Chapter Text
January 2018, All-Star Weekend
After the game and a few hours of raucous partying at the hotel bar with the rest of the stars, and after discreetly leaving the crowds behind (departing at different times, headed in different directions) Shane had safely arrived at Ilya’s hotel room door and slipped inside without anyone noticing.
It was kind of fun, Ilya had thought, not for the first time in their almost-decade together—sneaking around right under everyone’s noses. He felt like a 007 or something in the bar, texting Jane while nodding absently at something a defenseman from St. Louis was saying, leg bouncing in anticipation and watching out of the corner of his eye as Shane read the text from across the room. Smirking at the familiar thrill of knowing that in under an hour he would have Shane writhing and gasping and moaning beneath him, and none of those idiots crowding around Shane in the bar to shake his hand or clap him over the shoulder had any idea what Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov were about to do.
If everything went according to their plan, this would be their last All-Star weekend as public enemies. Next year, after their charity and friendship were made public, maybe it would be Ilya pulling Shane into a one-armed hug at the after party. Maybe they would have their own table and share their own pitcher of beer while pretending to listen as their colleagues laughed or played drinking games around them. Maybe Ilya would casually, quietly cover Shane’s tab because he was such a good sport, and nobody would have anything to say about it because they would all think that Rozanov and Hollander were friends. The thought excited him even as friends chafed.
Now, in his hotel room, Ilya had Shane backed up against the closed door, holding him close and devouring his gorgeous mouth, and Shane’s strong hands were scrabbling desperately over his bare shoulders and back because there was no audience demanding they perform rivals or friends and they could just be Shane and Ilya, hopelessly dickmatized boyfriends.
“I thought JJ was never going to let me leave,” Shane laughed breathlessly after Ilya had pulled Shane’s shirt over his head and moved to kiss across Shane’s cheek to his ear, absolutely adoring the soft groan that earned him.
“JJ is an asshole,” Ilya growled directly into Shane’s ear, running his tongue along the perfect shell of it and relishing in Shane’s involuntary shudder. For once, Shane didn’t argue the point.
They kissed again, a deep, licking, lip-sucking, messy kiss, and Ilya pressed his own chest against Shane’s, losing himself in the warm smooth skinfeel, until Shane placed a palm between his pecs and shoved lightly, pushing Ilya back a step. Without another word, Shane dropped to his knees. While he worked Ilya’s fly down and pulled out Ilya’s half-hard cock, he flashed a sparkly-eyed smile up at him that would have been sweet if his mouth wasn’t already kiss-swollen and sloppy with spit. As if he wasn’t kneeling there with a fistful of dick.
“Yes, Shane,” Ilya breathed, and cupped a hand behind Shane’s head to guide him down onto his cock, his touch featherlight because Shane hardly needed the encouragement. His generous lips closed around the head with the confidence he’d learned from years spent between Ilya’s legs, and Ilya sighed appreciatively. “So—mmm—so good for me, moya lyubov.”
Shane hummed and pumped his fist along his length in response, slurping deliciously, breath puffing against Ilya’s hair and tickling the skin below. It didn’t take long for the slide and friction to garble all of Ilya’s thoughts and make him forget all his words, in any language. He kept a hand on Shane’s neck, exerting only the slightest pressure, and brought the other up to caress at his freckled cheek, bulging around the head of his now-fully hard dick. Shane was always beautiful, but maybe never more so than when he was exactly like this: eyelashes fluttering against his freckles, brow furrowed with effort, cheeks stretched, lips suck-thickened and wet, head bobbing, neck and shoulders and back flexing powerfully.
He was absolutely, completely, and devastatingly perfect, and Ilya told him so over and over again. Or tried to, anyway.
When Shane’s eyes flicked open and fixed him with his warm fuck-sparkled brown gaze, watching him with passion and challenge from under his sharp black brows, Ilya’s stomach dropped. The rest of him floated impossibly high, coasting on another plane contained entirely within the russet heat of Shane’s gaze.
After a few moments or lifetimes he remembered himself because the heat was definitely rising from the base of his cock, and tapped Shane’s shoulder with a murmured warning. Shane only reached one hand up to cup and squeeze Ilya’s chest while continuing to swirl his tongue over and under the head, and used his other hand to stroke Ilya’s balls in exactly the right way. Within seconds Ilya came hard down his throat with a guttural cry and a full-body shudder and a burst of starlight.
