicks the overhead fan on, then fusses with the valves and starts stripping his clothes from him, folding them up neatly in the way Shane likes to set the piles of clothes on the bathroom counter. Does Ilya know how much Shane likes that? To keep things neat and tidy? He must. He must notice. That’s stupid. They’ve been doing this, hooking up, for years now. Ilya must notice things about him. He has to. 

Does he obsess over every little scrap of Shane he gets his hands on like Shane does for him? 

Ilya herds him into the shower once he decides the spray is warm enough. His shower has excellent water pressure, turns out. It’s a stupid, stray thought. Shane feels scattered still.

He reaches for the shampoo blindly, but Ilya catches his wrist. Turns the soft inside to him and kisses it, mindless and soft and quick, like they always do this. “Let me,” he says and Shane nods along. Ilya lathers the shampoo and starts working it into Shane’s hair. The pressure of his fingers against Shane’s scalp is perfect. “You might look weird after this,” he murmurs. “Like sad poodle dog. The product is for curly hair.” 

“I would have expected you to have 3-in-1 shampoo,” Shane chirps weakly, trying to recenter himself. Bring himself back to Earth, maybe. He sort of feels like he’s floating, but it’s prickly. Different than his usual panic attacks and different than how he’d felt after they fucked in Vegas after Ilya won the Cup in 2014, but not altogether dissimilar. He feels sort of untethered to himself and stuck in his body at the same time.

Ilya clicks his tongue, tsking at him. “How dare you, Hollander. I have standards.” 

He starts rinsing the shampoo from Shane’s hair, careful not to get it in his eyes. Shane lets his eyes slide shut anyway. It’s nice. Even if the thready drum beat of panic in the back of his mind, this is nice. Being tucked away in Ilya’s warm, steamy shower. Having to stand close together, hip to hip, under the spray. Feeling Ilya… care for him. 

Shane keeps wondering if he’ll make it sexual. They’ve fucked in the shower plenty of times before and Shane is sure he could get it up, even after orgasming on the couch in the last hour. Desire is not really a problem for him when it comes to Ilya. Sometimes Shane thinks he hadn’t even known or understood what desire was until Ilya taught it to him. 

But Ilya keeps it chaste, carefully washing the shampoo from his hair and lathering in conditioner, and Shane just stands there. Basking in it like an idiot who doesn’t know how to keep his own heart armored up before it gets run over. 

After a while, the water begins to turn tepid and lukewarm and Ilya bustles him out of the shower. He wraps a towel around Shane’s shoulders and he thinks that Ilya might actually reach up to rub his hair dry for him, but he just presses a quick kiss to the corner of Shane’s mouth and wanders out to the bedroom.

“Here,” Ilya says, producing a new pair of sweaters and an oversized t-shirt. “New clothes. Since you made the old ones dirty.”

“Pretty sure we both made them dirty.”

“Yes,” he agrees, pleased and cheeky and pink from the shower. “Yes, we did.”

Shane dresses himself as Ilya does and then sits at the edge of the bed, feeling sort of like a little kid. Shane doesn’t know what to do. What he’s supposed to do. 

Ilya finishes toweling his hair dry and starts talking evenly. “You will leave tomorrow morning, yes? For the game. After this we can watch the end highlights from Tampa and San Jose. I can order dinner. Or make it. Something boring and healthy like you like. Then you do your little yoga poses. Then maybe I fuck again and we go to bed. Tomorrow morning I will blow you.”

Ilya’s trying to walk him through the plan, Shane realizes. Shower. Highlights. Dinner. Yoga. Fucking. Bedtime. Because Shane needs plans, and somehow Ilya knows that. 

“Yeah,” Shane says, feeling his chest unknot a bit. He should be panicking. Well. He is kind of panicking a little. In a low-grade, background way. He should be panicking more, maybe, but it’s all starting to recede a bit the longer that Ilya keeps talking and planning and looking at him so intently. “Yeah, Okay.” 

Ilya smiles. Not the one he flashes at reporters or fans or opponents across the rink as he beats them, but the wider version that Shane wants to be just his.

Then Ilya makes good on his plan.

He queues up the highlights from the games early today and they watch them, talking shit and gossiping about other players in the league idly. Ilya’s always been funny and quicker, quicker than Shane could ever be, but he feels the permission with Ilya to make his tongue a little sharper. He sort of likes when he says something a little too mean —  something that Shane Hollander would never dream of saying to the press, to his teammates, to his mother —  and Ilya does this snorting sort of laugh.

In a few hours, Ilya orders them dinner. Protein bowls from a local health-food kind of place that are surprisingly and thoughtfully in accordance with Shane’s performance diet. They eat them on the couch. Shane even has another ginger ale. 

It shouldn’t feel this easy, he thinks. Being in Ilya’s space. He doesn’t particularly like being in anyone’s space. Even when he has dinner at Jackie and Hayden’s, or hangs out with the kids to babysit, he doesn’t dawdle. He enjoys himself and still tries to leave fairly soon after. The unstructured time with him hanging around in a house that isn’t his starts to prickle at him after a while. But there’s a comfort to Ilya’s presence that Shane wants to cling to and that lingers through their conversations, making the chatting feel easier than it ever does for Shane. 

Around 9PM, Shane untangles himself from the couch where their legs have been gently overlapping. 

“I’m going to do yoga,” he says. “If that’s okay?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll come.” 

“You don’t have to join.”

Ilya shrugs. “I’ll come. Lift some weights or something if I don’t like the yoga. I have to save the cardio for bedtime.”

Shane's facesburns. They’ve been sleeping together for over six years and he still gets embarrassed when Ilya jokes about it sometimes. “Sex doesn’t count as cardio.”  

“Does the way we do it. C’mon.”

Ilya’s home gym is nice, which is no surprise. They are, after all, professional athletes. It would be like a librarian having shitty bookshelves, he thinks. There’s no yoga mats or dimming lights like Shane has in his own home gym, but there’s a mirror on the wall for Shane to check his form in and the floors aren’t overly hard against his hands as he pressed into his first pose. 

“Don’t mind me,” Ilya says, attempting to copy him. “I am a quick learner. Will follow along.” 

Ilya is pretty bad at yoga, which isn’t very surprising. Mostly, it’s funny that Ilya can’t touch his toes. He follows along, half a step behind and wiggling in his poses, swearing under his breath in Russian and muttering about balance. Eventually, he stops attempting yoga and sits back on his heels, watching Shane.

Shane ignores the hot feeling of Ilya’s eyes on him and focuses on the yoga. He breathes in deeply and presses into downward dog. He glances up to the mirror as he breathes out and catches Ilya’s eyes on him, hot and liquid. 

“Fuck, Hollander,” Ilya breathes. “You are flirting with me.”

“I am doing yoga.”

“You are reminding me how flexible you are.” Ilya runs a hand up the flank of his thigh from the back and Shane shivers into the contact. “And presenting for me.” 

Shane remembers one time in a hotel, they’d fucked in front of a mirror. They’d started on the bed, Ilya fingering Shane open with his face down against the bed spread as he whined helplessly. Ilya has pulled him up by the hips and manhandled him in front of the mirror and arranged his palms to brace against the wall on either side of the mirror as he slid inside. Look, Ilya had gasped as he pounded into Shane and he’d keened. Look how pretty you are. Look how well you take my cock. He’d shot off all over the mirror and had to wipe it up.

Ilya presses a kiss to his thigh, featherlight and over the fabric of his borrowed sweatpants, and it shouldn’t set Shane on fire but it does. He unfolds himself from the pose and turns over to look at Ilya. His eyes are dark and unfathomable. 

“Look how hard you get for me, Hollander.”

Shane doesn’t know who kisses who first, who reaches first, but he almost never does with Ilya. He gets in a room alone with him and his mind stops tracking movement until they’re pressed together. Fused. Ilya kisses him, deep and claiming, pressing him into the floor of the gym. This is what they should’ve done in that hotel gym the night before the draft, Shane thinks. 

“I don’t want to fuck on the floor of your gym,” Shane gasps as they break apart. “It’s—  It’s unsanitary.”

“Cleaning lady comes once a week,” he gripes, but rolls off Shane anyway. “Okay, c’mon. Bedroom.” 

They stumble upstairs to the bedroom, connected by the mouth, until Ilya tips him back onto the bed. Shane grapples until he’s pulling Ilya’s shirt over his head, until they’re naked and pressed together so tightly that the angle is almost too awkward for Ilya to start rubbing his hole and fingering him open. He’s still loose from earlier and they’ve never fucked so many times in one day, he thinks. It’s reckless to do before a game, but Shane craves the ache now. Wants to feel Ilya long after he’s gone. Only the bedside lamp is on and the curtains are drawn, leaving the room golden and shadowed. Ilya’s skin looks bronzed and perfect in the light as he grinds on top of him. Shane can’t decide where to touch so he settles on everywhere he can reach and bites at one of the moles on Ilya’s shoulder.

He whines as Ilya slicks up his fingers with lube and presses into him, licks the whine from his mouth. By the time he’s grabbed the condom and is pressing inside, Shane is whimpering and it would be so embarrassing if Ilya didn’t seem just as affected. 

He seems focused on a kind of sex they’ve never quite had before; slow, languid, unhurried and deep until Shane feels like he’s melting out of his body. Canting his hips to hit his prostate and rocking slow and steady until Shane is practically clawing at his back.

Ironically, Shane can think of few places or times where he feels as whole and as calm as when he’s full of Ilya’s cock. Ilya fucking him makes his mind go perfectly, mercifully, blissfully blank. Shane’s always had a crowded brain. Noisy. It wasn’t until he was older that he realized that not everyone else’s brains always felt so… busy. The realization had embarrassed him, made him feel oddly self-conscious. 

“Ilya,” he gasps. “Please.”

“That’s it,” Ilya croons. “Perfect, so fucking perfect. So fucking perfect for me, Shane.” 

His hips are still moving in a steady rhythm, his crucifix tapping against Shane’s chin with each thrust, Shane’s cock is sensitive and rubbing against Ilya’s abs and happy trail. It’s too much. It feels like being consumed. It feels like being claimed. It feels—  it feels—  like being worshipped. 

You like me, too, Shane thinks — wishes —  wildly. You care. You want to say my name, too. This is ruining you, too, and you don’t want to stop either. 

“Ilya,” he gasps again and cums all over their stomachs before Ilya can even get a hand around him. Ilya follows right after with a string of strangled words in Russian as he empties in the condom. 

He keeps pressing kisses to Shane’s face, his shoulders, his neck as their breathing slows. With a parting kiss, he slides gently out of Shane and mumbles come here. Carefully helps Shane sit up and leads him to the bathroom where he tenderly wipes Shane down with a clean, wet washcloth and produces his promised toothbrush. They brush their teeth naked, Ilya half smiling around a mouthful of toothpaste when he catches Shane’s eye in the mirror. Their elbows brush as he leans down to spit. 

Does he do this with his other hook-ups? Shane wonders. Do they all know his bedtime routine? 

They bundle into new, clean sweats —  really this makes for, like, three outfit changes in a day and Shane really hopes Ilya employs a laundry service with that cleaning lady —  and then Ilya tugs him into bed, flipping off the light and settling into bed behind him.

All the fuzzy pleasure of sex starts to fade as Shane lays there, reality sneaking back in now that his mind isn’t singularly focused on the feeling of Ilya sliding him and chasing his impending orgasm.

The last time Shane stupidly got his hopes up for more from him — in Sochi, in Vegas — Ilya left him hanging and unmoored. Shane hates himself for giving in again. He doesn’t like making the same mistake twice. What’s the point in that? Proof he doesn’t learn? He thinks of Ilya’s taut posture and blank face at the Olympics as he said, Not here. We are not anything. Go away, Hollander. He thinks of Ilya illuminated by the lights of the Vegas strip in his penthouse hotel suite, looking away and dismissing Shane from the room like he was nothing. 

He thinks of Ilya now, slotted behind him in bed and spooning him, holding tight like he knows Shane is considering bolting.

Ilya breaks the silence before Shane can. 

“Shane,” he rumbles, his voice deep and just a bit hoarse. “I can hear you thinking. Is very loud in your brain.”

It’s always loud in my fucking brain, Shane wants to say. He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t actually want to say that. He doesn’t actually want to tell Ilya that sometimes his brain feels like a faulty circuit board where rats chewed through the wiring. That everything is just too much.

“I don’t— You’re not going to ghost me this time are you?”

Ilya holds him tighter. “No. I promise.”

“Okay, okay.” Shane tries to breathe deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Counts one, two, three. “You just— you said you don't like me. As a person. Just as a—a— you know.”

He can’t bring himself to say you just like my wet mouth, but well. That is essentially what Ilya teased earlier today on the couch before things started to spin out of control. 

Ilya rolls over in the bed to face Shane, his face illuminated by the sliver of light coming in through the gap in the curtains. He frowns and his whole face takes the shape of it, furrowing between his brows. Shane wants to take his thumb and rub the crease out.

 “I shouldn’t have said that,” he says seriously. “Hollander. Shane. You are very annoying, boring person sometimes. But I like you. Especially when you are annoying and boring. I do not sleep with or hang out with people I do not like, okay?”

“Okay. Okay. I like you, too.” 

And he does, he’s past trying to pretend even to himself that he doesn’t like Ilya at least a little bit. None of this would feel so completely perfect and completely unbearable if he didn’t like Ilya. But Shane has always imagined that this —  he and Ilya, whatever they are, what they do together — would end eventually. It had to end eventually. It was a horrible, terrible, tangled thing that had to end. There was no future for them and nothing changed that. 

Eventually, Shane assumed that he would meet a girl and things would click in the way they were supposed to for him. He’s the kind of guy that does that, right? The kind of guy who makes his parents proud and follows the uncomplicated path in front of him. Shane’s not the kind of guy who goes off script. Or draw attention to himself. Or is ruled by his impossible wants. He’d get married and have kids and do all the things he was supposed to do. Feel all the things he was supposed to feel. He’d forget about Ilya Rozanov’s hands and smile and eyes.

Suddenly, it all feels impossible. Like that future has been snuffed out, cut off, without even consulting Shane. All because he can’t get Ilya Rozanov out of his skin and all because he can’t make himself even want to. 

“I don’t like girls,” he admits, the confession sitting sharp and horrible between them. “Not how I’m supposed to.”

“Okay,” Ilya says slowly. “Is no supposed to. You either like or you don’t. This is okay.”

“It’s really not,” Shane says miserably and his voice cracks, tears welling up. He sits up, turning away from Ilya, because it’s either that or burying his face in the man’s pillows. And the pillows still smell like Ilya, like his cologne and shampoo and a bit like his sweat. 

Ilya sits up with him, hovering just behind his shoulder like he doesn’t know quite what to do. He’s been putting on a good show today, but he knows Ilya can be a bit of a showman. Maybe he’s out of his depth, too. Maybe he’s realizing this is a horrible, stupid idea. To have Shane spend the night and pretend that Shane is the kind of person who can do casual and easy without fucking it up. Maybe he’s realizing that he can have anyone, that he has had anyone, and if he wants more then it could all be so easy as long as it wasn’t with Shane. 

The tears leak out of the corner of his eyes. 

Shane hates crying. God, he hates crying. It makes him feel five years old and five inches tall. He hates that he can’t control it and he hates, more than almost anything, doing it with an audience. He rubs hard, like he’s going to pop a blood vessel. Or claw his own eyeballs out. Both options sound preferable to crying in front of Ilya, in his house, in his bed. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Ilya shushes, prying Shane’s hands from his face and turning him half around to face him again. He rearranges Shane until Shane’s in his arms again, half in his lap like a little kid. “None of this.”

His thumbs wipe under Shane’s eyes, gentle and firm. They graze lower, moving slow and steady like Ilya’s tracing his freckles. The repetitive motions makes Shane’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, his eyelashes whispering against Ilya’s fingers. Once he’s satisfied that Shane’s tears are wiped up, his hands migrate down to Shane’s wrists again and squeeze gently like he knows that the pressure soothes him. 

“Lyubimyy, there is nothing wrong with you. Okay? Nothing.” Ilya pauses, his lips quirking up. “Except maybe weak backhand. You could stand to work on this, yes?”

It’s such an asshole thing to say, so fucking Ilya Rozanov, but it has the desired effect. The teary panic in Shane’s chest starts to unknot itself a bit. Fraying. His heart, drumming and hammering against his ribcage like he’s being chased, starts to slow a bit. His limbs still feel shaky and fragile, but his wrists are firmly held by Ilya’s strong, beautiful hands. He can’t even begin to unpack how his heart feels in the face of Ilya murmuring what sounded like sweet nothings in Russian into his temple. 

“Dude, fuck you,” Shane laughs, hoarse and breathless. His backhand is great. You don’t get to lead the league in points with a weak fucking backhand.

Ilya smiles, the corner of his mouth pulling up like Shane’s watery little fuck you the best thing he’s heard all day. “Okay. Four times in one day might be a record. Even for me. But for you, my dick will do this.” 

They sit for a moment, Shane’s heartbeat slowing down to something approaching steady. They’ve talked, but Shane’s not sure they’ve said anything. Or maybe they’ve said enough.

“Let’s go to bed, hmm?” Ilya says, so softly.

“Okay. Okay.”

“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “I set an early alarm so you can do your full pregame routine.” 

Ilya manhandles Shane so they’re tangled together under the covers of his bed, echoing how they were on the couch earlier today with his head pressed against Ilya’s broad chest. Shane resists the urge to turn and press his whole face into the space between Ilya’s chest and collarbone like he can disappear in there.

“What did you call me?” he asks after a moment, the darkness and closeness making him feel almost brave. “Before? Ly— ly-ooh-bim-mee?” 

“Lyubimyy,” Ilya corrects him then hums in the back of his throat, almost casual and noncommittal. Shane would believe it if he couldn’t feel Ilya’s heart jack-rabbitting under his ear where they’re pressed together. That almost calms him more than anything else. It’s a metronome of proof that Ilya isn’t quite as nonchalant and unaffected as he seems. As he’s pretending to be. He might also feel like he’s several pages behind whatever script they usually run together and blindly stumbling forward without his lines memorized. They might be somewhere uncharted right now, but it makes him feel like at least they’re there together. On equal footing. 

