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Ilya's dick stops working one month before he's supposed to leave for the South of France. 

He had been stupid and careless, and so found himself in an equally stupid and careless situation as a result. 

His father always said he never learned how to use his head, so he always found himself in bad situations. The only problem was, back when he was single, his dumb decisions were his own problem. Now that he had a boyfriend, his dumb decisions meant ruining Shane's vacation by having a broken dick. 

It all started with that stupid questionnaire. 

Ilya had been tired after practice. He hadn't been sleeping. It had been a desolate, two-month stretch in which he hadn't seen Shane, so lately, Ilya had spent most of his time alternating between crying and wishing he was dead. 

Ottawa's team doctor had forgotten to give him a copy of the questionnaire in Cyrillic, and Ilya couldn't be fucked to stop and ask him for another form. So he had filled out this stupid English checklist, words barely processing in his head, because he had been too busy wondering, as his eyes glazed over, if Shane also felt like his life had no meaning if he didn't get to see him. 

Ilya handed the form over. The doctor's face fell. 

And that was when Ilya knew he fucked up. 

The bureaucratic dance that followed afterward suddenly became a lot more familiar to Ilya. He'd seen it with his mom. He'd be fucked if he'd let it happen to him here. The doctor went into another room, leaving Ilya to wait, for a very long time, alone. When he came back out, there was a deep frown on his face, and after a lot of jargon and big words, he said he wanted to refer Ilya out to a psychologist. 

Ilya had gone on the defensive. He might be in Canada now, but he'd lived in America for almost seven years, and had picked up a few tricks along the way. 

"I will get amazing lawyers," Ilya snarled, "and I will bankrupt this team to nothing if anyone tries to lock me in a nuthouse." 

The team doctor did not look phased by Ilya's anger. He explained, in a calm, professional voice, that institutionalizing him was the absolute last resort. However, he cautioned that if Ilya did not seek professional help, and the problems he listed on the questionnaire didn't improve, the worst case scenario was not entirely out of the realm of possibility. 

Since it felt like his team doctor was threatening him with some Nurse Jackie, Cuckoo Nest bullshit, Ilya went to the stupid psychologist to get the doctor off his back. 

The doctor had mentioned the psychologist was popular with other athletes in the league. The psychologist did not know Russian, but he had the appearance of a kind person. He gave Ilya forty-five minutes to talk about his problems. 

Ilya waited out the first fifteen minutes in stubborn silence, with his arms crossed and face frozen—unresponsive to any questions the psychologist asked. 

But Ilya always sucked at sitting still. It was why he was so shit at school, and so good at hockey. The longer he sat, the more his brain shouted at him to just fucking do something, so Ilya finally cracked. 

He started talking. He had wisened up from his visit to the team doctor, so he left out the fact that he'd thought about killing himself almost everyday this year.

Additionally, Ilya figured that Shane would not want him talking about their relationship with a stranger, so he left that part out too. 

So the only thing left to talk about was his family. 

He started by talking about his mom and his dad in even tones, like he was reciting something from memory. But, sitting in front of this man, peering at his sadness like he was a fucking zoo animal, he found, the more he spoke, the angrier he got, hate and despair that he hadn't felt since he was a teenager fueling the fire. 

Usually his attitudes toward his parents stayed at a neutral resignation, especially since they both died. But in that office, Ilya felt like his blood was boiling in his body. His father was an easy target for his ire, because there was a lot to hate about him. But Ilya had an out-of-body moment when his rage only grew in intensity when he started talking about his mom. 

For the first time in his life, Ilya hated his mom. He hated her just as much as he hated his dad. He hated them both so fucking much. They fucking left him here with this shitty brain and this shitty life, and just expected him to fucking deal with it. The rage scared him shitless, because he felt out-of-control, like some kind of monster. 

He forced himself to move on to someone he was used to being mad at—Alexei. 

Yelling about Alexei had the added benefit, as he ranted about his piece-of-shit cop brother, of making his face burn with humiliation. He tortured himself to an even hotter rage at the thought of Alexei, overseas, seeing him flounder this badly over at Ottawa.

Speaking of fucking Ottawa. 

They were fucking losers. They were incapable of intelligent thought. They didn't deserve to be on the ice. They were better players than they appeared on paper, but this only worsened his anger against them. He hated people who didn't know the extent of their capabilities—it made them seem stupid and unsure of themselves. 

All his emotions, as if following a predetermined, genetic pathway, siloed toward uncontrollable rage. Rage defined the last twenty minutes of the session. Just Ilya, yelling, ranting, screaming about his piece-of-shit family, his piece-of-shit teammates, his piece-of-shit life, until the session went way past the hour, and he ran out of breath. 

When Ilya finished, the psychologist, to nobody's surprise, was absolutely useless. 

Even better, he said he needed to refer Ilya out to yet another doctor. A psychiatrist, which sounded exactly the same as the doctor Ilya was already seeing, so Ilya did not understand why he had to go to yet another specialist, when he had already taken time out of his shitty day to go to this one. 

The psychologist, calmly, explained that he had to refer Ilya out to another doctor, because he was not licensed to prescribe Ilya medication. 

This, after everything, was the final straw.

Ilya's heart pounded violently, like an alien was going to burst out of his chest. "I am not taking pills," Ilya shook, wild. "You cannot make me." 

The psychologist continued in a smooth voice. Ilya was allowed to do whatever he wanted, but considering what he heard today, he strongly suggested that Ilya look into getting psychiatric help. 