Chest heaving, knees shaking, hands trembling, one each cupping Shane’s cheek and holding Shane’s fingers against his chest, he watched as Shane swallowed him down. Watched the final bob of his throat and felt one last heavenly wet squeeze around his spent dick before Shane pulled off completely.
Still on his knees, Shane grinned up at him, obviously very proud of himself. As he should be. “Did you like that?” he asked in a raspy voice, and gave Ilya’s pec another squeeze.
“Da,” Ilya smiled back, and pulled him back up so he could press his lips to Shane’s swollen ones, wanting to be close again. Wanting to be surrounded by him again. Shane obliged by leaning into the kiss for a long beat before tenderly nuzzling his forehead against Ilya’s and reaching around him with both hands to stroke down his back and grip Ilya’s ass over his jeans.
Fuck, he loved those hands.
Later, with Shane face down ass up on the bed, lovely hands fisted in the hotel sheets as if to tear them, panting loudly while Ilya fucked him open with his tongue, Ilya corrected himself—this was Shane at his most beautiful. Body folded up and soul bared open for only Ilya to see and hear, gasping and begging for exactly what he wanted, the sounds a glorious anthem to the passion they could only make together. He never wanted the song to end, so he lapped and thrusted with his tongue and pumped his fist along Shane’s rigid and wet cock until he cried out for him to stop.
“Fu—Fuck, Ilya,” Shane groaned even as his hips shook up and down with uncontrollable spasms.
Ilya sat up with a messy grin to admire his work, swiping a thumb around and into Shane’s twitching hole to catch some of the spit shining against his smooth skin. Shane groaned again at the intrusion, though the thumb slipped easily past the first layers of muscle. Beautiful, just beautiful.
“You really should see this, moya lyubov,” he said a little breathlessly with another stroke of his thumb. Eating ass was an aerobic activity after all. “You are so cute back here.”
Shane scoffed into the sheets. “No, thanks. That’s all yours.”
Something thrummed through Ilya at that. All yours.
Instead of trying to examine it because he was busy, Ilya leaned back down to lay a few open mouthed kisses against the plush swells of Shane’s cheeks, letting his teeth scrape against one and huffing a laugh at Shane’s hiss.
“Are you actually gonna fuck me, or just take bites out of me?” he complained, shooting a look over his shoulder that was probably supposed to be stern but Ilya read as needy.
“Why, do you have somewhere to go?” he asked with another lazy pump of his thumb. Shane contracted around it so hard that Ilya’s dick lurched with interest. “Late for another dick appointment?”
Marleau had taught him that phrase recently and he’d thought it was hilarious until he realized that that was literally the only way he had sex anymore—by appointment after comparing calendars and making travel plans. Usually weeks in advance. It had been a sobering realization.
“Obviously not,” Shane answered honestly, and the thing thrummed through Ilya again.
While he wondered what exactly it was, he let Shane crawl off his thumb and roll onto his back, let his strong legs wrap around him and tug him down on top of him, let his hands reach for Ilya’s face and pull him down further until there was no more space between them. He even let Shane roll the condom onto his dick and let him guide him towards Shane’s hole, let him press himself back and down until they were well and truly connected.
“Hey,” Shane said, hands cupping Ilya’s face, forcing him to meet his eyes even as his legs strained to fuck himself properly. “You gonna help me out here or what?”
So he pushed away his wondering, wrapped his arms around Shane’s shoulders to both hold him in place and hold him close, and thrust hard to make up for it. He focused on the little whimpers that escaped Shane’s lips with every snap of his hips and not on how Shane might sound if he did have another dick appointment.
“Is this what you want?” Ilya breathed hotly against Shane’s ear as he pounded into him with all of his considerable core strength. He reached one hand down to coast the length of his body, from nipple to hip and around the curve of his ass up to his bent knee, before wedging the hand between them and circling it around his thumping cock. The strokes earned him a few shaky gasps—sometimes Shane was ticklish at his sides—and another long, insistent kiss.
“Yes,” Shane huffed. “Yes, Ilya—you’re the best.”
And something else streaked through him… Uncertainty?
Shane orgasmed first, one of his long and shuddering spasms that left him breathless, boneless, and covered in his own cum. Ilya stroked him through it, inside and outside, and watched his face and wondered whether he felt as taken apart as he looked. Wondered if this is really the best he could ever have, or if it’s only the best he’d been able to get.