 “Is just a nice thing to call people in Russian,” Ilya says softly.

“Oh. Okay. You could call me that again. If you want. I like it,” Shane admits. What’s one more confession in all the vulnerability that he’s dumbly thrust into Ilya’s hands today and always, just hoping Ilya will hold onto it —  to him —  for even a second before dropping it all to shatter? 

“Okay, lybuimyy,” Ilya kisses him softly, almost hypnotic. “Okay, sweetheart. Whatever you want.” 

Shane thinks of something Ilya’s said before, usually when Shane is pressed face down into the couch or bed or counter and whimpering while Ilya nails his prostate. I want to please you. For once, Shane lets himself believe it means more than just Ilya being single-minded in bed. For all the other ways he can be withholding, stoically keeping his emotions off his face or going cold for months in 2014 or being mean in bed because it makes Shane whimper, Ilya has always been a generous lover when they’re together. Maybe his generosity can stretch to this, too. 

Ilya cards a hand through Shane’s hair and Shane resists the urge to push back against his palm like his childhood cat. His parents had the cat since before Shane was born, and it had finally died when he was about twelve. He’d cried harder about it then basically anything in his little life. Wildly, he sort of wants to tell Ilya that, but he doesn’t. He sort of wants to tell Ilya everything.

“Let’s go to sleep, yes? I heard in some documentary that Shane Hollander needs a full eight hours, or he turns into a pumpkin.”

Shane makes a noise of surprise, his voice coming out small and hesitant. “You watched that?”

“Go to sleep, Shane.”

Ilya keeps petting his hair and eventually Shane does just that.

…

Shane wakes up the next morning to the tinny sound of Ilya’s alarm, as promised.

They spent the next two hours like Shane spends every morning before a game, methodically completing Shane’s pregame rituals. He meditates for ten minutes to center his mind and does yoga again. He does a quick thirty minutes of cardio on the treadmill in Ilya’s gym. He eats egg whites and spinach, sprinkled with protein powder. The kind Ilya buys isn’t his preferred, but Ilya seems to take note of that and file the fact away for later when he mentions it, which makes Shane’s chest hurt in a lovely, achy sort of way. 

And Ilya presses him back into the slick tiled wall of the shower and sucks his dick, ruthless and relentless, until Shane cums down his throat with a cry.

Not part of the pregame routine, but a welcome addition.

“I have to go,” Shane says, regretfully, when 10:30 rolls around and he’s returned the favor by letting Ilya fuck his mouth under the shower’s spray. His voice is slightly hoarse, but the kind of hoarse that fades fast.

He’s got to go now to get back to the hotel for the team’s bus to the arena. It’s an afternoon game and the team is going over tape beforehand. Wouldn’t do for the captain to be late.

“Okay,” Ilya says, kissing him one more time and Shane can’t help chasing his mouth when he pulls back. Whatever. The last twenty-four hours have established yet again that Shane becomes a weak, weak man when Ilya Rozanov is involved. “See you on the ice. Don’t cry too hard when I beat you. Or do cry. You are very pretty when you cry.” 

“Fuck you, you wish,” he scoffs before finally disentangling himself.

“I do wish!” Ilya calls after him, too proud of the innuendo. Shane flips him off before slamming the door to shuffle into his waiting Uber. It’s not a walk of shame, he tells himself.  

Hayden gives him all kinds of shit when he gets back to the hotel.

“Oh, so he lives!” he crows as soon as Shane enters their hotel room, shit-eating grin firmly plastered on his face. Hayden rarely gets the chance to give Shane shit for hooking up or about girls, and he has a special kind of glee whenever he gets the opportunity.

“Fuck you, dude,” Shane mutters, ignoring him to start packing his hockey bag for the stadium. “You knew I wasn’t dead.” 

“Staying over at Boston Lily’s now, huh?”

“Shut up, Hay.”

The rest of the day whizzes along and it’s like the next time Shane looks up, he’s facing off with Ilya, ready for the game to start. The arena buzzes around them. Boston’s always had loud, raucous, enthusiastic fans. TD Garden holds a certain crackling energy, and Shane doesn’t think it’s just because he anticipates these matches the most every season. 

Ilya cuts his gaze up to Shane across the dot, his eyes bright. Shane has been cataloging Ilya Rozanov’s smiles since he was 17, at first without meaning to and then so obsessively that he couldn’t help it. He hasn’t ever seen this smile before. He loses the face-off and is off to the races, chasing after Ilya as always. 

Montreal wins 3-2 and the Metros fly out after the game. It’s the kind of flight where you leave the arena still in your game day suit after press and sleep on the plane. Guys start unknotting their ties once they’re seated and chattering. Shane slips his headphones over his ears and lets the noise of a podcast wash over him as they make the ascent from Boston. He closes his eyes and feigns sleep once they’re cruising. It’s a short flight and he feels bone-tired, but he can’t manage sleep. He thinks his body has been buzzing since Ilya said his name on the couch, panting into his mouth as they both came all over themselves. 

An hour later, they’re landing in Montreal. Hayden’s still out cold and snoring softly next to him even as the plane taxis to their gate. Since Arthur was born, he claims that he can sleep under any and all conditions.  

Shane glances down at his phone, thumbing the lockscreen open to put it in airplane mode. A single text from Lily lights up the screen, a banner at the top.

Lily

fly safe 

Shane stares at the message and feels something he’s been trying to kill bloom in his chest like a stubborn weed. His phone buzzes with another text. He wonders, wildly, if Ilya knows he’s landed somehow. If he’s been timing the flight from take-off. 

Lily

next month in montreal, we get in early before game

Lily 

team dinner is not mandatory

The ellipses bubble in their text conversation and then stop, Ilya leaving the message there. Hanging, waiting. The ball is back in Shane’s court. They’re facing off again and Ilya expects Shane to move first. 

Shane doesn’t understand everything. He doesn’t quite understand what has changed between them in the last twenty-four hours and what that means. But he does understand an offer when he sees one. 

He starts typing before he fully decides what to say. 

Shane

Think you can get away with spending the day at mine? Maybe stay the night?

The response isn’t quite instant, but Shane hasn’t even closed out of his text app before Ilya’s text comes through.

Lily

yes. 

…

Two days later, Shane’s just finished his bedtime routine when his phone buzzes. He’s tucked up in bed with only the bedside lamp on, paging through a newer biography of the first-ever general manager for the Metros. He’ll read a chapter and then go to bed by 10:30 PM exactly, like he always does. The routine is soothing and safe. 

But his phone buzzes and Shane gives up pretending to read his book, face down and abandoned against the other half of his bed, in favor of texting Ilya back.

Because of course it’s Ilya. Who else is texting him at 10:19 PM on a Wednesday? 

They’ve been texting even more regularly now, ever since Shane left his house in Boston two weeks ago. Their text thread is mostly idle chatting about their days, complaints from Ilya about 7AM practices being inhumane and akin to russian gulags, trust me hollander i would know and i am allowed to say this, sly gripes from Shane about his teammates and packed schedule. Shane sends links to hockey coverage and commentary on trade gossip, Ilya sends a litany of truly incomprehensible memes.  

It should feel like an uptick in contact, the consistent stream of texts they exchange. But it only makes Shane realize how much he itches to have Ilya near and how much he wants to share every dumb thought he has with him. 

Shane keys in his passcode and swipes open the message to read Ilya’s newest text. 

Lily

what are you doing for halloween?

Shane

Well, considering the fact I’m not 12 anymore

Shane

Nothing

Lily

boooooooooo

Lily

lame 

Lily

what other holidays is there that give you an excuse to wear a sexy little costume for me :(((

Shane bites his lip, feeling a whole slew of emotions rush through him that he is unable, or maybe uninterested, in naming. He types another reply, his thumbs tapping across his phone screen. 

Shane

Halloween isn’t really my thing

Shane

It’s not a thing in Russia, is it?

Lily

no

Lily

but it is a big thing in boston

Lily

boston is like the birthplace of halloween

Shane

I thought it was like Celtic? Or Medieval?

Lily

boston is known for witches

Lily 

the salem witches

Shane

What?

Shane

Do you think the Salem Witch Trials invented Halloween?

Shane

They definitely didn’t

Lily 

whatever

Lily 

anyways halloween is cool and boston loves it

Shane

Are you doing anything fun then?

Ilya’s house is big and beautiful in the suburbs just outside of the city, close enough for the train to still run there but far enough to thin out the traffic.  He wonders if Ilya gets any trick-or-treaters who come to his door and momentarily becomes distracted by the picture his mind conjures. Ilya, wide smiling and genial, remarking on every weird homemade costume that the neighborhood kids are wearing and telling them how scary they all look. He probably would buy king-sized candy bars and dole them out liberally. He’s good with kids, always hamming it up at Boston home games during warm-up and making them laugh behind the glasses as they beg him to sign their posters or pucks or pose for selfies.

He tries picturing Ilya celebrating Halloween in Boston at a party, or a club, or a bar. He imagines Ilya under the colored lights of a bar, pounding shots or dancing next to a bunch of beautiful girls in slutty costumes. Sexy nurses and sexy devils and sexy ghosts. Shane feels something horrible like jealousy curdle in his gut, but Ilya’s still texting. 

Lily

yes

Lily

marly hosts a party every year

Lily

very cool and sexy and fun until one of the rookies pukes on his lawn

Lily

but i have a sexy costume

Lily

i will show you

Lily

hold on

A Facetime call request from Lily lights up his phone screen. 

Shane startles. They don’t do this. They text —  or sext —  regularly, with increasing frequency, especially over the last year. For the last two weeks, they’ve been texting so much that Shane feels glued to his phone like a middle schooler with a dumb crush. But they’ve never called or Facetimed. 

His phone keeps buzzing in his hand. He swipes up to answer the call before he can talk himself out of it.

Ilya fills up his phone screen immediately, smirking. Aviator glasses are perched on his face and a police cap is slightly askew on top of his curls. Shane can only make out the top of the costume-store cheap blue uniform shirt, unbuttoned much too low. But Ilya’s European. He gets away with stuff like that. Silk shirts with tiger print and pants painted onto him. He can’t quite make out what the badge says but he’s sure it’s something crass like panty inspector. It is, unfortunately, doing something for Shane. But he thinks Ilya in a burlap sack could probably do something for him. So. 

“Hello there, mister. License and registration, please— ” Ilya cuts himself off suddenly, leaning closer to his own phone. “Wait. Glasses?” he crows with no small amount of delight. “You have glasses?”

Shane flushes and fumbles to take them off. “Just for reading.”

“No, Shane,” Ilya whines. “Put them back on.” 

He leaves the glasses on and Ilya beams like he’s a little kid who someone just told could have ice cream or a puppy. Maybe both.

“Do you like my costume, Hollander?”

“Do you want to be a cop?” he asks dumbly. The amount of buttons that Ilya has undone is making some of the blood leave his brain and migrate downward.

“No, cops are dirty bastards. Halloween is not school career day like for little kids, Hollander. But the costume is very sexy, yes?” 

He squints at Ilya. “Did you bring up Halloween and put on this costume just so you could Facetime me to have phone sex?”

Ilya doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed or embarrassed. He doesn’t get all tortured, knotted up about desire like Shane does. He never has. Ilya just wants, gluttonous and greedy and unbearably direct about it. What he wants from Shane is simple. What Shane feels about is not.

“Is it working?” 

Shane hesitates, not ready to admit he’s been half-hard in his boxers since he answered the Facetime call. 

“Would you let me use the handcuffs on you, Shane?” Ilya purrs and his resolve snaps like a weak rubber band. He slides a hand down his chest to squeeze his cock.

“What would you do with them, Rozanov?” 

“It depends. Do I need to arrest you for disobeying an officer? For refusing to comply?” 

“Did you look police phrases up for this? Are you going to read me my Miranda Rights like they do in those shitty American buddy cop movies? Like in—”

Ilya interrupts him, rolling his eyes like he’s annoyed, but he’s still grinning. “Are you disobeying?” 

“No.” 

Shane’s voice comes out breathy. He never disobeys with Ilya when he uses that deep, gravelly voice in bed. Years ago, he decided to stop examining it and locked that thought away in a box deep inside his head. It feels good to cede control to Ilya, to feel and not think.

“Good boy,” Ilya rumbles. His eyes rake, hot and visceral, down Shane’s face. “I will still need to do a strip search, though, yes? Leave the glasses on.” 

Within three minutes, Shane is stripped naked on his bed and whining as he fucks his fist exactly like Ilya tells him to. Ilya’s not unaffected, stroking himself as his tongue drips honey and filth to Shane through the phone, but Shane feels like he’s unravelling too fast.

“So pretty,” Ilya croons. “So good. Maybe I will have to detain you. So I can keep you here all for me to use. Would you like this, lyubimyy?”

The Russian pet name — whatever it means, because Ilya still hasn’t told him and Googling the phonetics has only led to frustrating dead ends — undoes Shane with its tenderness. So many things Ilya does destroy him, but this —  the dangerous mix of dirty and sweet —  always sets him afire. 

“Miss you,” Shane slurs. “Wanna suck you.” 

Ilya’s blue eyes go dark, pupils blown wide. “Fill up your pretty mouth then, kotenok, put your fingers in.”

Shane complies immediately, sucking two fingers into his mouth and moaning. He likes this more than he ever wants to admit under pain of death or under oath. He likes performing for Ilya, likes the heady power of having Ilya’s eyes track him through a room or as Shane writhes and begs underneath him. 

“Fuck, Shane, I’m close.” Ilya pans his phone down so Shane can watch him work his hand over his cock. It’s flushed and leaking precum, red and pretty, and it looks unfairly massive in his hand, but it’s not what he wants right now.

“No,” Shane whines, too horny and fucked out to think better of it. “Let me see you. Your face. Please.”

Ilya breaks off, swearing a blue streak in Russian, but he moves the phone back up so Shane can see him. 

“Next time,” he pants. “Next time we do this, I want you to prop the phone up and spread your legs for me. Yes? I want to see you fuck yourself open for me. Finally learn the color of your dildo.” 

“Fuck, Ilya, I—”

Shane’s stomach tenses and he spasms, coming all over his stomach in hot ropes. He feels fuzzy and floaty and perfect, and he practically grins when he hears Ilya choke out his first name as he cums on the other end of the phone. 

After a minute, the cum starts to dry on his stomach, itching at his skin. He wrinkles his nose and Ilya chuckles like he knows how much Shane hates messy once he’s come down from the buzzy afterglow of his orgasm.

“I’m gonna have to shower again, you asshole.”

Ilya ignores the jab.

“Small price to pay for me to make you cum like that. I will sleep very good tonight,” Ilya says, still conceited and preening a bit because Shane hasn’t managed to drag his eyes away from him. He’s too fucking beautiful to be confined to a tiny phone screen, flushed and panting and golden.  

I wish you were here with me, Shane thinks. 

“How do you say goodnight in Russian?” Shane asks instead. It’s impulsive, but not utterly damning.

He wishes he could take the question back until llya smiles, small and private, like they’re sharing a joke together.

“Spokoynoy nochi.” 

“Spokoynoy nochi, Ilya.”

“Your accent is so bad, Hollander.” 

If he didn’t know better, he’d say that Ilya sounds fond.

“Fuck you.” 

He flips Ilya off and Ilya blows him a kiss, noisy and obnoxious. He pretends to bat the kiss away, like it can actually make it through the phone, and Ilya laughs like he’s delighted. He likes making Ilya laugh. 

“You wound me! You reject my kisses! Maybe I will arrest you.”

“Fine, you asshole.” 

Shane feels embarrassed and maybe a little crazy, but whatever. He just came to nothing but the sight of Ilya’s face screwed up in pleasure, aviators pushed from his handsome face, the stupid ruined Party City Halloween costume unbuttoned too low, and the dirty promise of his words. He hesitates, presses a kiss to his fingers then presses his fingers to his phone screen. 

“Better, you asshole?” 

“Yes,” he agrees readily, his face softened. “Much better. Spokoynoy nochi, Shane. Slad kikh snov, lyubimyy.” 

Shane has to shower for the second time that night and wash his bedding, digging the extra sheets and duvet out from his closet like he does on nights that Ilya is here, but he can’t stop smiling to himself and mumbling the Russian phrases back to himself. Like he’s practicing. Maybe he should get Rosetta Stone or Duolingo. He tries to imagine the way Ilya’s smirk would slide off his face if he fired back at his shit-talking with Russian one day.

He repeats the words he’s collected again. Spokoynoy nochi. Lyubimyy. Spokoynoy nochi. Lyubimyy.

…

Shane’s in a pretty good mood when he gets to the restaurant to see his parents. They’re only in town for a day and a half, Dad having a work conference in Montreal that his mom decided to tag along for.  

He’s been in a pretty good mood since October, if he’s honest with himself. He and Ilya are still in fairly consistent, if not constant, communication. Ilya’s sharp, incisive commentary has somehow become the background noise in his head and the thing he looks forward to the most. Anything funny or noteworthy happens in his day, and his immediate instinct is now to start composing a text to Ilya. It would be mortifying if it didn’t feel like Ilya was indulging in the same behavior. 

It’s probably fine if they don’t acknowledge it. 

And if he’s willing to be honest with himself, more than anything it makes Shane feel less lonely. It makes him miss Ilya, sure, in a way that he’d never quite let himself admit before even when months of no-contact would stretch between them and Shane would find himself thumbing open their dormant text thread like he was picking at a scab. He misses Ilya whether he thinks to or not, like breathing.

He hadn’t been able to name it at Ilya’s house last month, but there was a heady relief now in no longer pretending he didn’t want more than just sex. No longer pretending that he was just running down the clock with Ilya in an endless stream of hotel rooms while he waited for something real. Someone real. It was a relief to stop pretending that there was something out there more real than this for Shane. In admitting that there was never going to be a wife and kids and white picket fence one day for him. 

In admitting that he was —  probably, maybe, definitely —  gay. Even if that admission was just for himself right now. 

His parents already have a table when he gets to the restaurant, so Shane makes his way over weaving around servers and tables. 

“Hi honey,” Mom greets him, pressing a quick kiss to his temple as they hug. Shane might be a giant hockey player with nearly twenty-five kilos of muscle on her, but hugging his mom has a way of making him feel like a little kid again with his face hidden in her sweater. 

He hugs his dad, too. 

“It’s good to see you guys,” Shane says, taking a seat. He hasn’t gotten a chance to have an afternoon or evening off with them probably since September. He doesn’t usually have to go too long without seeing his family, like a lot of guys in the league have to. Most guys don’t get drafted two hours from their hometown. Plus, his parents have the means to come to most home games and never miss any of his play-off runs no matter the city they’re in. He’s lucky.

His dad smiles. “Good to see you, too, kiddo. You look good.”

“By the way,” Mom starts as they sit. “I got outreach from this new cologne brand that’s looking for a spokesman and is interested in you. Don’t let me forget, I brought the samples they sent over so you can try them.”

Shane tries to stifle a frown. He doesn’t even wear cologne. He doesn’t even like cologne— 

Well. 

He likes Ilya’s cologne. It’s woodsy and fresh and way fucking better than the shit he wore when they were nineteen and it was like he bathed in Axe body spray. He’d hated the scent so much that he had actually complained about it, sniping about Ilya smelling like a middle schooler or the back aisle of Spencer’s at a mall in the afterglow of one of their hook ups. He can’t exactly remember which one—  the time in Ilya’s old Boston apartment when he’d came down Shane’s throat too fast then had wrung two brutal orgasms from him like he was evening the score or the time in Montreal where Ilya fucked him facedown against the couch so hard that Shane had tears leaking out of his eyes and the idents of the leather cushions etched on his cheek by the time he came? Whenever it had been, Ilya had showed up to their next hook-up with the scent cleared from his skin. He’d started wearing his current cologne about a year ago and grins like a maniac when Shane ducks his head to his neck to try to get a whiff. The scent is probably Pavlovian to him at this point, just like most things about Ilya are. 

Swiftly, he banishes that thought from his head. 

“Your mom thinks if she talks shop with you then she can expense this as a business dinner,” Dad jokes, wryly.

He feels his good mood wilt a bit. Only a bit. It’s just that he’d maybe like one dinner where they didn’t talk about brand deals or endorsements. He gets that hockey doesn’t last forever. The brand deals, endorsements, sponsored posts— those are all things that will help Shane not have to think about money in his post-hockey life. It’s his Mom’s way of giving him security in a career that could end in an unlucky blink of an eye. But still, sometimes he would like to have a conversation with his mom that doesn’t include a diatribe about the details of whatever Reebok, or Rolex, or Speedo, or CCM want from him now. 

A smiling waitress appears. “Are we expecting someone else?” 

“Oh, no, it's just the three of us,” his mom says easily. “Thank you.”

The waitress nods and steps away to get their waters. 

Shane doesn’t hate being an only child, exactly. He’s an incredibly lucky person; he knows that. He has wonderful, supportive, loving parents. They can be a bit intense—  or more aptly his mom can be a bit intense, but Shane has always hated the accompanying tiger mom jokes that come with. No one says that shit about the moms of white players. But the intensity is borne of love. His parents don’t talk about it often, but Shane knows they had trouble getting pregnant with him. And then after he was born, having more kids hadn’t been an option anymore. It’s okay, his mom had always said, because it means we just get to focus on being the best possible parents to you.

So Shane doesn’t hate being an only child. And he loves his parents, he does. 

But, sometimes, he wishes there was another person in his life to pull up a chair to the table and take some of the intensity of his mother’s love off him for a minute. 

“Honey,” Mom breaks the silence again. She’s giving her menu a cursory glance. Shane doesn’t know why. They’ve been here, the three of them, probably a dozen times since Shane signed with the Metros and moved to Montreal. She’ll get the risotto with mushrooms, Shane will get the tilapia, and Dad will swing between the hanger steak and seabass depending on the season and his mood. “Have you decided about Wimbledon? Rolex really wants you there. I think they're worried their box is too… tennis-y, I think.”

“Does that mean too white?” Shane asks dryly, taking a sip of his water. He doesn’t mean to poke, but he feels sort of done with pretense today. Why not just state the obvious? Shane doesn’t love subtext. Or implications. Or shades of grey. It’s part of why he’s always liked Ilya, maybe. He’s an asshole, but he’s always direct. While other people look at Shane blankly like he’s supposed to understand things he doesn’t or make him parse their words for double meanings, Ilya just says what he wants. 

Mom frowns. “I thought you liked your deal with Rolex.”

“I do.”

“Well, you certainly love the money, and they're great seats,” she pauses, as if she senses that her comment was maybe a little too pointed, and changes tracks. “I mean, they're next to a prince, or, no, actually, a Swedish princess.”

“I don't think I should skip training.”

Shane doesn’t know why he’d want to waste a week of his summer watching a sport he doesn’t even care about with a Swedish princess or prince he’s never even met.

“Well, meeting a Swedish princess could be fun, right?”

“I don't have time for that right now, Mom. All my time is scheduled.”

Scheduled is an understatement. Sometimes Shane feels like he’s on a conveyor belt. There is a track he’s been placed on without exits and he was strapped to it so long ago he sometimes, guiltily, thinks that he can’t really remember deciding to get on it; can’t remember when his life became so pre-planned without this input or feedback. He loves hockey, of course he loves hockey, but the rest of it. The press, and the sponsorships, and the crushing scrutiny of being a generational talent. Even worse, of being a role model. Shane didn’t really want to be a role model. He wanted to win hockey games. 

His mom is looking at him with concern. It’s not like him to snap at his parents, especially not his mom. Shane Hollander is the perfect son. Perfect hockey player, perfect captain, perfect guy. 

She opens her mouth to speak and Shane Hollander, perfect son, sort of wants to scream. “I just meant—”

“I’m gay,” Shane blurts out. “I’m gay, okay? I don’t want to meet a Swedish princess.” 

It feels like all the noise in the restaurant stops. He’s sure it doesn’t actually, that forks keep clinking against plates and patrons keep chattering, but the blood rushing to his ears makes everything quiet. His parents just stare at him, and the reality of what he’s just done crashes into Shane, swift and sudden. His parents stare at him, and then they stare at each other before snapping their gazes back to him. Dad sets down his menu. Mom opens her mouth to say something, then closes it like she doesn’t know what to say next.

The waitress chooses this moment to reappear, the fact that Shane Hollander came out to his parents, unplanned, in the middle of a nice but very public restaurant, unnoticed. Shane feels like laughing, in an almost hysterical way. What the fuck has he just done? 

“Can I get anyone a drink?”

Mom snaps back to life. “Actually, I’m sorry—  I know this is sudden, but my husband isn’t feeling well. Could we actually get our orders to go?” 

The waitress nods, offers her well-wishes to a bemused David Hollander who goes along with this plan like he goes along with all of Mom’s schemes, and before Shane can really blink or process that he just fucking came out to his parents he’s ushered from the restaurant to his dad’s sensible Toyota RAV4 and then they’re back at his apartment. Safely behind closed and locked doors.

What was he thinking? Blurting that out in a public restaurant, where anyone could hear.

In his kitchen, his parents are fluttering around like they need to keep busy. Dad’s unpacking the take-out containers and Mom is looking for a bottle of wine except Shane doesn’t really keep alcohol in the apartment because he doesn’t drink much and Shane’s standing there uselessly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m, uh… I’m really sorry that I told you like that. I didn’t mean to. Not like that.” 

“I’m glad you told us,” Dad says firmly. “Thank you for telling us.”

Mom abandons her search through his pantry and keeps looking at him, her big brown eyes wide. Shane has the same eyes. It shouldn’t hurt him so much to have his mom stare at him. 

Does she not recognize him anymore? Is he some alien thing she doesn’t know? Does this one fact about him change him that much to her? 

This is why he can’t be gay, Shane thinks. Remembers, because he’d forgotten. Not because it would change anything about him. But because it would change everything around him and he can’t handle that.

He suddenly feels like crying. He scrubs at the back of his neck with his palm and squeezes, just like Ilya did when he was panicking in Boston. He really, really wants Ilya suddenly. Wishes he was here, just off his elbow at the kitchen island. It’s so stupid, but Shane has always been stupid about Ilya. He wants anyway. 

“Mom, um… I need you to know that I did really try. I tried really hard, but, um I just can't help it. And I'm sorry.”

His mom’s face trembles, like he’s dealt her a physical blow. “Oh, no, you have nothing, nothing to apologize for. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me,” she says, running her hands up Shane’s shoulders to hold his face in her hands. It makes him feel like a little kid again and that makes him want to cry even harder. “I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't tell me.”

Shane nods dumbly. His eyes are still swimming with tears and he blinks, trying to rid them, but they cling to his eyelashes.

“Hey,” she says softly. “I am so, so proud of you. Okay? Please forgive me.”

“I forgive you, Mom,” Shane says, because of course he does. “I love you.”

“Oh, I love you too. So much.”

“We’re so proud of you, buddy,” Dad says, butting in finally, calm and warm and letting them work it out themselves like he always does. “So proud. Nothing could ever change that.”

“Nothing,” Mom repeats, her eyes shining with tears.

“Let’s have something to eat, huh?” Dad says. “Emotional talks make me hungry. How about you, Shane?” 

Shane laughs and it suddenly feels just as easy as that.

The rest of their meal passes with them all perched around his kitchen island, a softer patter to their conversation. It’s like his parents are trying not to spook him, like they want to make the world gentle and quiet for him. He feels so stupidly relieved and grateful for them. 

“I know this is probably a big surprise,” Shane says between a bite of wild rice and salmon. He’s forcing himself to eat and it all kind of tastes like sawdust. Better to puke something up than dryheave, though, if his anxiety gets the best of him. “I mean. It was kind of a big surprise for me. To finally—  well, too.. come to terms with it, I guess.” 

Mom makes a slightly bemused face. “I think we thought maybe you were gay.”

“You did?”

“I think we thought it was certainly possible.”

“For how long?”

“Mmm, for a while, I guess.”

“We both know you pretty well, Shane,” Dad butts in, reassuring as if he can hear exactly where Shane’s thoughts were spiraling off to. No one else knows, his eyes seem to say, just us. We only figured it out because we think about you more than anyone in the world. No one else sees. You’re still safe.

“And you’ve never really brought girls home,” Mom adds gently. “Or seemed interested in bringing girls home. We didn’t know. But we thought maybe this was why.” 

Shane scratches his fork at the bottom of his takeout box awkwardly. “Well, I mean, I guess you’re right. That’s part of why.”

“Are you seeing someone?” Mom asks.

Shane bristles immediately. “What? No.”

“It would be okay if you’re seeing someone, honey. Really. Your dad and I just want you to be happy.” 

“I mean, Mom, do you really want an itemized list of everyone I’ve ever—  ever— been with?” he says, feeling a little snotty like teenager and pointedly ignoring the fact that an itemized list of every sexual and romantic partner he’s ever had would include a handful of high school girlfriends, some truly lackluster hook ups, Ilya Rozanov’s name underlined roughly a million times with exclamation points, and no one else. 

He’s shared more than enough with his parents today, he thinks. There are some things that they’re not ready for. That he isn’t ready for. 

“Alright, honey. Point taken.”

Dad clears his throat, seeming to realize he’s got to step in. He usually lets Mom run these kinds of conversations, but is pretty good at realizing when he needs to reel his son and wife back in. “What your mom is trying to say is that if you find someone special one day… We’d be really excited to meet him, buddy.”  

Shane pictures his parents meeting Ilya and shakes his head before the dream can even fully form. His parents and Ilya feel like such completely separate parts of his life that it’s hard to even imagine. And it’s not worth imagining impossible things, he tells himself. He can save breaking to news to his Metros superfan of a mother that he’s fucking the captain of the Boston Raiders for another day. Or maybe never. Today’s been tough enough. 

They finish up dinner and put everything away, his mom stalling and fussing around the kitchen like she sometimes does when she’s trying to draw out their time together before they leave him. She hugs him roughly a dozen times as he walks them to the door and his dad hovers.  

“We love you, honey,” Mom says one last time, still holding on to him tight. “No matter what.” 

“No matter what,” Dad echoes. 

After they leave, the adrenaline that’s been propping Shane up crashes. He showers in a daze and changes into sweats, climbing into bed with his hair still damp even though it’s about 8PM. The exhaustion has caught him and he finds himself staring at his phone, the call log open. 

Mom - 2:14PM

Hayden Pike - Yesterday 

Lily - Tuesday 

He only really calls four people. Five, if you could count the occasional brusque and no-nonsense call from Coach Theriault about hockey. Six, if you count the monthly call to his agent.

Shane wants to physically shake himself. He’s allowed to call Ilya. They’ve talked on the phone a handful of times in the last few weeks since he was in Boston, and the frequency has only been increasing. They call now and Facetime, and not just for phone sex. It’s a thing they do, a part of their unnamed arrangement. 

He presses Lily in his recent call log before he can talk himself out of it.

Ilya answers after two rings.

“Hello,” he rumbles.

“Hi,” Shane breathes out. He can’t help the feeling of relief that spreads through him at the sound of Ilya’s voice. It’s deep and rough and sort of soothing without meaning to be. His own voice comes out wobbly.

Ilya makes a noise over the line. There’s a rustling sound like he’s getting up to pace or something. Shane tries to picture him in his living room or kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

“I told my parents I’m gay.” 

“Yes?” Ilya suddenly sounds very serious now. “And they are good about it?”

“Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were surprised. But, um, not surprised?” He breathes deep and Ilya just lets him, without rushing to fill the silence. “I was worried they were going to be… disappointed, I guess. My mom, especially. But they weren’t.”

“Who could ever be disappointed with you? Perfect Shane Hollander.” 

Even two months ago, Shane thinks Ilya saying that would have raised his hackles; made him tight and defensive, like Ilya was making a punchline of him. But now he can hear the quiet affection in the words. It just makes Shane want to coax even more of it out of Ilya and wrap himself up in the words, warm and cared for.  

“I’m not perfect.”

Ilya makes a vague, offended noise. “You are perfect. Who said you are not?”

Shane doesn’t know what to do with that, so he ignores it. 

“I lied to them. For a long time. About something really big and—”

Ilya cuts him off, swift and almost ruthless. “This is not the same as lying, Hollander. You know that.” 

“Still. My mom just… I know she loves me,” he continues.  “She just expects a lot from me. And she didn’t expect this. So.”

He doesn’t explain. So I thought she’d be angry. So I thought she’d be disappointed. So I thought she’d remind me that little Asian kids all over North America are looking up to me to change the face of hockey and I just made it harder for them. He doesn’t need to say any of that to Ilya, he thinks. Maybe he already knows. Or maybe it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t know. Maybe it just matters that when Shane called, he’d picked up. No hesitation. 

“I understand this,” Ilya says softly. “Family can expect a lot.”

“Yeah. Uh, my dad’s parents? They weren’t… great when my parents got married,” Shane admits. It’s not something he’s ever told anyone, actually, and he’s not completely sure why he is now. Maybe because he thinks Ilya might understand. Maybe because he wants Ilya to understand. “They never said anything like super racist or anything. I mean not that my parents told me. But you know. My dad just says it was clear they weren’t happy. That it wasn’t like when his sister, my aunt, got married to her husband. And it was really hard on them. They didn’t talk to them for a long time, like until I was born. And even now, we’re not, like, really close with them. So I think… I think I could’ve done anything. Or been anything. And my parents would’ve been okay with it. Because they didn’t want to be like Dad’s family.” 

“That’s good. That’s how it should be, yes? With parents?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” 

He wants to ask Ilya how it is with his family, but he knows better. Instead, he pressed the phone a little more deeply into his cheek. 

“I’m glad you answered. It feels good to talk with you about it. Because you already know about me, right?”

“I’m switching to Facetime,” Ilya says suddenly. “Want to see you.” 

“Okay.”

He accepts the Facetime request as soon as his phone lights up

Ilya looks rumpled and tired, his curls messy and a bit of stubble creeping up over his jaw. Tired makes sense. The Raiders just returned home last night from a roadie through the Midwest. Ilya had played brilliantly, four assists and as many goals in three games. He looks so good that Shane wants to reach through the phone and touch him.

“Hi,” Shane says.

“Hi,” Ilya echoes.

They sit in comfortable silence for a minute before Shane’s curiosity gets the better of him. 

“How’s… how’s your family?”

Ilya’s eyebrows climb up his forehead like Shane has just asked him something so ridiculous he can’t even fathom it. “My family?”

“I mean… have you… you haven’t told them about you, right? Would you ever?”

He scoffs darkly, like the mere idea itself is funny. Shane feels rather small for even asking, but wills himself not to flinch over Facetime.

“My father is police. My brother is police,” Ilya says, like this is explanation enough. Maybe it is. Shane doesn’t consider cops in Canada and the US to be bastions of progressivism. He can’t imagine they’d be leading any pride parades in Russia, given how things are there.

“And your mother?”

“Dead.”

Shane feels himself soften. God, he wishes they were in the same place. “I’m sorry.”

Ilya sucks in air through his teeth. Purses his mouth and turns his head away from the screen. “I was young.”

“I’m still sorry.”

That doesn’t make it easier, Shane wants to say. That doesn’t mean it hurts less. That doesn’t mean you can’t miss her. 

Ilya looks back at the screen, eyes tracing Shane with an intensity that he can't name. He feels the heat of his gaze through the phone and through nearly five hundred kilometers. 

“I will never tell them,” he says. “Not as long as I have to go back to Russia still. Is not legal there.”

Shane feels his heart clench. He’s known since Sochi when he finally researched a bit more about Russian politics after leaving the Olympics village that Russia didn’t have the same laws or protections for gay people as Canada or the States did. But the consequences are vague to him and Shane doesn’t know exactly what would happen if Ilya were ever out or outed. Would being a public figure protect him? Or would it only make it worse, more dangerous?

 “What would happen to you?”

“I don’t want to find out.” Ilya looks away from the camera, avoiding Shane’s eyes.  “Even if it was legal, my father is very old-fashioned. And sick. My father is sick.”

“Sick like crazy?”

“That too, a little, but no. Sick more like…”

“Oh, like cancer?”

“Dementia.”

“That’s awful.”

Ilya turns his face away again, tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. He sucks in a harsh breath and rubs his hand over his face roughly. 