“Ilya,” Shane was choking out, grasping at his wrists because Ilya hadn’t stopped moving against him while he wondered. “Ilya, baby, stop, stop, I need a minute—”
“Sorry.” He released Shane’s dick and pulled out his own, with just enough presence of mind to appreciate how his red-rimmed hole twitched and gaped so prettily in the absence. He knelt over Shane and rolled the empty condom off and jerked himself off to Shane’s heaving chest, brown nipples pert and cum-splattered, while Shane watched with a buzzy, hungry gaze. Ilya managed to restrain himself from cumming all over those eyes, but only just.
After his spend joined Shane’s on his chest, he dropped into Shane’s waiting arms and settled his weight comfortably enough for both of them and buried his face in Shane’s neck with a groan. Shane’s fingers were already moving against his hair, but the soothing sensation was at odds with the streaks now pelting through him.
“The best, ah?” Ilya said before thinking, with no plan, just the phrase ringing through his head.
Shane laughed under him, but the sound didn’t comfort him. “Yes, Rozanov, you’re the best I’ve ever had. Happy?”
No, Ilya thought. Should have taken a beat to examine the next thought before letting it out of his mouth, but like a fucking idiot, he didn’t.
“Maybe you should try it. Other guys.”
The gentle shake of Shane’s laugh in his chest stilled immediately. This should have been a warning, but Ilya didn’t read it in time. Like a fucking idiot.
And suddenly Shane was pushing him, shoving him off his chest, away from his body. This should have been the second warning, but Ilya, undiscerning, went without resisting. Shane quickly moved to a sitting position against the headboard, eyes boring into his but with none of the usual post-nut silliness or mushiness that was now their way.
“What,” Shane said, and it made Ilya’s blood run cold because he said it in his Shane-style flat voice, but the word felt empty. Stiff.
Ilya licked his lips and sat back on his legs so they were facing each other. He rubbed his thumb over his index finger, hard, feeling the burn of his skin catching and pulling. It hurt, but the sharpness seemed to fit the moment, so he did it again.
“You are not so… experienced, yes? In general.” The two of them had, of course, fucked repeatedly (and spectacularly) for nigh on a decade. He hadn’t been sure for most of that time, but since the cottage he had learned for a fact that he was not only Shane’s first man, but his only—even after all this time. And while that singlemindedness was a trait he usually adored in Shane, when Ilya looked at the situation objectively now, he could only conclude that it really wasn’t very fair to Shane. He, unlike Ilya, didn’t know about the thrill of discovery and sheer variety that was out there.
“Maybe you could sleep with someone else. See if I am actually the best,” he continued, and even though the thought has never crystalized before, it seemed the sensible thing to do. He tried to ignore how much he hated the words the second they crashed around his own ears.
Shane stared blankly at Ilya’s collarbone, no longer making eye contact, and the quiet and stillness of it was worse than any other reaction.
“I mean—” Ilya really didn’t know what he meant anymore.
“Why are you saying this,” Shane said quietly to his collarbone.
His mind was reeling now and he couldn’t think of the other things he should say, the sensible, reasonable, very mature things that would lead to a very sensible, very reasonable, very mature arrangement that would then lead to Shane confirming (Ilya hoped with every fiber of his being) his undying love for him. So he could leave the Bears in a few months and move to Ottawa and be with Shane for ever and ever, amen.
Before he could answer, Shane stood swiftly, swiped at their mess still coloring his chest with the bedsheet, and Ilya didn’t reach him or any helpful words quickly enough.
“I’m leaving,” Shane said in the flat empty voice. He had already picked up his underwear and pants from the neat stack he’d left on top of the dresser.
“Shane,” Ilya tried, but the words that would salvage this did not magically appear, so all he could do was repeat the pitiful one-word plea. “Shane—”
“Don’t follow me.” His shoes were already on and he was heading for the door but Ilya still didn’t have any words.
“Shane—!”
And then he was gone.
Ilya stared at his phone for hours afterward, emptying more than a couple of glasses of the overpriced potato piss that the hotel’s minifridge claimed to be vodka. Shane didn't open his texts for over an hour and when he finally did, he left them on read. Which was somehow worse than if he hadn’t read them at all. Ilya tried calling once, then twice, then a third time, but Shane never picked up.
Lily: Shane
Please come back
I’m sorry
Shane
Can I see you before we leave tomorrow?
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and swore loudly into the empty room.