“Hey,” Shane coaxes, his voice so soft it’s barely his. He wishes he could teleport. He wishes he could crawl through the phone and into Ilya’s arms, to hold him and press kisses all over his face. 

Ilya speaks finally and his voice is rough. “They would not be so good. My family, I mean. If I told them about me. I am… very glad your family is good, Shane. You deserve a good family.”

Shane's heart aches in his chest in a way that is so physical it makes him feel like he’s been checked into the boards. “So do you.”

“Yes, well.” 

“You do. You deserve the best.” 

Ilya doesn’t seem to have a response to that—  nothing cocky like Shane would’ve usually expected and nothing almost vulnerable like he’s been given tonight. Silence creeps back in, not quite comfortable or uncomfortable. Just there. 

This is the thing that Shane has come to appreciate about their calls, now that they’re spending time together regularly on the phone of on Facetime. Texts can be ignored. Hotel rooms and apartments can be left. But they can’t distract themselves or keep a conversation at bay by falling into bed or running away, this way. The only way out is talking or hanging up and, well, Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander are nothing if not competitive. Neither wants to blink first. 

“I'm sorry about your family,” he offers after a few minutes pass. “Even if they suck, you must miss them.”

Ilya shrugs, not answering the question. “My mother didn't suck. She was great.”

What was she like? he wants to ask. Will you tell me about her? Was she like you? 

“How did she die?” Shane asks instead.

A dark look like a storm cloud passes over Ilya’s face. His eyes go glassy, the set of his mouth looks a bit brittle. Like he wants to make himself smile or laugh, but he knows nothing is funny. 

“By accident.” He looks up, avoiding Shane’s eyes. This would be easier if they could be touching, he thinks. Maybe Ilya’s head in his lap or his face pressed and hidden into Shane’s collarbone. Close but not flayed open. “She accidentally swallowed a whole bottle of pills.”

It feels like a hand closes in around Shane’s heart and squeezes hard. 

“How old were you?”

“Twelve. I found her.” Ilya drags his gaze back to the camera. Looks at Shane and Shane wonders what Ilya finds there. “I don't want you to think she was weak.”

“I don't.”

His answer is immediate and Ilya’s eyes soften for him, just a bit. Suddenly, he wants to do everything, whatever he can, to earn that look again and again and again. To never be without it

“She wasn't. She was so funny and beautiful. She was so sad. And my dad was so hard on her.” Ilya’s smile is so sad now. So sad and so beautiful. Shane wonders if he has his mother’s smile. “I think that she would have come around about it.”

“About you being… about you liking men?”

Tell me about her, Shane wants to say. Let me love her like you do. I’ll help you hold on to it, to her. 

“Maybe. I don’t know. She was very religious. Orthodox. But she was also—  I don’t know. Kind of a rule breaker? A—  what is the best word?”

“A rebel?” he offers. 

“Yes. She grew up outside of Moscow in a small village, and her parents wanted her to stay there. Follow their lives. But she loved to figure skate so she left home at fourteen to go to a training camp in Moscow. Chase the dream and all that. She used to tell me she hitchhiked all the way there.” 

Ilya smiles, as if remembering his mother telling this story that was first hers before she gave it to her son for safekeeping and Shane smiles, too. He wonders when the last time was that Ilya got to talk about his mother like this. 

“She was very good, too,” he continues. “Or I don’t know, I guess. Maybe I only thought she was very good because I was very little. I did not really know the difference, but. She was happy on the ice.”

“Did she ever compete? Like at the Olympics or anything?”

“Uh, no. No. She got pregnant and married my father instead. She was very young. So no Olympics.” Ilya fiddles with his crucifix, pressing his thumbs into the spikes of the cross on the end of the gold chain around his neck. “Anyways. Just makes me think. She probably would not understand, at first. Me being with men. Is not talked about in Russia, not openly. But she had a big heart and she was… rebellious. Liked trouble.”

“Like you?”

“Yes, like me, Hollander. Maybe too much like me. So maybe she would understand. That it’s not wrong, really. Just against someone else’s rules.” His eyes pierce Shane’s. “That some trouble is worth it.”

They keep talking for a while after that, soft and hushed, about everything and nothing. At some point, Shane falls asleep with his bedside lamp still on, exhaustion finally claiming him.

When he wakes up, Ilya’s still on the other end of the call. His face is soft and relaxed in sleep, a sight that Shane is always much too greedy for. His phone hasn’t died because he did manage to plug it in while they were talking. They didn’t even have phone sex, Shane realizes. They just… talked. For nearly two hours.

God, he’s in trouble.

…

A couple weeks later on a Saturday night around 7PM, Shane’s phone starts buzzing incessantly as he’s on the couch. He’s been relaxing, which means alternating between half-watching an ESPN sports documentary that’s airing, scrolling idly through Ilya’s Instagram, and thinking of something to text Ilya. They were texting earlier but the conversation petered out a bit and they’ve developed a routine of calling later in the night, closer to bedtime. He shouldn’t call just because he, what? Misses Ilya too bad and can’t wait three more hours? 

Fuck it, he’s thinking about dialing Ilya early when the first call from JJ lights up his phone. He lets it ring through to voicemail, feeling slightly guilty. JJ wouldn’t call him in an emergency, would he? He doesn’t like ignoring calls from his teammates, it always feels wrong and like he’s shirking his duties as a captain. 

His phone vibrates again and the guilt wins out.

“Hey man— ”

“Hollander, what the fuck are you doing right now?” JJ interrupts, breathless.

Shane searches for an excuse. “I was about to— ”

“Bullshit! Get your ass to the Mile End, baby! My buddy François, the chef, you remember him?”

“Oh, yeah?”

“He's having an after hours thing at his restaurant.  And get this— ”

“JJ— ” Shane starts, prepared to start begging off. 

Really, JJ should be used to the song and dance of it all by now; Shane ducks out of most post-game barcrawls or club outings as much as JJ cajoles him. He’ll go out after a big win —  it’s good for team morale and Shane knows that sort of thing sometimes exists in his blindspot so he tries hard to be the kind of captain who is conscious of his teammates’ moods —  but he never stays out for more than a round of drinks.

“The cast of the X Squad movie they're filming in town is here.”

“I don’t know, man, I’m kind of in for the night— ”

“Cap, don’t be so fucking lame. There are like four famous A-list Hollywood hotties in this restaurant right now. If you’re not here in thirty minutes, I’m sending someone to come get your ass,” JJ declares before hanging up.

Shane sighs and stares down at his phone. 

JJ can be very stubborn when he wants to be so Shane decides that going to the restaurant to appease him is easier than trying to make up another excuse rather than wait for another call to come through.

Within twenty-five minutes, Shane’s walking into Le Tambour. JJ greets him exuberantly, telling him the bar’s open, before beelining back to the actress he’s hitting on. She’s beautiful, with long blonde hair and vaguely familiar but frighteningly symmetrical face, and Shane has no hope of remembering her name. She only looks amused by JJ’s flirting, anyways. 

Shane greets a couple of his teammates as he makes his way to the bar, making the sort of small talk that he can manage but that saps his brain space as he does. As captain, Shane knows everyone on the team well enough; knows their hometowns, past teams, draft numbers, their stats and points for the season almost as easily as he recalls his own. It’s his job to know all of that stuff. 

But he’s not particularly tight with any of the guys besides JJ and Hayden when they get too far off the ice. 

Shane knows he’s developed a reputation for being less than social, for being awkward and a bit particular. Ilya, after all, calls him boring constantly, although lately he says it more often in the same baby-soft voice he uses to call Shane an ever-growing host of Russian pet names that he refuses to translate. He doesn’t party, he doesn’t date, he keeps his nose clean. He’s not a pariah in his own team, but he’s not exactly the most popular either. He’s not the most talkative guy in the locker room or the kind of captain who keeps the Metros’ social calendar moving. Frankly, he sort of relies on JJ for that. He goes to team house parties and weddings and baby showers and ignores the feeling he gets sometimes that he’s like the kid in class who’s only invited to birthday parties because everyone’s moms are making them. 

He’s wandering away from the bar, absently picking at the label of the beer bottle he’s holding on to, when he ends up stumbling upon Rose Landry sitting in the booth by herself. 

Rose Landry is actually an actress that Shane recognizes. He is maybe hopelessly out of touch with pop culture —  Ilya had quizzed about famous singers he knew a few weeks ago and was practically giggling like a little kid as Shane failed to get anyone’s name right or name any song they’d sung —  but he knows who Rose Landry is. The X-Squad movies are blockbusters; he’s seen them on planes with teammates and gets ads for them as he does his daily Sudokus and Rose Landry is so famous she graces every other cover of the magazines crowding the tables in his dentist’s office. Rose Landry is so famous that she consistently tops the list of “hall passes” or “most fuckable celebrities” that the guys throw around in the locker room. Not that Shane has much to contribute to those conversations, historically. 

She smiles up at him, the purse of her lips caught somewhere between angelic and sly. “Are you here to help me finish these fries? The chef gave them to me, and they are really good. I'm not gonna fit in my costume if I eat them all.”

Shane’s on a macrobiotic performance diet that’s probably just as strict as whatever Hollywood diet Rose is on, but he doesn’t say that. When one of the world’s most famous women asks you to come share her fries, Shane gets the feeling you’re supposed to say yes. 

He slides into the booth across from her. 

“Oh, Jesus Christ, these are so good!” Rose licks a bit of grease off her fingers, closing her eyes happily. She is truly beautiful up close, the low lights of the restaurant illuminating her big brown eyes and the honey red in her hair. Her skin looks practically airbrushed and her voice seems to be permanently sultry and husky and Shane feels… nothing. God, he really is gay isn’t he? “I'm Rose, by the way.”

“I'm Shane,” he offers. “I'm—  Wow, I'm a big fan.”

He is, truly. He’s not a huge movie guy, but he does like the X-Squad movies. Rose is a good actress, even covered in blue body paint and prosthetics.

Rose smiles, faintly pleased. “Would you be surprised to know that I'm a fan of yours?”

“Really?”

It’s not like hockey is nearly as big in the States as it is in Montreal or Canada. Most Americans can’t name any NHL star or a hockey player besides Wayne Gretzky. Although, if they can, Shane does know they’d probably name him next. It feels conceited to even think it, but he’s got a higher profile than most other guys in the league, even the other big franchise stars. Yuna Hollander is very good at what she does and her quest to put Shane’s name into the conversation of Serena Williams and Tiger Woods, rather than just hockey stars like Scott Hunter and Dallas Kent, has been paying off. 

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, smiling. “I'm a Michigan girl with three brothers. Have a fry, Shane Hollander.

Detroit's not gonna go easy on you tomorrow night.”

Rose is funny and sweet and surprisingly down-to-earth for one of the hottest stars in Hollywood. There is a surreal quality to talking to someone that he’s only seen on a TV screen or in magazines before, but Shane shakes it off as they chat. She has a sharp sense of humor that reminds Shane of Ilya a bit. It’s a thought that he can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed by anymore. His brain is a one-way track and all roads lead back to Ilya Rozanov. 

Rose is easy to talk to, he realizes. It’s a nice realization. Shane doesn’t find many people easy to talk to. His parents. Hayden and Jackie. JJ. Ilya. It’s sort of nice to sit sequestered in the corner of this very nice restaurant, share a basket of fries he shouldn’t have, and talk aimlessly without feeling like every question or story is some minefield he has to defuse or sort out the desired outcome for.

They’re chatting about being eight years old —  Rose was in a horrible kidnapping movie, the first of many she says, and Shane was in hockey practice before the intensity of it really took off with recruiters and scouts and stats —  when his phone buzzes and he realizes that a couple hours have already passed. 

He grabs it before he can think anything of it, opening his phone immediately to a string of texts from Ilya. Now that they talk regularly, Shane’s found that Ilya texts in flurries and seems to like giving Shane live updates even when he’s out and about. He unlocks his phone, already half smiling. 

Lily

marly is giving me shit

Lily

says i am being a “wet blanket” for not going to shittiest club in boston with him

Lily

home in hour if you are around?

“Girlfriend?” Rose asks, a knowing note in her tone.

Shane’s head whips up and he immediately locks his phone like he’s been caught red-handed. He has been caught red-handed, he realizes. A hot blush sweeps across his cheeks. 

“I’m sorry, that was—  I realize that was, like, so rude.”

“Eh, only a little,” she says, but he thinks her tone is mostly teasing. “Your secret is safe with me, Shane Hollander. She’s a lucky girl.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend. Really. I don’t.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s just recently let himself admit that he’s never going to have a girlfriend. But he might have something. He might have Ilya. He might— 

The thought is too much for Shane to even think so he just shuts his mouth and sort of grimaces apologetically at Rose. 

“Okay,” Rose acquiesces. “So would you be interested in going on a date then?”

Shane scrambles. “Oh, I mean—  I’m flattered, but uh—”

Rose laughs. “You’re not a great actor, Shane. Let’s not swap jobs, huh?”

Shane blushes even harder. 

“Yeah, okay.” Shane tries for a joke. “You probably wouldn’t be a great hockey center either.”

“Fuck off, Hollander, I’d be great.” Rose smiles and Shane thinks it’s genuine. “I’d still like to be friends. Real friends. This shoot is so crazy that I need someone normal to talk to at the end of the day and I’m still in Montreal for three more months.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, feeling relieved. “I’d like to be friends.”

They settle up their bills, exchange phone numbers to text, and Shane walks her out the restaurant to her waiting car, ducking the small cluster of paparazzi that’s formed after catching wind of the X-Squad cast being in the building. They bid each other quick goodbyes and Shane heads home immediately.

After all, Ilya asked if he was free in an hour.

So forty-five minutes later, Shane home and showered and settled into bed with his phone.

Ilya answers after a single ring and a shot of warmth spreads through his gut. 

“Hi,” Shane says, smiling before he can help himself. Sometimes when they’re Facetiming, Shane glances down at the little icon screen of his own face on the screen and almost startles at how he looks. He beams at Ilya so much over the phone when they talk it’s like his whole face changes. Transforms. 

“Hi,” Ilya parrots him, smiling slightly. He looks good. Rumpled, curly hair slightly sticking up in the back, and shirtless because he’s learned that Ilya prefers to sleep naked. 

Shane has never been one to let his mind drift in an indulgent way. Sure, he’ll spiral with anxiety — that can’t be helped as hard as he’s tried —  but he doesn’t really allow himself to daydream. 

But now, ​​as Shane looks at Ilya through his grainy screen, he has all sorts of dumb, mundane daydreams about Ilya that feel hopelessly unattainable. Grocery shopping, doing the dishes, waking up together without an alarm. Going for their morning runs together, cooking dinner, taking him to his cottage where they could swim in the lake. Shane doesn’t even know if Ilya likes swimming, but he imagines he does. He imagines splashing around in the water and racing Ilya back and forth from the dock because even in his fantasies, they find a way to compete. He imagines taking Ilya to Ottawa to drive him around his hometown and point at the landmarks of his childhood, the ice rink he first practiced at, or his high school, or the steakhouse the Hollanders used to go to on special occasions. 

It’s fucking embarrassing, really. He hasn’t let himself want like this before and, god, is there so much to want.

“Tell me about your day, Hollander,” Ilya says, and Shane lets himself believe for a moment that Ilya harbors the same impossible daydreams he does. Slow mornings. Whispering secrets under their bedsheets. Easy domesticity. “Is probably boring and will put me right to sleep like a white noise machine.”

“Fuck you,” Shane huffs, too charming and smitten to do anything more than that to defend his honor. 

“Okay, we can do that, too. Take off your clothes. Maybe put your glasses on?”

“I’m tired,” he says like he won’t strip naked if Ilya coaxes him just a little more. “JJ convinced me to go out.”

“Tell him to fuck off just like I tell Marly to fuck off. Easy.”

“Yeah, well, he was excited. It wasn’t actually that bad. It was kind of fun, actually. There were actually a bunch of famous people there, like really A-list.”

“A-list?” Ilya snorts. “Shane, kotenok, you do not recognize any famous people. I thought we established this already, yes? You are… What does Marly say? Pop culture illiterate.”

“Wow, big word,” Shane snarks and Ilya grins at him through the phone like a shark. “I know who Rose Landry is, though.”  

“Rose Landry?”

“Yeah. You know, from the X-squad movies?” 

“Yes, I know. I did not think you’d know. Marly thinks she is hot. Those movies make no sense.”

Shane laughs because that’s probably true. The first one was pretty good and then all the subsequent movies sort of fell apart. “I think Rose would agree with you.”

Ilya’s face sort of freezes and for a second Shane thinks his wifi has buffered. “You talked to her? Rose Landry?”

“Yeah, we actually talked for a couple hours. She’s really cool. Not at all pretentious or anything like that.”

“Hours?” Ilya’s voice is doing something that Shane doesn’t recognize and that he doesn’t quite know how to categorize. Surprise maybe? Shock? But there’s a note of something darker, a little off, in there.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Shane frowns. “I know I’m not like… the most social guy in the world, but I can talk to people.”

“I know. We talk all the time. I just did not know you’d want to talk to someone like Rose Landry,” Ilya spits out her name like he would a Russian curse word or a slur. 

Shane frowns harder. He feels like he’s in a fight now and no one told him. He wants to get Ilya’s soft smile back and talk about their days and he has no idea how he took a wrong turn and ended up here instead. 

“We talked about hockey, mostly,” he says slowly. “Rose is from Michigan. All three of her brothers played. Like AHL and college, but still it’s cool. She’s easy to talk to.”

“Oh, well, if she’s easy to talk to,” Ilya repeats, something flinty in his tone. “Maybe we call you Hollywood now that you hang out with movie stars. Could be a good nickname.”

“That’s not— ” Shane pauses, feeling like he’s completely in the dark. It’s been weeks since he felt that way while talking to Ilya and he doesn’t enjoy the feeling returning. He takes a stab. “I’m not going to date her, Ilya.” 

Obviously, I’m not going to date her, Shane wants to say. When would I ever have time to talk to a girlfriend when I spend all my time talking to you? Why would I want to talk to someone else when I could talk to you? But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t even know how to get the words to form outside his head. 

That seems to settle Ilya a bit, but his jaw still looks tense. “Good. You should not. Actresses are bad kissers. They use all their good kissing at work.”

“Oh? And you’d know?”

Shane thinks of all the women Ilya has been with over the years. He’s always tried to ignore the chatter around Ilya Rozanov, noted womanizer and manwhore, and his endless hook ups, but he’s not always been successful. Models and influencers and puck bunnies all hanging off his arm in tabloid photos on TMZ and grainy photos on Twitter and Instagram. Not to mention the men that Ilya could have been with when he wasn’t with Shane, not that could be public like the others and not that they ever talked about it. There could have been an actress in the mix. How would he know?

“Maybe.” 

“I have to go to bed,” Shane says finally, deciding that he doesn't know how to keep up with this conversation anymore. 

Ilya looks chastised for a moment, like a little kid. “Talk tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he softens, weak as tissue paper in the rain for Ilya. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Call me after you land in South Carolina?”

“Yes,” Ilya agrees immediately. “Spokoynoy nochi, Shane. Slad kikh snov.” 

He says the words almost like an apology, but Shane has never known Ilya Rozanov to apologize. 

Shane plugs in his phone and flips off the lamp. He rolls over, feeling like they’ve had another conversation that he only has half the script to and, still, wishing Ilya was there in bed with him.

…

Two weeks later, Boston ekes out a win 2-1 at the Bell Centre. 

It’s a close game. Shane manages to score in the third period to tie the game, but Boston pulls ahead again with a brutal slapshot from Ilya that sinks a puck in the fourth period into the top shelf behind Drapeau and that’s that. 

He gives the guys a we’ll-get-them-next-time type of speech in the locker room and heads to the showers quickly. It always stings to lose on home ice, especially against a rival as fierce as Boston. He hates every loss, but they used to tear him up with a more particular viciousness. You can’t wallow in the same way when you wear the C, at least not for regular season games with so much hockey still ahead of them. It’s November and there’s a lot of season left. The guys know that. Most of them have raised the Cup back-to-back over the last two years—  they know what it takes and how to lick their wounds before focusing on the next game. They’re still in a good position to head into play-offs, but Shane’s much too superstitious to even think of the word threepeat. 

Besides, it’s hard to feel too defeated when his last message to Ilya was his front door code and his reply of i’ll see you there, hollander ;) is sitting in his recent texts like a promise. 

They haven’t seen each other in person since the October afternoon on Ilya’s couch in Boston where everything seemed to shift under their feet. Shane can’t get through the postgame press scrum and pack his gear up fast enough, actually.

Before, he tried not to think of Ilya when they’re apart. It never really worked, and it’s only gotten worse. 

He’s antsy and keyed up when he gets back to his apartment, unable to focus on anything and pacing uneven circles around his living room, part postgame high and part the inescapable adrenaline that always floods his veins whenever he’s about to see Ilya. It should probably lessen or dull after all these years, but it hasn’t. It should probably feel less anticipatory and shivery for him to think about Ilya in his home, in his bed, after the last months of increased contact between them. Like he’s scratched the itch or gotten his fix. But it doesn’t.

And Ilya doesn’t make him wait long.

As soon as he hears the whir of his front door unlocking, Shane’s feet move without his permission to find Ilya standing inside his door, gently pulling it shut and locking it behind him. 

He’s wearing his walk-in suit, no tie and several buttons of his silk shirt undone so the lights glint with the gold of the chain around his neck. His hair is slightly wet still from a post game shower at the arena, the curls drying haphazardly against his forehead and the back of his neck. He’s dropped his gear bag on the bench Shane keeps by the door right next to his, black against blue, and he’s leaning down to take off his shoes and line them up on Shane’s shoe rack. 

When he straightens up, spotting Shane at the end of the hallway to the living room and kitchen, he smiles at him. A small one, just the perfect heart shape of his lips curving up crookedly at the sight of Shane. 

Shane’s not sure who moves first, but before he can blink he’s pressed up against the wall of his foyer and Ilya’s kissing him, hot and possessive, their mouths moving together. He sighs into Ilya’s mouth and buries his hands into his curls, angling to get even closer. He always wants to be closer to Ilya. 

He practically whimpers when Ilya finally pulls back, pressing a few short pecks to his slack mouth, as his eyes flutter back open. 

“Hello, Hollander.” 

“Nice goal,” Shane greets him, completely breathless and only slightly begrudgingly. 

Ilya smirks. “Should I tell other captains that Shane Hollander is this nice and polite after I beat him? They might be jealous you are saving all your good sportsmanship for me.” 

Shane rolls his eyes. Yeah, they should give him the Lady Byng this year. He’s being incredibly sportmanslike to the asshole who’s currently just pulled ahead of him the season’s scoring race because that asshole is about to suck his brain out through his dick then fuck him into his mattress then — maybe, hopefully, probably —  spoon him before falling asleep. 

“Well,” he drawls, deciding to be bold. Ilya likes it when he’s bold, he thinks, when he says something too mean or too sharp or too honest. His eyes light up and Shane thinks Ilya likes it when doesn’t try to be perfect or media-trained with him. “Hunter and Matheson don’t suck my dick after we play. So I don’t really have a reason to be as nice to them.” 

Ilya’s eyes go dark, like a predator locking on its prey. It probably says something about Shane that his only instinctual response to that is to rut up against Ilya’s thigh and bare his neck, silently straining for another kiss. 

“No,” he agrees. “No, they don’t.” 

He dives in for another kiss. Ilya’s kisses are possessive, claiming.

By the time they break apart again, Shane is breathless and half-hard in his pants. He’s almost ready to drop to his knees to start mouthing at Ilya’s cock through his slacks. He should be maneuvering them upstairs to the bedroom or at least onto the couch, but he likes feeling pinned to the wall under Ilya’s insistent hips and eyes. 

“The guys really wanted to go out tonight,” Ilya says lightly. There’s a note of something in his voice but Shane’s hopeless to figure out what. It’s always hard to focus when they’re touching like this and Ilya’s hand is teasing him over his sweatpants. “We win in Montreal and they heard all the famous Hollywood types are here. They saw the paparazzi pictures of you with Rose Landry and decided turns out anyone can fuck movie stars, yes?”

“Fuck you,” Shane snorts. Only Ilya can find a way to give him shit while actively working a hand into Shane’s pants. He should reassess his standards, maybe. Ilya wraps a hand around his cock and he bucks his hips and decides to reassess nothing as long as Ilya keeps touching him.

“Yes, I am going too,” Ilya agrees, stroking Shane’s cock ruthlessly and pressing hot little kisses into Shane’s clavicle. His is a little too dry without lube, but it’s Ilya so it’s perfect and Shane is rocking into his hand. 

“I’m not fucking Rose Landry,” Shane pants. It should be obvious when Shane is leaking precum all over Ilya’s hand, but it feels worth saying. Everything feels worth saying to Ilya now, after they’ve spent years saying nothing of consequence to each other, and it’s a dangerous feeling. “I don’t want to fuck Rose Landry. I’m fucking you.” 

Something in Ilya’s face thaws. His kisses soften slightly, as he keeps stroking Shane’s cock. Shane helplessly tangles his hands into Ilya’s hair. He loves his curls and Ilya seems to like it when he gets a hand in his hair, pulling or holding. He presses into the contact.

“They should be so lucky to be Shane Hollander,” he murmurs, softly, pausing again to kiss the other corner of Shane’s mouth. “Cosmopolitan’s prettiest man in NHL. Ugly cavemen like Conners and Marly could not pull hot Hollywood stars.”

“I don’t know if that was the title,” Shane argues, embarrassed. That Cosmopolitan article had come out over a year ago and the Metros had a fucking field day in chirping him in the locker room, but he didn’t know Ilya remembered that. He and Ilya weren’t even regularly texting then.

“Oh, I do.” 

Shane presses Ilya back into another kiss, making it a little deeper. He doesn’t really want to talk about Conners or Marleau or any of the guys on Boston’s roster. He doesn’t want to keep standing in the fucking hallway of his apartment when they could be doing so much more. Shane wants Ilya to be rough with him, to pin him down and make him take it, to lick the tears from the corners of his eyelids and make him feel it tomorrow. Shane wants Ilya to be gentle with him, to press hot kisses all over his skin and murmur to him lowly in Russian. Shane wants, wants, wants. 

“I don’t want a hot Hollywood star,” Shane whispers. It feels like a confession against Ilya’s mouth. “I want you to take me to bed.”

Ilya makes a noise and hoists Shane into his arms, which he usually protests about but now he just grabs Ilya’s shoulders and wraps his legs around Ilya's waist. He lets him carry him up the stairs to his bedroom without making a single snarky comment about concussions or IR or violating their player contracts by taking dumb risks off-ice. 

In his bedroom, Ilya tosses him onto the bed and crawls right after him, barely breaking contact as he reattaches himself to Shane’s mouth and presses their bodies back together.

“Oh, fuck, god, I missed you,” Shane moans, helpless and too honest as Ilya’s hips grind against him. He’s so fucking hard still. 

Ilya’s eyes go dark. “Take your pants off.”

And, well, Shane is nothing if not a consummate rule follower.

Once they’ve stripped from their clothes and folded them up in the chair by Shane’s bed, Ilya grabs condoms and lube from the bedside table. They’re making out hot and heavy as he works a finger inside him and Shane feels dizzy and fuzzy with want.

“Please,” he whimpers, unsure of what he’s asking for tonight.

If he stops to think about it —  and he does, probably think about it a little too much —  Shane is pretty sure he was bad at sex the first few times they’d hooked up, They’d been nineteen and rather stupid and Shane had never touched another man, barely did more than perfunctory hook-ups with high school girlfriends. He wasn’t a virgin, but it sort of felt like a technicality. Even then, Ilya was more experienced. He knew how to kiss and where to put his hands, how to carefully open Shane up and find his prostate, how to suck his cock without scraping his teeth in an uncomfortable way. 

But Shane always hated being bad at things. So he’d studied and learned and he might not be as sure as Ilya but he gives him what he wants in bed now. He knows, now, he’s good at this. With Ilya at least. He’s good at sucking down Ilya’s cock, at not gagging, at taking it when Ilya presses inside him, at riding his cock. He knows it like he knows that he’s good at hockey. He can’t imagine doing this with someone else anymore. Some other guy —  because at some point, he stopped trying to even make himself imagine girls —  touching him and kissing him and opening him up to fuck. This only works with Ilya. With someone with as much to lose as him, maybe more. With someone who makes him feel safe enough to stop being Shane Hollander and just be Shane. 

“What do you want?” Ilya murmurs, two fingers fucking in and out of him lazy and perfect and not nearly enough. “I will give it to you. Make it good for you.” 

Shane’s hips stutter. “I want you, please.” 

“Ask me,” Ilya orders. “Ask me for what you want, kotenok.” 

He kind of wants to tell Ilya to forget the fucking condom and fuck him bare until he can feel every inch of him and have Ilya lose control and cum inside him, marking him and claiming him.

But even lust-addled, Shane knows better than to ask for impossible things. 

“Eat me out,” he finally begs. “Please.”

Ilya moves frantically, dropping down to push his knees up to his chest. They don’t do this often. Shane likes it, but it makes him self-conscious and he likes to be sure he’s really clean when Ilya gets his mouth on his asshole. And, usually, Shane is begging Ilya to hurry up and fuck him by this point of the night. But it makes Shane go crazy when they do this, whimpering and moaning and bucking against the ironclad of Ilya’s hands pinning his hips to the bed and his legs back. And Ilya seems to like it more than Shane can possibly fathom. 

“Fuck, sweetheart, anything for you.”

Ilya eats him out sloppy, making out with his hole, until Shane is on the edge, babbling and begging to cum. Just as fast as Ilya takes him to the edge, he brings him back, denying his orgasm only to work in cock into Shane and fuck him with slow, deep strokes until Shane is clawing at his back and keening. They cum within seconds of each other, pressed together, and Ilya kisses him through it, whispering praise and filth in Russian into his mouth.

Afterwards, Shane’s legs are wobbly and unsure as a newborn colt and Ilya practically carries him to the shower. They huddle together, close and encased in the steam, as they whisper and wash each other’s bodies and hair lazily. 

Ilya ducks to kiss his shoulder, finding where his scar is under the layers of clothing, and Shane feels himself shudder involuntarily. It’s a raised mark on his shoulder, the result of getting tangled up against the boards with two other players when he played in the QMJHL then hitting the ice hard and taking a skate to his shoulder. The blade had found skin, tearing through his jersey and finding the gap in his pads like it was a chink in his armor. He’d gotten eleven stitches and the guys in the locker room talking about how chicks dig scars. Apparently. Shane's never exactly tested it out. Ilya’s never asked about the scar, where it came from—  the story of it. Shane suddenly wants to tell him. There’s so much he’s bursting to tell Ilya all the time now. So much he wants to ask. 

That’s never been what they do, what this is, but everything has shifted since he was at Ilya’s house in Boston. And Ilya didn’t seem confused about it all or obsessing over what they were to each other. He seemed content. At ease. So Shane did what he’d often done in his life when he felt out of depth— he took his cues from the person closest to him. And it’s not like it’s a hardship to follow along here and fall into Ilya, close and cozy.

Ilya’s always been a bundle of contradictions. Brash and gentle. Mean and tender. Selfish and giving. Thoughtless and intent. Casual and… whatever it is they’re doing now, where he’s decided he likes to take his time with Shane. Where he makes sure Shane eats dinner before he’s even naked in his bed and holds him after when Shane is trembling from the aftershocks of his orgasm. Where he talks to him every day and calls him sugar-sweet things in Russian.

Once they dry off from the shower, Ilya half-toweling him off and half-groping him, teasing about round two, they change into pajamas. Ilya’s teasing him about his plaid sleep pants when his stomach growls.  

“Hungry?” Shane teases. 

“Yes, but I hear you only keep bird food in this home, Hollander—”

“Fuck off. Do you want to starve or not?”

They eat leftovers of Shane’s meal prep for the week —  bowls with brown rice, high-protein chicken meatballs, and a Greek-style mix of veggies —  over the kitchen counter. It feels intimate in a way. Close and domestic. Maybe this is what it would feel like, Shane thinks. Coming home to someone and sharing a life with them. 

Shane shakes his head like that will keep the want from planting itself in his chest.

“Not bird food, huh?” he taunts as Ilya tucks into his bowl.

“Is fine,” Ilya sighs dramatically, like the confession is tortured out of him and not easily offered across the kitchen counter. “But kind of dry. Not even sauce, Hollander?”

“Sauce has empty calories.”

“Bodies need calories. And flavor. Sauce has flavor.”

“Shut up and eat your food.”

After eating, they migrate to the couch to watch hockey replays and commentary. Round two does happen, Ilya getting impatient and sliding down Shane’s boxer briefs and pajama pants to blow him against the couch, swallowing him down within minutes. It would be most embarrassing if Ilya didn’t come down his throat, swearing his name, after a few minutes of fucking his mouth. 

In the afterglow, they laze together on the couch, lit up by the TV’s glow. He starts to drowse off as an ESPN analyst picks apart the ranking of the Western Conference teams. 

“You’re falling asleep on me,” Ilya rumbles, a broad, warm hand tracing down Shane’s back.

“I’m not,” Shane protests, trying to rouse himself. He feels like a little kid at his first slumber party, too excited to talk to fall asleep even as exhaustion claims him. 

Ilya gently. “No, sleep is good, Hollander. Beauty rest keeps you so beautiful, moya lybubimyy.” 

“You’re staying the night?” he asks. He immediately fights down a wince at how open and hopeful his voice sounds. 

“Yes,” Ilya kisses him quickly, his wince melting as soon as Ilya’s mouth brushes his. “Flight home to Boston is at one. I will stay.” 

Shane falls asleep on the couch and wakes up as Ilya’s carrying him to bed. 

…

“When’s your next roadie?” Shane asks Ilya, like he hasn’t half-memorized Boston’s travel schedule. He likes to hear Ilya narrate his days better anyway. 

He props his phone up on the kitchen counter against his unused coffee machine as he microwaves his meal prep for the week (chicken and quinoa and broccoli, no sauce no matter what Ilya says) and watches Ilya putter around his own kitchen on the other side of the screen. Like Shane and most other single guys in the league, Ilya gets most of his meals pre-made and prepped weekly by a service the team nutritionist picks out. It helps them bulk up, stay healthy, balance their macros. Shane takes it more seriously than most, skipping cheat days and fast food completely, but he’s learned that Ilya likes to freestyle more in the kitchen more than Shane typically does. He's making some sort of pasta right now.

“After the break for Thanksgiving.” 

Shane smiles, unable to help himself. “Canadian Thanksgiving already happened, you know.” 

Ilya makes a dramatic sound. “This continent is so stupid. Why can you all not agree on date of Thanksgiving?” 

“Take it up with the Americans,” Shane shrugs. Frankly, it does bother him that the NHL prioritizes the American break over the Canadian but whatever. “Are you doing anything for it?”

“No. Some years I go with Marly to his family’s since they are all in Boston, but not this year. It’s still nice to have some extra days off. Full four days before Thanksgiving weekend with the game schedule.” Ilya pauses. “What about you?”

“The same,” Shane says, glancing at his physical calendar hung up by his kitchen. His mom buys him a calendar every year for Christmas. He drove home to Ottawa a few weeks ago to see his parents for Thanksgiving and ducked their slightly leading questions about his dating life or the possibility of him coming out to other people in his life like Hayden and Jackie. It’s nice that they’re so supportive and Shane’s relieved that things haven’t fundamentally changed with him coming out to him, but it’s still a lot. More than he’s ready for.

He tries to imagine how supportive they’d be about a potential partner if he brought home the guy he’s actually sleeping with and said Mom, Dad, this is my boyfriend, Ilya Rozanov.

God. Even the thought feels impossible. Shane wants to bad it makes his teeth ache. 

“Doing anything fun with your break?” Ilya probes.

“Rolodex is having me fly in to do an ad shoot in New York for two days from Monday to Wednesday. So, not really a total break.”

Ilya goes still on the other end of the phone. “You’ll be in New York?”

“Yeah.”

“New York is close to Boston.”

“Not that close,” Shane says slowly, trying to figure out what Ilya’s saying. He doesn’t—  He couldn’t possibly mean— 

“I could come up,” Ilya offers, casual, like he’s not saying I will travel 350 kilometers to come suck your dick and spend two days breathing the same air as you. “I could take the train. Or drive. I like driving. Is not that far.”

Shane tries valiantly to arrange his voice, face, entire body into something casual. “Really?”

“Really. I like New York. And I never get to fuck in a penthouse suite before. I want to press you up against the glass. Make it all foggy.” 

Ilya’s smirking like he’s picturing it and, fuck, now Shane is picturing it, too. The hotel suite

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Ilya corrects. “Do you want?”

“Yes, yes, I want.” Shane bites his lip. “Won’t someone see you, though?”

Ilya rolls his eyes. “No one will see. America is not as hockey-obsessed as Canada. There are, like, a billion people in the city.  And there are way more famous people in New York than us. Rose Landry, maybe—”

“Fuck off,” Shane huffs. “You know Rose isn’t in New York.” 

“Yes, she is in Montreal, please remind me,” Ilya drawls and Shane rolls his eyes. He’s been waiting for Ilya to let the Rose Landry thing go to no avail. “Anyways, I can sneak into the hotel. And we will not be leaving the room. Plenty to do there.”

Well. Shane’s not really equipped to argue with him there. 

They talk over the next week at the same pace they’ve been keeping up since October. Ilya mentions that he’s decided to drive his most recently purchased Porsche to New York and describes in vivid detail what he wants to do to Shane in the extra-large hotel bathtub that Ritz during one memorable call that ends with them both panting over the phone. But Shane doesn’t really let himself believe it’s actually going to happen. It seems too good to be true, the idea of having Ilya to himself for that long. 

Sure, they usually spend hours locked away whenever they’re in the same city —  Montreal, Boston, Vegas, whatever city the league has slated for All-Stars weekend, it doesn’t matter —  but they’ve never traveled just to fuck each other. That feels a lot bigger than a hook-up. 

So Shane is half-convinced it’s not actually going to happen until he hears a quiet knock on his hotel room door about an hour after he checks in.

He opens the door, feeling nineteen again. I might knock. I might answer. 

For a split second, Ilya looks as out of his depth as Shane feels. Like his endless bravado has actually caught up with him. Kind of like the dog who caught the car and didn’t know what to do now that the chase is over. Then he smirks.

“Room service for Shane Hollander?”

Shane reels him inside the room by the collar of his Adidas sweatshirt, shuts the door tightly, and pulls Ilya to him, mouth first. Ilya lets himself be led, grinning into the kiss. He drops his bag in the entryway to the suite, his hands too busy cupping Shane’s face and grabbing a handful of his ass through his jeans, and Shane doesn’t even pause to reprimand him

“You,” Shane takes a deep breath before diving back in for another messy, reckless kiss, “are not room service.”

“Is your room.” Ilya nips at his neck and Shane tilts his head back to give him more room. “And I plan to service you.” 

“God, you’re so annoying.”

“You like me annoying. Annoying you.” 

Shane drags him down onto the bed, still made and untouched, and Ilya presses him into the mattress.

Two orgasms later, they’re naked and lazy in bed. Ilya’s skin looks bronzed and beautiful against the endless white cotton of the hotel sheets. Shane’s face is still pressed into the crook of Ilya’s neck, blissed out and boneless, and Ilya’s hand has found its way into Shane’s hair, petting it, and it feels… nice.

So, of course, that’s when the panic begins to invade Shane again. Even with their stolen evenings recently in Boston and Montreal, spending the night and lingering, are shorter than what they have planned this week. He’s worried, in the back of his mind, about how to fill the time. Besides sex. Because even with the combined stamina of two professional athletes and the nerve-ending blaze of desire that Shane’s body has whenever Ilya is near him, they can’t actually have sex the whole time. Their dicks will start to chafe and he’ll have to limp to the Rolex shoot in the morning. 

He’s boring, he knows that, and Ilya reminds him of it often. Even if boring has begun to sound unbearably affectionate in Ilya’s deep, rumbling accent. He’s not sure how to keep Ilya’s attention, how to keep him from getting restless, for the rest of their time hidden away in a New York City penthouse hotel suite.  

Shane must be starting to fidget because Ilya chuckles and presses a kiss to his hair. 

“Are you getting fussy because you are not clean?” Ilya teases. “Because you can shower, but I will only make you mess again very soon.”

“I’m not fussy,” Shane gripes. “Is that your plan for the next day and a half? Messy marathon sex?”

Ilya shrugs. “Also ordering room service. And using fancy bath ub.”

So they do—  Ilya orders them both room service and Shane lets it become easy from there. Being with Ilya is easy, he reminds himself. Even when it hurt, there was an inescapable gravity to it. Easier to fall into than to fight against. 

They lounge in the hotel’s California king bed, snuggled close even though there’s no need to be. Ilya snags the remote and plays old sitcom re-runs, things like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and FRIENDS, saying off-handedly how he used to watch them subtitled to improve his English when he was younger.  They discuss what’s the best sport after hockey (basketball, obviously, Ilya insists while Shane makes a valiant case for soccer because Ilya says he’s not allowed to pick curling). They debate who else in the league might not be straight (“Carter Vaughn is not gay, Shane. That is wishful thinking— he’s just ten feet up Hunter’s ass.”) 

Later, they fuck again, Ilya taking him hard and fast from behind until Shane arches to his elbows and collapses onto the bed. Afterwards, Ilya lures him into the bath by making lewd and anatomically impossible jokes about growing gills to give Shane an underwater blowjob until Shane is giggling and the bathwater is sloshing out of the massive tub as they make out and rub together like teenagers. 

They towel off and wrap up in the fancy, plush hotel robes. It’s never been something that Shane’s indulged before, a fact that Ilya was aghast to learn. He feels sort of bundled up like a little kid in a snow suit, but it’s cozy. 

Shane falls asleep thinking that, his head pillowed on Ilya’s chest and their feet tangled together. 

It’s frightening how easy it is to get used to Ilya waking up in bed with him. He even finds his quiet snoring charming, a tender reminder that he’s not alone in bed. Ilya grouses at Shane’s early alarm and rolls back over, rumpled and burying his face into the mountain of hotel pillows. 

When he gets back from the photoshoot — four tortuous hours of hair, make up, and being stuffed into the suits as photo assistants flit around switching luxury watches on and off his wrist —  he finds Ilya still bed, only in his boxers and an open robe, watching some trashy reality show that Shane had probably vetoed during their channel surfing yesterday on the TV.

“You’re still here,” Shane says without meaning to, feeling a little dumbstruck. He didn’t think Ilya would leave, exactly, not after he’s already traveled the way from Boston but there is a surreal feeling about seeing Ilya sitting in his unmade bed. Mostly naked and waiting for Shane.

“Yes?” Ilya’s brow furrows a bit. “That was the plan?”

“No, I just mean—  I left. And you’re still here.”

“Should I have gone to see Statue of Liberty?” he snorts. “Times Square?”

“No.”

“Actually, the rides on Coney Island can be pretty fun. Went with the boys once on a roadie. Team bonding.” 

“Yeah,” Shane laughs, crawling back into the bed with Ilya now that his shoes are discarded and he’s left his jacket folded over the sofa. “I’m gonna opt out of rollercoasters.” 

“Lame. You should try it with the Metros. Could be fun to see Pike blow chunks everywhere.”

“Ew,” Shane wrinkles his nose, but acquiesces when Ilya leans in for a kiss. 

They make out, slow and unhurried, until Shane’s phone buzzes from his pocket. 

“Ignore it, it’s just the sneak-peek photos from the shoot,” Shane mutters, sinking his hands deeper into Ilya’s curls, but Ilya rears back, scrambling for the phone like he’s chasing after a puck in the neutral zone. 

“No, I must see—”

They wrestle until Ilya’s got his phone unlocked and is scrolling through the email from Rolex’s PR team with his chin hooked over Shane’s shoulder, peering at the sneak-peek photos on his phone.

The photos are fine. The photos are good, even. Still yet to be edited, but the glossy promotional shots don’t exactly feel or look like himself to Shane. Outside of his game day suits (designer, unimaginative and embarrassingly picked out for him by his mom despite the fact he’s a twenty-six year old multi-millionaire) and the occasional wedding of teammate, Shane doesn’t really dress up. Mostly, he lives in athletic wear and wears a rotation of the same five button ups and jeans when he goes out anywhere where it’s unacceptable to wear track pants. 

He feels slightly self-conscious as Ilya intently scrolls through the photos, zooming in here and there. Mostly on Shane’s face, not the expensive watches even though those are meant to be the true focus. He knows he’s an attractive enough guy, but he’s also never quite understood why Ilya seems to look at him and want as badly as he does. 

“So pretty,” Ilya purrs. “Better than a model.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Shane squirms, caught in Ilya’s arms. It’s one thing for these photos to end up on billboards in cities Shane barely visits or to be in magazines that he doesn’t read. It's a whole other thing for Ilya to be tucked up against him in bed, carefully examining them with bright eyes. Examining Shane.

“But I do not like that they covered your freckles,” Ilya continues. “Should be a crime. Punishable by law.”

“Yeah, I’ll put the Rolex make-up artist in jail.” Shane rolls his eyes and snags the phone back from him. “I should send them to my mom. She has my Instagram and will do the sponsored post they want for it.”

“Mr. Brand Ambassador. Mr. Influencer. Mr. Instagram Baddie,” Ilya teases and Shane shoves at him in retaliation, but it’s half-hearted. Shane doesn’t actually want to leave the circle of Ilya’s arms or this bed or this impossible two days they’re carved out to spend together in a city where neither of them live. “Send these to me, too. I jerked off to your Calvin Klein ads before. I need new material.”

Shane flushes. “You did not.”

“Oh, I did.” 

“Still hungry, Hollander?” Ilya taunts.

Forty-eight uninterrupted hours with Ilya is an unheard-of luxury. Instead of sating Shane, it only makes him hungrier.

“Yes,” Shane breathes. “I am.”

…

Shane has never been good at making friends, as a rule. He was an awkward little kid who became a teenager too intense and focused on hockey to really nurture deep friendships. He’s had good friends in his life, but they’ve been few and far between. When his mom pokes at him about it, worrying about him, he likes to say stuff about quantity over quality. 

He thinks he’s well-liked enough by the Metros as their captain, but besides JJ and Hayden, they’re all pretty shallow friendships and he knew it. He probably has spent twice as much time talking to Jackie Pike as he has Miitka, or Drapeau, or Comeau, or any guy on his bench. Which is fine, really. Jackie is nicer than any of his teammates, and Shane likes being folded into the happy chaos of the Pike family.

But he thinks he’s made a genuine friend in Rose Landry.

It’s not often that Shane really… clicks with people. Rose is just as funny and caring as his first impression of her was and her hockey knowledge. She’s more forward than most people Shane knows, wearing an easy confidence that lets her handle situations easily and keeps Shane from obsessing about saying the wrong things or missing cues like he so often does in social situations. 

And it’s nice to have friends outside of hockey. They both understand the similar pressures of a high-pressure, high-performance career, but there’s no overlap in acting and hockey so Shane gets to bitch about players on his team who can’t get it together or the GM lurking around practice, and Rose gets to complain about habitually late costars and crazy requests from her publicists without either of them having to feel guilty about it. 

Their friendship has drawn more attention than Shane anticipated, though. He’s a pretty public figure, at least in Canada, but Rose’s star is in a whole other solar system and paparazzi will camp out in dreary Montreal winter to catch a photo of her eating a kale salad or leaving a coffee shop with Shane. 

Most of the guys on the team and half of the American tabloids think they’re dating because of a few paparazzi photos and fake sources “close to Landry” or “familiar with Hollander” that are all bullshit. Nothing that Shane says seems to dissuade them and he’s become the center of attention in the locker room in a way that frankly makes his skin itch. He’s glad he came out to his parents for a lot of reasons —  some days when he thinks of it, it’s like a boulder rolled off his chest —  but being able to shut down his mom’s probing about his relationship with Rose by reminding her that he’s literally gay is nice.

Ilya makes comments about Rose sometimes, still, verging on a jealousy that Shane wants to pull out and examine and maybe beg for. I’m yours, he wants to say, do you want that? Do you want to be mine, too? Is that what this is? Is that what we’re doing? But Ilya can be evasive, still, and he seems content with the fact that Shane doesn’t want to date Rose because he’s gay. 

Rose has asked about his love life a few times, light questions that he awkwardly dodges, but she’s too tactful to push about it much more after he says hockey keeps him busy and reiterates that he doesn’t have a girlfriend. 

Until Rose tries to kiss him when he’s walking her inside to her apartment one night after they get dinner and Shane flinches back like he’s been shot.

“Sorry, I’m sorry—  I didn’t— ”

“Jesus,” she laughs, half self-deprecating and half-amused. “I really read that wrong, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Shane says helplessly.

“I’m sorry,” Rose says. “You said you didn’t have a girlfriend so I thought maybe I’d shoot my shot. But obviously that was overstepping—”

“I’m gay,” he blurts out. “And I think I’m in love with someone else.” 

“Oh.”

Shane panics. 

“Maybe I’m not in love with someone else. I don’t know. Forget I said that. I have no idea why I said that. It’s not even— ”

Rose looks at him with wide eyes.

“Well. You’re definitely coming in for a drink now.” 

He lets himself be herded inside Rose’s apartment and sits there on her couch as she grabs a bottle of wine from the kitchen. She doesn’t even bother with glasses, just hands him the bottle.

Well, Shane thinks, he’s already spilling all his fucking secrets. So why not? He takes a swig from the bottle and tries not to make a face. He doesn't actually really like wine very much.

“Have you ever said that to anyone before?” Rose asks softly.

Shane shakes his head, trying not to cry suddenly. Since he was a little kid, he’s hated this. Crying and how easily it comes to him. He always feels paper-thin and like every emotion roiling inside him can’t help rising up to the surface like a storm he can’t control. 

“I, uh, told my parents. That I’m gay. Not that I’m—” 

He can’t even bring himself to say it again. He can’t believe he even let himself say that to Rose. 

“Not that you’re in love?”

Shane winces. “I hope you don’t think that I'm sending mixed signals. Or was using you. Or—”

“Oh, Shane, of course not.” Rose gives him a gentle look. “Is it serious? With this guy?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Maybe. I don’t know.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut.

He’s never gotten the chance to talk about Ilya and their… relationship, for lack of a better word, with anyone before and he’s wanted to. Sometimes. He’s wanted proof that there is something between them beyond what lives in his head and hotel rooms. He wanted a second opinion on Ilya’s moods and words and whether or not he might feel what Shane feels. But it makes him feel flayed open to talk about it and he wants to press all his words back into his chest, tender and private.  

“You don’t know?” she prompts, still unbearably gentle.

“Things have been… different recently,” he admits. It’s the understatement of the century, really. Everything has changed since October and Shane’s been living in a delicious, delirious world of limbo.

“Tell me about it,” Rose suggests. “Maybe it’ll help you figure it out.”

Maybe it’s because Rose is so safely removed from the world of hockey. Maybe it’s because she’s been a genuine friend in the short time they’ve known each other and Hollywood makes her understand scrutiny and secrets as well as Shane does. Maybe it’s because there’s not a single other person in his life —  not his parents, not Hayden, not any of his teammates —  about his sexuality or about Ilya. But it all comes spilling out of Shane as they share the bottle of too-sweet wine on Rose's couch. He safeguards any detail that might give Ilya’s identity away, but he can’t help detailing the rest for her: how much he burns for Ilya’s touch, how he always leaves his stolen hours with Ilya wishing for more, how sweet Ilya can be and how gentle once his armor is peeled back, how easy it feels to together even without the sex and how big that feels when being has never really come easily to Shane. 

How much he sometimes wishes things could be different.

Rose watches him with her big brown eyes, soft and a little sad. “You should tell him you love him.”

“No, no, no. I mean no. That would just— ” Shane shakes his head immediately. He can’t fathom starting a serious conversation with Ilya about his — about their —  feelings. “Things are good with us right now. I don’t want to ruin them.” 

“What if it didn’t ruin them? 

“I don’t know. You don’t know him. He’s—  He doesn’t feel the same way, I think. It’s not as serious to him.”

Rose narrows her eyes. “How often do you talk again? Like on the phone and Facetime?”

“Like every day.If we can or if we—  if I’m not on the road with teammates. Then we just text.”

“Shane,” Rose says, a deep amount of affection and judgment baked into the one syllable of his name. Shane feels like burying his face in her couch so she can’t watch his face anymore. “No one talks to someone every single day —  on purpose, of their own volition —  if they don’t like them.”

“It’s too much to ask,” Shane says finally. “Even if he felt the same. He has a lot to lose, too. If we were ever serious.”

“It sounds like it’s too late for that,” she says gently. “This already seems pretty serious to both of you.” 

Rose hands him back the bottle of wine and Shane drinks so he doesn’t have to even try to find a response to that. 

…

Shane always spends Christmas in Ottawa.

Neither of his parents are particularly religious and they’d never attended church when he was a kid. His paternal grandparents were mostly a non-factor in their life and vaguely Protestant. His maternal grandparents practiced some traditional Japanese things, like keeping a shrine and leaving offerings, but it always felt more ritualistic than as an act of faith and devotion. They’d both died when Shane was in middle school. To this day, Shane thinks about God and religion with the same slight discomfort that he associates with anything he’s mostly unfamiliar with. Sometimes the American guys on the team want to pray before a big game. He remembers a joke Ilya made to him once when he asked if they did that in Boston too—  American athletes love God so much you’d think he was on the team scoring the fucking goals, he’d said. 

But Christmas in Ottawa is still a festive affair for the Hollander family. Once Mom had said she liked Christmas because it made her feel Canadian, in the way that watching hockey or having college stories from McGill did. So every year they make Christmas cookies that Shane won’t allow himself to eat, and his dad drinks a little too much eggnog, and they watch Christmas movies like Elf or A Christmas Story. It’s cozy.

This year feels no different, except for the fact that Shane finds himself waiting in the back of his mind for each day of the holiday to end so he can sneak into his childhood bedroom to call Ilya.

It’s ridiculous. It’s not like Shane spent any time hiding under the covers calling girls when he actually lived in his parents house. He’d told his longest-running high school girlfriend, Jessica, that his parents kept him too busy with family obligations to sneak away for a call. Not exactly true, but it was always a relief with Jessica not being stuck on the phone with the awkward, static air over the line highlighting how little they really had to say to each other.

Which almost makes him laugh to think because he’s basically spent any free moment he’d had in the last three months talking to Ilya over the phone. 

Things have changed since October. They haven’t had any talk about defining the relationship, or exclusivity, or any of those things. If Ilya’s fucking someone else, Shane’s not sure when he’d have time for it or at least Shane’s pretty sure it would be hard to keep a secret. He’s been texting Shane almost every night from the road and calling him almost every night when he’s home in Boston, usually on Facetime. He carries the phone from room to room as he cooks dinner and gets ready for bed and it almost makes Shane feel like they’re together. After their last night together, Ilya left his clothes at Shane’s Montreal apartment and a week ago Ilya off-handedly mentioned that he bought Shane the specific kind of floss that he likes to keep in Boston. Not to mention their interlude in New York, where Shane spent three hours one day shooting his Rolex ad and the next two days locked in a hotel suite with Ilya. 

Shane feels a little insane when he pauses to think about it and far too deep in to stop.

It’s like they’re in a fucked up game of relationship chicken now, increasingly doing things together that Shane can’t describe as anything other than domestic and romantic and boyfriend-like. They text constantly, detailing their days and sharing everything from complaints about teammates to jokes about other players in the league to the kind of quiet worries about family that don’t need to be responded to, just heard by another person. 

Or maybe it’s like Schroedinger’s cat. As long as Shane doesn’t ask, doesn’t speak out loud, he can have this. It can exist, and it cannot exist at the same time as long as Shane doesn’t press too hard. Doesn’t want too much. 

It feels increasingly like agony now that he’s realized that he loves Ilya.

Shane thinks about what he said to Rose. It had felt too raw, too true as soon as he said it, and he wanted to wind up the words back inside him and hide them under his ribcage. It doesn’t exactly make them less true. He’s been trying not to obsess about it. 

He accepts the Facetime call as soon as Lily pops up on his screen anyway.

Ilya grins, grainy and soft and perfect through the stupid little screen as the call connects. “Merry Christmas. Did Santa bring you coal? Or were you a good boy?”

“Do you even have Santa in Russia?” Shane ignores Ilya’s voice curling around the words good boy. He’s not going to be goaded into phone sex in his childhood bedroom with his parents sleeping down the hall and those words are usually a slippery slope to Shane naked and begging over the phone. Or in person. 

“No, Santa is a capitalist pig figure. Was banned in Soviet Russia when I was a baby.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “You were a baby for like two whole minutes of the USSR before it collapsed.”

“We have similar guy. Like Father Christmas. It’s not as big of a deal as it is here though. Not as many presents.” Ilya pauses, his smiling sharpening. “I bet you all wear matching pajamas. The Hollanders. Like a little Christmas card family.” 

“We don’t,” Shane says immediately and then amends the statement. “Well, not anymore. We did that when I was little. Mom liked it.”

“Do you have baby Shane pictures?” Ilya asks, his interest evidently piqued. “I want to see. Little freckled baby with glasses and braces.”

There are plenty of photos like that dotting the walls of his parent’s house. The entire first floor and hallway up the stairs is covered in family photos and school pictures and hockey medals and, most embarrassingly, a few childhood art projects his parents won’t part with despite his total lack of artistic talent at any point in his life. Shane is self-aware enough to realize that his mom kind of has an only child shrine to him going on. Add in a floral arrangement and it would look like he died an untimely and tragic death. He imagines Ilya seeing it, appearing in his childhood home to examine it all, and his heart hurts.

 “Absolutely not.” Shane pauses, considering. “Only if you send me baby Ilya pictures.”

The smile on Ilya’s face dims. 

“I did not take many photos from Moscow when I came to America. I think my father got rid of most after my mother died.”

Shane frowns, feeling wrong-footed like he’s stepped in it and popped the warm bubble of their moment together. He usually feels that way whenever the conversation strays too far to Ilya's family or Russia. He’s learned more about Ilya’s childhood and home in the last couple of months than in all the years prior and he doesn’t shut down completely when Shane broaches the topic like he did in Sochi or Vegas, but it still feels too tender to touch sometimes. He's beginning to understandly, deeply, that home and family aren't easy or uncomplicated or even necessarily very good things for Ilya. Not like they are for Shane. It makes his heart hurt. “Oh. I’m sorry. That sucks,” he offers, though it feels like an understatement.

Ilya shrugs, glancing away from the camera into the distance. “One day, maybe, you will meet Sveta. If she likes you, she will send pictures of us from middle school. We wore little uniforms, and I had too long hair. She saves everything on her phone.” 

“I can’t really picture you in school,” Shane says, though his imagination is putting up a valiant effort trying to conjure up Ilya —  younger, like he was when they first met —  with longer curls grumpily fiddling with his uniform tie. He wonders if they wore blazers like the private school kids in the movies. He wonders if Svetlana would send him the pictures if he met her. He wonders if Svetlana would like him, what she’d think of him and Ilya, if they met. 

“I was a good student!” Ilya sounds vaguely offended, but mostly teasing. “Teachers loved me.”

Shane snorts. “Okay, now I know you’re lying.”

“Okay, okay, maybe teachers did not all love me. But I was a good student. Really. I liked math in school. And literature. Did not always turn my homework in on time and smoked behind the school gym, yes, but I got good marks.” 

“I didn’t know that about you,” Shane murmurs. 

Ilya smiles, his eyes soft and too intense. Shane feels himself squirm a bit inside, but he doesn’t even attempt to break their gaze. Ilya does that to him. 

“There is much you don’t know about me, Hollander.”

Shane hates all the things he doesn’t know about Ilya, suddenly. He knows exactly what Ilya sounds like when he cums and he could map the moles on his body blindfolded, but he doesn’t know any of the everyday stuff and he wants to with a ferocity that nearly takes his breath. How does Ilya take his coffee in the morning? Does he prefer winter or summer? What’s his favorite movie?  Is he a good driver? Shane knows he likes tacky sports cars, has a whole fleet of them in his Boston garage, so he assumes no, but he doesn’t know. He tries to imagine Ilya in the car, using his blinkers and furrowing his brows as he checks the mirrors to change lanes. He imagines himself in the car with Ilya, sneaking glances at his side profile as he drives. 

“What are you doing for Christmas?” he asks instead of saying tell me something about you that I don’t know please. “Are you going to Marly’s? Or seeing Svetlana?”

“No, Sveta is busy. She’s visiting a friend in Paris. I went over to Marly’s on Christmas Eve because his mom is a great cook, but Christmas Day is for family, I think. Besides, in Russia, Orthodox Christmas isn’t until January 7th, anyway. Not much to miss. And I’m not really Orthodox anymore so.”

“Were you religious growing up?” Shane asks, then regrets it because Ilya’s face loses some of its openness.  “I just—  I’ve never seen you without your crucifix.”

“Ahh. Well. It was my mother’s.” Ilya pauses, fiddling with the spiked cross absently. “I go to church on Orthodox Christmas. Very boring. Not the most exciting part of January.”

“No?”

“No, most exciting part of January is the All-Stars game,” Ilya says, bravado firmly back in place and Shane loves that, too. He loves Ilya, the performance of him and reality of him, and he can’t handle how much he wants Ilya here with him close enough to touch. How much he wants to earn every piece of information about Ilya and memorize them all. “I will beat all your records and then fuck you all night.” 

“You will not beat all my records.”

“But I will fuck you all night, yes?”

“Let’s see how you do in the endurance competitions first,” Shane retorts, flushed and ignoring his cock firming up in interest. Ilya’s endurance, his single-minded focus, has never been an issue for them. 

Ilya laughs, and it’s the sweetest sound in the world

…

Unlike past All-Stars weekends, Shane makes an effort to get to Florida early before the circus really starts. 

Shane’s always liked the All-Stars game. Most guys in the league don’t get to go ever and most only go a handful of times. He’s been invited every year since he was a rookie and knows how rare that is. What an honor. He’s only skipped once in his career, before their first Cup run in 2015 when he’d minorly rolled his ankle in December and decided that it wasn’t worth pushing it. The choice had paid off even if Ilya had sent him a few dirty texts about what he was missing out on in Columbus. 

It’s a nice chance to remember that hockey is fun, especially with the pressure valve of playoffs and stats and games turned off. Shane plays hard and tries, of course, because that’s who he is, but it’s low stakes and no one is trying to get injured or worked up over an All-Star match. 

Besides, it has always been reliably an extra weekend when he gets to see Ilya every year.

He’d actually been on the phone with Ilya when the rosters were announced for the 2017 game. East vs West, putting them on the same team for the first time in all their years in the league. They’d gotten into a fifteen-minute argument about who would be centering who in Florida at the exhibition. It had devolved from there into phone sex with Ilya weaving a complicated and completely impractical fantasy about them fucking on center ice. Shane wasn’t proud of how much it worked for him, the fantasy of melting ice against his back and Ilya pressed hot against his front and everyone watching. His libido with Ilya has taken him places that he would’ve never venture on his own, he thinks.

There’s a text waiting for him from Ilya after he checks into his hotel room and showers.

Lily

at the hotel bar when you get here

Lily

i will buy you the world’s coldest and most boring ginger ale <3

Shane

I’m pretty sure the organizers said it’s an open bar

Lily 

oh my god just get down here already, hollander

The hotel that all the players are staying in is more of a resort than a hotel. There's a massive pool with a cabana and a large outdoor beach-style bar where Shane can see a few other NHL stars milling about as he enters.

Shane scans the room and spots Ilya at the bar, alone and nursing a beer, and cuts across the room to head for him before he can talk himself out of it. He should maybe circulate, greet some of the other guys. He is captaining the East conference team, after all, this year.  

But it can be hard to get Ilya alone at things like this. For all his reputation about being the league’s biggest asshole and for all the players he’s knocked teeth out of, he has a magnetic quality. Shane knows that better than anyone maybe. Everyone gets caught up in his gravity like a tractor beam, veteran players wanting to hear his stories or party with him and rookies staring starry-eyed at the legend of Ilya Rozanov, but Shane is stupid and selfish enough to want Ilya to himself, if only for a few minutes.

Ilya is wearing a button-down Hawaiian shirt that can only be described as truly hideous. It’s a peachy pink with cartoon palm trees all over it that reminds Shane of an American dad on vacation at Disney World. Only someone as deeply attractive as Ilya could pull it off and not look completely ridiculous.

Shane slides into the seat next to him and lets himself warm as the annoyance on Ilya’s face from someone sitting down directly next to him blooms into a smile when he realizes it’s just Shane. It feels like relief to sit down next to Ilya and press his foot into his, to feel Ilya press back. It’s only been a month since they saw each other in New York before Thanksgiving and he thinks it’s been entirely too long.

“Nice shirt,” he says instead of hello.

“I like to get into the spirit.”

The year All-Stars had been in Nashville, Ilya had bought cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. Shane still remembers how he'd looked with his jeans slung low on his hips with the garish, novelty belt buckle basically drawing all attention to his cock. He'd rode a mechanical bull when all the players went out to party after and then left early to have Shane ride him the hotel. It was a good night. 

“No,” Shane laughs. “You’re pulling it off, though.”

Ilya’s voice drops in volume, sly and sure. “You can pull it off later if—”

Shane kicks his ankle. They are still in public, in a bar filling with other players and their families and maybe even press. Ilya just laughs.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” the bartender asks, appearing in front of them. Shane glances at the Corona with lime that Ilya’s loosely holding, the condensation dripping into his hand. 

“I'll have the same as my teammate, please,” Shane says, cheeky and trying not to keep glancing back at Ilya. He mostly fails, but Ilya’s still grinning.

“So, what, are they out of ginger ale, Captain?”

“I'm feeling a bit wild,” Shane says dryly, taking the beer the bartender brings him with a quick thank you. He sees the innuendo forming on Ilya’s tongue, something dirty and clever about exactly how wild they’re going to be once he gets Shane alone in one of their hotel rooms, so he keeps talking. “So this should be fun, huh? I've always wondered what it would be like to play on the same team. Have you?”

Ilya smiles warms to something a little softer, more private. “Of course, I have. I have been looking forward to it. Even if the stupid league coach has put you in center.”

“My stats back up the choice, Rozanov. I’m beating you in the scoring race and points race right now.”

“Pfft. Not for long.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”  

“Sveta said they’d put me on your wing instead of letting me center,” Ilya complains, half pouting. “I hate that she is always right, like a fucking witch.” 

Shane tries to keep his face neutral. He doesn’t love the prickly jealousy that overtakes him whenever Ilya mentions Svetlana, now that he’s named and categorized the feeling. It’s irrational. Immature. She's obviously one of his closest friends and perhaps the only person from Russia that Ilya's ever talked about with seeming angry, sad, or beaten down. Whatever they’re doing, however it’s changed or morphed, it’s not like Shane owns Ilya. It doesn’t matter what he wants.

But he can’t erase the jealousy he feels when Ilya talks about Svetlana—  she’s beautiful and Ilya talks about her in a way that he doesn’t speak about anyone else, with an easy and obvious affection, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

“Did she come with you?” he asks, keeping his voice casual and careful.

Ilya gives him a look, like he’s completely transparent, but Ilya’s still trying to puzzle him out anyway. 

“No. She said she was only interested in coming if you were bringing Rose Landry for her to hang out with.” 

“You gotta let this Rose Landry thing go.” 

“No, you blush so pretty when I tease you about it.” Ilya leans closer. “And I will make you remember why Rose Landry will never come to an All-Stars game with you this weekend.” 

Shane blushes harder. He’s about to say something else when he’s interrupted by Carter Vaughn from New York, slinging his arms around them and leaning in close. It seems that Vaughn has already been enjoying the open bar.

He likes Vaughn. He’s a genuinely nice guy, friendly and open, if a little louder and more boisterous than Shane can handle in more than small doses. 

“Cats and dogs,” Vaughn crows. “Look at this—  you fucking beauties!  Burying the hatchet so we can bring home a win to the East?”

“There is no hatchet,” Ilya rolls his eyes. “Hollander and I are actually friends, Vaughny, did you not hear?”

“Hollzy, you gonna let him slander you like this?”

“No. We’re actually best friends,” Shane deadpans, mostly to see the way it makes Ilya really smile out of the corner of his eye. Ilya’s smile, his real smile, not the sly smirk or cocky grin he usually sports in public always hits Shane right in the solar plexus. It’s like looking directly into the sun. 

“You’re funnier than people give you credit for, Hollander. Anyways, I wanna see that chemistry on the ice, boys! East boys are gonna crush those West Coast fuckers!”

Vaughn disappears, probably having spotted Hunter or maybe Bennett, the goalie from the Admirals. They had three guys make it this year, spots bolstered by fan voting. Shane hates to admit it, but the Admirals are sort of on a tear. Or they will be until Hunter has his typical mid-season flameout.

“I feel like we’re gonna get a lot of that this weekend,” Shane mutters to Ilya once they’re alone again, slightly annoyed. It’s frustrating to him, sometimes, when the bubble around him and Ilya bursts and the outside world rushes in. When he’s no longer allowed to imagine a world where Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov sitting next to each other and sharing a drink isn’t a rare sight.

Ilya finishes his beer, his forearm brushing Shane’s as he sets the empty bottle back down. “Don’t worry, lyubimyy,” he murmurs, his voice a promise. “I will make it all worth your while.”

More guys from the league filter in until the resort bar is overrun by hockey players, WAGs, and a handful of NHL officials and staff. People mix and mingle and get pulled easily from one conversation to another, floating about. The vibe is casual and easy and it’s the kind of social situation that drains all the marrow out of Shane usually, but he finds himself orbiting Ilya which oddly makes it easier. He can get through anything, probably, if he feels Ilya’s gaze drifting back to him again and again with the promise of later behind closed doors. 

Ilya is charismatic in an easy, natural way that Shane never has been, funnier and quicker in his second language than most people are in their guys in their first. The guys complain about his teasing and ribbing, but they all laugh at everything he says and hang out his words for more. 

As the sun starts to set, they end up at a table of guys, including Vaughn, Hunter, and a few other guys from the Eastern conference. They’re chatting, as players almost always are during this point of the season, about who’s in the best shape to make the run for the Cup.

“We’re going all the way this year,” Vaughn declares. “My boy Scotty is on a fucking roll.”

He slings a friendly arm around Hunter and jostles him, Hunter laughing gamely. To be fair, Shane’s been watching Admirals game tape about as often as he watches anybody’s in the Eastern conference and Vaughn has a point. Hunter’s been in great shape this season and if his usual midseason offensive meltdown is coming then there are no signs of it. Still, the Admirals have to get through the Metros and Raiders to get to the Stanley Cup finals.  

“Be careful with Hunter and his old bones,” Ilya teases, unable to not take the bait. “At a certain point it becomes elder abuse, yes?”

Hunter snorts, more exasperated than truly pissed off. “Fuck you, Rozanov.”

“You know I was in New York, recently?” Ilya says suddenly, changing the subject. “Is wonderful city. Very cool and fun. Exciting. I have no idea why they allow you to live there because you are none of these things.”

“Fuck you, man,” Hunter says. “What the hell were you doing in New York?”

“Having a very nice weekend.” His eyes cut to Shane’s across the table. “Maybe the best weekend ever.” 

Shane feels his heart wobble, remembering two golden days of room service and endless sex and falling asleep together without immediately having to leave to catch a plane and Ilya’s perfect skin against white bed sheets. Yeah. Maybe the best weekend ever. 

Guys filter from the table, grabbing more drinks and getting caught in other conversations, until Shane is left alone with Ilya. Somehow, being alone with him in a crowded room feels worse than being stuck in different places or hidden behind a hotel door and praying that no one will hear them.

“Shane,” Ilya murmurs too low for anyone to hear. His foot presses into Shane’s from across the table, hidden and out of sight. “Can we be done talking to other people now? They are so boring.”

“You always say I’m boring.”

“Yes, but I am never bored of you.” He pauses, licking his lips and Shane’s eyes follow the motion. “My room?”

They’d already exchanged room numbers after checking in this morning, but the evening is pretty young and people might notice if they both disappear. Ilya keeps looking at him, blue eyes boring into his, and Shane suddenly feels like he can’t stand wasting any more time.

“You go first. I’ll follow in ten?”

Ilya nods, immediately getting up and abandoning his drink. Shane can’t help watching him walk away until he disappears out of the entrance of the bar, headed towards the elevators.

Shane lingers for a bit, nursing his beers and counting the seconds until he can follow Ilya. He’s just about to leave when Cliff Marleau and Eric Sullivan, a defenseman from Vegas, settle around the table he’s at. 

Fan voting had sent Marleau with Ilya to the All-Stars game this year from Boston. Shane has been rammed into the boards by Marleau more times than they’ve spoken, he’s pretty sure, but he knows that he’s one of the teammates that Ilya is closest to on the Raiders’ roster. He always tells stories that Marly with a fond lilt in his voice, even says he’s complaining about the shitty clubs Marly likes or his brain being full of rocks sometimes, I swear, Hollander.

“Hey Hollander,” Marleau greets him easily. He’s a friendly guy when he’s not on the ice and doesn’t seem to entertain the stories of Montreal-Boston rivalry much beyond some good-natured ribbing earlier with other guys in the Eastern Conference. “Did you see where’d Roz go?”

Shane freezes and finishes his beer with a quick gulp, trying to recover and act casual. 

“Oh, uh, I don’t know.”

Sullivan laughs. “He’s probably pulling, that fucking dog. All-Stars weekend always has plenty of puck bunnies hanging around. Figures Rozanov would get there first.”

Shane pastes a smile on his face and tries to remind himself that Ilya isn’t pulling or fucking a puck bunny or whatever else Sullivan thinks right now. He’s in his hotel room waiting for Shane to slip inside the door. Before he can even attempt to drum up a response, Sullivan is already flitting away at someone else calling his name. 

He’s about to make a flimsy excuse to get up and leave himself when Marleau leans in across the table.

“Let me tell you a secret about Roz, Hollzy,” Marleau says and Shane thinks yes please tell me everything about Ilya actually thanks so much. “I think he’s got a girl.”

Shane’s heart drops to his stomach.

“He’s told you about a girl? You’ve met her?”

His voice comes out slightly high and reedy and he suddenly wishes he didn’t finish his beer already. He desperately needs something to do with his hands, his mouth. He tries not to picture Ilya with a faceless girlfriend—  maybe Svetlana, maybe someone else. He wouldn’t, right? He couldn’t, not with how often they’ve been talking and how everything has changed. Could he? 

Shane feels a strange, distant panic well up inside his veins.  

“No, no,” Marly laughs. “Dude can be weirdly private for someone who’s probably sent a dick pick to half of Boston. But I swear he’s locked down since the fall. He barely goes out with me anymore, at home or on the road. And when he does—  I mean, the guy used to be the worst fucking wingman, right? Like he’s my brother and all, but girls are fucking obsessed with him. They don’t notice anyone else once they spot Rozy.”

Yeah, Shane thinks faintly. He can relate to the feeling of seeing no one but Ilya Rozanov once he walks into a room. 

“But,” Marleau continues, “ever since like September? October? I don’t know, but definitely since Halloween because he didn’t go home with anyone on Halloweekend and this girl in a slutty pumpkin costume was all over him. Anyway, ever since then I haven’t seen him even so much as grind on a girl. Last time I managed to drag him to the club was on the road before Christmas. Nashville, I think. Whatever. I’m just saying that he was at the bar texting with heart eyes on his phone and he ignored every girl who came up to him.”

“That’s, uh—” Shane clears his throat, searching for something to say that isn’t completely incriminating like is he really not fucking anyone else? since September? has it been like that since we— His heart is still hammering in his chest. “Good for Rozanov, I guess.”

Marleau laughs. “Yeah, good for Rozy. I can’t wait to meet the girl who’s managed to make him monogamous.” He winks, big and exaggerated, and it’s more like he’s having a small facial seizure. “Don’t tell Roz I said anything.”

“Yeah,” Shane says faintly, standing. “I’d never.”

Marleau claps on the back and lets Shane get up and exit the bar, his head whirling. He feels like he’s on autopilot as he leaves and takes the elevator up to the eleventh floor. 

1112. He knocks on the door and Ilya opens it almost immediately, like he’s been waiting, and draws Shane inside. 

Shane follows easily, like a fish on the line for Ilya, who keeps him close as he shuts the door. He doesn’t turn to press him into the door with a kiss like he sometimes does when they’re feeling keyed up and Shane’s just slipped inside his hotel room or his house in Boston. Instead, Ilya keeps their chests and hips pressed close together and manhandles Shane to watch towards the bed. He’s still wearing his stupid Hawaiian shirt, just with more of the buttons undone, and his skin is warm where it presses into Shane’s. He can feel the heat through the layer of cotton of his own shirt. 

“You took too long,” Ilya complains, pressing lazy, lingering kisses to Shane’s neck as they shuffle toward the bed. “I missed you.”

“We were apart for twenty minutes.”

“Too long,” he declares. “Gimme kiss.” 

Ilya leans in to kiss him and Shane responds because, well, he doesn’t think he’s ever rebuffed Ilya’s leaning in for a kiss in his life. Not even when he was burning with fury at him in a Vegas bathroom. His kisses are too precious and finite for Shane to refuse, even when he’s annoyed or angry or so fucking confused like he is right now. And, usually, kissing Ilya makes everything in his brain go quiet. It wipes out the noise until Shane can’t focus on any sensation that isn’t purely physical. 

But now his head is still thrumming, thinking about Marleau’s words and what his heart did in response to the idea of Ilya— 

Ilya pulls back like he can tell that Shane is thinking too hard, distracted and scrambled, all from the press of his lips. He frowns slightly, looking concerned. “Something is wrong?” he says it like a question, but it’s not.  

Shane hesitates. Ilya doesn’t like being forced to talk about his feelings any more than Shane does. Ilya doesn’t like being cornered, Shane knows that. Learned the hard way in Sochi. Learned it again in Vegas when Ilya didn’t even kiss him once and Shane ended up back in his own bed, cold and alone. His stoicness can turn cruel on a dime if he feels like Shane’s pressed up against something too tender or asked too much. It’s why Shane doesn’t try to define what they are to each other, even as the questions in his head pile up and he feels increasingly out of his depth, but— 

But Shane thinks of how since October, since he first spent the night in Ilya’s bed, whenever he reaches out and offers up some vulnerability from a closed fist, Ilya has surprised him and reached back. 

“Hollander,” Ilya prods, impatient. “Shane. What is it?” 

Fuck it. Shane decides to try bravery for once. 

He licks his lips, unsure of where to start. “It’s just… Marleau said something to me.”

“Marly?” Ilya raising his eyebrows like this makes no sense. “Marly is the dumbest motherfucker I have ever met in my life. Why would you talk to him?”

Shane ignores the bait. Ilya’s tricky like that sometimes, too skilled at deflecting. He could get them into a five-minute debate about why the hell Shane was hanging out with Marleau and he’d lose his nerve. “He said he thinks you have a girlfriend.”

“See? Fucking idiot.” Ilya rolls his eyes. “Obviously, I do not.”

Shane hesitates. “He said—  he said that he hasn’t seen you hook up with anyone in a long time. Like since Halloween?”

Ilya freezes like he’s been caught. It’s quick; just a split-second before he recovers, but Shane’s practically made a career out of catching split-second reactions. He doesn’t miss it.

“Marly is just mad that the girl he was slobbering over on Halloween was only interested in fucking him if I was there for a threesome.”

“You’re not… you’re not sleeping with anyone else?” Shane pauses. “Are you?”

Ilya looks embarrassed. Or, rather, he would look embarrassed if his face was capable of the emotion. Shane can practically hear him teasing, Russians do not get embarrassed, Hollander.  “No,” Ilya says simply, with that stubborn jut to his jaw that Shane loves so much. 

Shane had suspected maybe —  he’d thought, wished maybe, especially after what Marleau was saying downstairs —  but it knocks the wind out of him to have it confirmed. 

“Since when?”

Ilya doesn’t quite meet his gaze. He scratches at his nose and his fingers twitch in the way they do when he wants to hold something or pluck a cigarette from the carton he keeps in his jacket pocket even when he says he’s quitting. Shane doesn’t know when he came to recognize that, when he learnt Ilya’s tells and quirks and microexpressions so deeply.

He presses. “Ilya, since when?”

“I don’t know. Since a little before September, maybe.”

“We didn’t— I didn’t—” Shane stops, his brain stalling. Marleau’s theoretical timeline was right. He feels like his insides are doing what his laptop does when it overheats and the fan starts up. Whirring uselessly. “But I was only at your house in October.”

“I know. I have not… needed to.”

Ilya has the most insatiable sex drive of anyone Shane knows. Not that he knows a lot about the sex drive of the other people in his life, but still. Sometimes Shane thinks that he hadn’t even really known desire existed until Ilya taught him about it on the floor of a hotel gym, in the first hotel bed that Ilya pressed him down into. 

Something cold and shaky and blood warm floods Shane’s veins all at once. If he had to name it, he might call it hope. 

“Ilya, we— are we dating?”

“I mean, not really, we do not go anywhere together,” Ilya deflects. 

“But are we together? Ilya, are we boyfriends?”

Ilya looks shy again. He avoids Shane’s gaze to stare up at the popcorn molding on the ceiling. “I mean, I guess yes. Probably.”

“Probably?”

Now Shane’s brain feels like it’s humming. Boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend, it chants. Naming what Shane has barely let himself admit he wants. 

“Probably,” Ilya repeats, wets his lips. His cupid’s bow mouth is stupidly distracting. “I mean. If you want. Unless you do not want.” 

“I didn’t say that. I want. I really want. But you do this—” Shane breaks off, frustrated. He looks up and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers then continues. Maybe he’ll find answers on the ceiling, too. He hates this, feeling out of control, but also he has the feeling he gets right before he scores a game-winner. Like he can have what he wants if he just reaches out for it and doesn’t let go. “You do this— you change the script and what we’re doing. What we are. And you don’t say anything to me. Or explain why.”

“Not everything needs to be explained. I like how we are. I think you like how we are. Why explain?”

“Because I don’t know what we’re doing! I don’t have the script anymore— I’ve been fucking freaking out a little since October. Do you know that? Every time we talk. Because I don’t know what we are or what we’re doing. And I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to ruin it. Or make you go away. And I just—” Shane breaks off, running out of steam. When he speaks again, his voice comes out small.  “Why didn’t you just say anything?”

Ilya’s face softens in the way that Shane is starting to grow familiar with and greedy for. His eyes go liquid and the curve of his mouth becomes a little indulgent. The line of his shoulders loses a bit of tension.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe… I thought if you noticed then you’d get scared and you’d try to run. Or I’d get scared and ruin everything. I am not…” Ilya huffs, like he’s meaning to laugh but can’t quite summon the sound. “I am a very bad idea, Shane, but I liked being with you so I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want you to remember that.”

Shane's heart catches in his chest. They are, by every metric, a bad idea. But he doesn’t like the way Ilya says it now, like it’s impossible and out of reach. Not when Shane feels like he’s been reaching for months and Ilya’s been reaching back.

He’s always known he can’t have this with Ilya. Hasn’t he? Shane doesn’t know when it shifted. When he decided they weren’t such a bad idea. When he decided they were worth every bad idea.

“You’re not a bad idea,” Shane says, his voice small and too gentle. Ilya gives him a hard look, his eyes pinning him to the bed. “Or maybe you are. Maybe we are. But I don’t care. I want—  I want to be together. I can’t keep pretending I don’t like you. I can’t keep pretending that I don’t want everything.”

“Shane,” Ilya breathes his name softly. The words propel him into movement, making him join Shane on his hotel bed, straddling Shane’s lap and pressing back until they’re both lying back against the hotel bed and its ugly palm tree duvet cover. 

His hands come up to cup Shane’s jaw, and the gesture is tender. Shane presses back into Ilya’s hands, feeling shaky and pulled apart and on the precipice of something terribly important.

He closes his eyes. Just like a goal on the ice. He can see what he wants in front of him before he has it. 

“I was stupid,” Ilya says, his voice low. “Before. I thought I could have more of you and not want all of you, but I— Shane.”

Shane opens his eyes and swallows hard. “I didn’t know. That you felt that way. That you feel that way. About me.”

Tell me, tell me, tell me, Shane thinks. Let me know it’s okay to love you and I’ll say it back every time.

“Of course, I feel this way about you.” The smile on Ilya’s mouth is one Shane hasn’t seen before, and he wants to study it. Small, a little rueful. “Thought it was obvious.”

“Nothing about how you feel is obvious to me. I need you to tell me. You have to tell me.” Shane doesn’t want to beg, but then thinks better of it. “Ilya. Please.” 

Ilya kisses him, just off-center on the corner of his mouth. He pulls back and buries his face in Shane’s shoulder, whispers something in Russian that he can’t quite decipher. It sounds familiar, but Shane can’t quite pin it down as any of the pet-names that Ilya has taken to doling out to him or any of the rumbling, dirty words that drip from his mouth when he’s inside Shane. 

When he pulls his face away to look at Shane, nose to nose, he’s crying. 

Shane stays stock-still. He’s never seen Ilya cry. Not once in bed or alone or with him or even from on-the-ice replays of his worst injuries. The moment feels charged and precious and fragile all around them. Like if he moves too suddenly then the whole moment will break, popping like a bubble or dissipating like a balloon with the air let out of it. 

“I love you,” Ilya says in English, finally. “I love you, Shane.” 

The relief makes him near delirious. 

“Holy shit. I love you, too,” he gasps, clutching at Ilya’s shoulders. “Oh my god, I love you too. I love you so much.” 

Shane surges forward, kissing him so hard that he feels their teeth clack, but Ilya is grasping at him, too, pulling him closer and closer and pressing him into the bed at the same time. He’s smiling into Shane’s mouth and chasing his lips and it’s maybe the best, most graceless, kiss of Shane’s life. “You can have all of me. I want all of you. Ilya, please.”

Ilya kisses him like he’s trying to devour him. “Ya tebya lyublyu,” he says again in Russian and Shane’s brain tries to hang on the words, memorize them so he can learn them and say them back to Ilya like a gift. 

He tries to repeat them back, clumsy and unsure, and Ilya kisses him even harder if that’s possible. 

“Jesus,” Shane breathes into his mouth, still dotting pecks there as their kisses slow. “Does it fucking feel like agony to you too?”

“No,” Ilya says very seriously. “Not anymore.”

He pulls back slightly and Shane makes a noise of protest until Ilya rearranges them more fully on the bed, their hips slotted together and chests pressed heartbeat to heartbeat until it feels like every part of them might fuse together.

“But I cannot believe you tell me you love me for the first time in the hotel at the fucking All-Stars game, filled with dumb hockey players everywhere so I cannot even make you scream as loud as I want.” 

“Sorry,” Shane says unrepentantly and Ilya grins in answer. He flops back against the pillows a bit. “How did we let this happen?” he asks, feeling delirious and desperate. He wants Ilya inside him. He wants Ilya to crawl inside his skin and for the first time since they’ve known each, seventeen and stupid, he thinks that Ilya would comply if only he asked for it.

“We were both very stupid and irresponsible.”

“This is real, though, right?” Shane can’t help asking, can’t help checking. 

“Yes,” Ilya promises. “The most real thing in my life.” 

“I love you,” Shane says thickly because it turns out that’s actually his favorite three words in the English language now that Ilya’s uttered them. They feel shiny and new against his tongue, like Ilya saying them back to him and meaning it has completely reinvented the words to him. 

“I love you, too,” Ilya echoes, the best call and response in the world. “I think always, maybe. From the beginning.”

Shane feels tears prick at the corner of his eyes. “Really?”

“Really. I wanted to fuck you in the gym on the mats, back in LA before the draft, make you all sweaty and pink.” His voice is wistful, soft and special and just for Shane. “You were so pretty.”

His heart feels like it’s seizing. “Oh, so I’m not so pretty anymore?” he tries to tease and falls so short it’s not even funny, his voice rough and soft. So in love.

Ilya’s eyes stay soft, molten and boring into Shane’s. “Silly Hollander. You are always pretty. Prettiest.”

“I was so nervous,” Shane admits, feeling cracked open. “The first time.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, sweetheart— I was nervous, too.” Ilya kisses him again like this is easier still than honesty. “I wanted you so bad. Wanted to touch you so much it burned. Wanted it to be good for you. But it was scary. I wanted it to be good for you so you’d want me again and let me come back. Sort of like an audition,” Ilya laughs quietly. “It felt like… so much. It was so much. You were perfect.”

Tears well up again at the corner of Shane’s eyes and Ilya wipes gently under his eyes like he did back in the day that Shane asked him not to ignore him again in Boston, the day Ilya first said his name, the day that made this day possible if he was going to assign an origin. Shane hates crying in front of people, always has, but it doesn’t feel so impossible with Ilya. 

“Would you have done it if you— I mean, would you have come up to my room back then if you knew that it would be this… complicated. That it would be like this?”

Shane thinks of them, young and stupid and horny, unknowing exactly what they were stumbling into. Unknowing how much it would change them, how completely it would rewrite every bit of the future either of them had planned for themselves. All he knew was nothing made him feel like Ilya’s eyes, like Ilya’s hands, like Ilya.

“Yes,” Ilya says without hesitation. “I would have skipped the elevator. Taken stairs. I would’ve ran.”

“Oh.”

A thousand feelings feel contained, safe and held tight for Ilya alone, are in his exclamation. Shane doesn’t feel so afraid of them anymore now that he knows Ilya is here, close enough to touch and to catch them.

He doesn’t know if he could be so brave as to reach out and have this for himself if he knew how deeply, how irrevocably, Ilya would change him when he knocked on his hotel door years ago. He’s glad he won’t ever have to find out. 

“Yes,” Ilya whispers tenderly. “Oh.”

“I’m really glad you knocked.”

“I’m really glad you answered.”

Shane kisses Ilya, slow and sweet and deep, and he forgets about everything outside of their hotel room for the rest of the night.