He mentioned that, though he wasn't going to name names, there were many athletes, not just in the MLH, who took anti-psychotics, or anti-depressants. The medication improved their mood, which, in turn, improved their play. 

Ilya's disgust only grew. Western doctors pushed pills like salesmen, and Ilya found the practice disturbing. They were always doing too much—invasive surgeries, invasive forms, invasive fucking medicine. 

Ilya left his room without saying another word. He wasn't coming back here, and he wasn't going to go to a fucking psychiatrist. He wasn't taking pills, end of discussion.

****

The problem was, as he continued through the season, Ilya only got worse. 

His first year on the Ottawa Centaurs was just as embarrassing as he feared. 

From the second he touched down in Ottawa, sports fans, commentators, and industry heads turned Ilya Rozanov into a laughing stock. No one could understand why he would torpedo his career like this. His agent actually begged him not to do it. Ilya was wasting his prime years on a dogshit team, ditching the Raiders just as his momentum was about to take the team to unbelievable heights.  

In the 2019 season, The Centaurs lost 63 games, out of the 82 in a regular season, averaging just under 3 goals per game. 

He kept a brave face for Shane. He had laughed at all the stupid headlines. But if Ilya was being honest with himself, the humiliation ritual of playing games, losing them badly, and then being paraded out like some kind of clown was making it very hard to live with himself. 

Back in Boston, when Ilya found it hard to live with himself, he'd just get wasted, DM a model, get them to hook him up with more famous people, and he'd piss away the sadness on partying, sex, and designer drugs. In Russia, especially if Svetlana and Sasha were in Moscow, his nights out would take on a particularly hedonistic and reckless edge, his home, his city, stretching out like a familiar  labyrinth before him.  

But Ilya couldn't do that anymore. Partying stopped being fun when every hot person he looked at reminded him of Shane. Also, Ottawa was a black hole of excitement. It was too quiet, too empty, too nothing.

So he fell back on even older habits. Habits he thought he had gotten rid of as a teenager. 

He started dreaming about his mom. 

Sometimes she would appear, like a ghost. Dreamy, nonverbal, spectral. Ilya preferred those dreams, because the alternative would be what he had been dealing with all season—

His mom, violent, angry. Grabbing Ilya, choking him with unrepentant fingers and nails. 

In the first few dreams, he would beg her to stop. Except she would never listen, and Ilya would jerk awake with the ghost of her long nails and bony fingers constricting his throat. 

But after dream four, Ilya had thought fuck it and just fought back with his entire strength. With anger he didn't understand, with hatred he felt terrified to examine, he thrashed her off of him, punching and kicking wildly. And when he finally beat her, the life would suddenly cut from her body, and she would tumble off, collapsing into the ground in a limp pile of bones. 

So he stopped sleeping. He smoked all the time. He missed Shane, all the fucking time.

Since moving to Ottawa, he saw Shane a lot more often, this was true. But it was a weird kind of mindfuck, because Ilya would go desolate stretches where he felt like his life had no meaning, and then suddenly Shane would breeze back into existence, real and laughing and here, and Ilya felt himself get swept up in the best days of his life. Waking up next to Shane. Fucking him whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. Talking to him all night, without all that artificial distance that was so necessary in their relationship before. In those brief, snatches of time, Ilya would always come away thinking—everything I did, it was worth it for him.

But then Shane would leave, and it was like he took all the happiness away with him.

The comedowns Ilya would have after a Shane visit were brutal. He would lie in bed for hours, staring at the wall, completely unable to move. Or he would look around at all the places that Shane had been, not but a few hours ago, and burst into uncontrollable tears. Every time he left or Shane left actually felt like a hole in his chest had been pried open, and despite this he would still have to go to practice, he would still have to play games, and he would fucking lose everytime. 

Ilya suspected the intensity of this sadness was not something Shane felt when he had to leave Ilya behind. 

Ilya's season had ended, while Shane charged forward into the playoffs. In the past, his communications with Ilya tended to get sporadic during this part of the year.

Except this time around, Shane called him almost every single day.

Ilya had been lying in bed, smoking indoors, when Shane FaceTimed him. Ilya let it ring as he slowly put out his cigarette, staring dully at the ceiling. He summoned the will to open up the window, so the fog could at least clear out. 

Ilya always made an effort to seem like himself, especially with his calls with Shane. When Ilya finally picked up, Ilya could tell that Shane was happy to see him. He had a lot of energy, and talked nonstop. 

While Ilya tried valiantly to summon the mask of a normal human being, Shane had been talking, for the last twenty minutes, about the plan for their first vacation together. 

Neither of them had meant to suggest it at first. The plan just came together last summer. 

Shane had been naked, twisted in bedsheets. He had his head in Ilya's lap, and he had been staring up at the ceiling with a relaxed smile on his face. They'd been talking all night when Shane brought up a Rolex commercial he did when he was nineteen, in the South of France. 

"So we had been filming all day on Pampelonne Beach," Shane had said. "And the entire point of the commercial is that I wear a loose shirt, I'm really luxurious, and I can afford vacations in France, which is why I get to wear the watch, right?" 

"I remember this one," Ilya had said, grimly. "You were on every TV screen and billboard in North America." 

Shane had smiled. "Yeah? Did I look good?" 

"I could not escape you. Everywhere I looked, there you were." Ilya mumbled. 

Shane had met Ilya's eyes. It had unnerved Ilya, because for a second it had been hard to reconcile the two realities. Looking up into Shane's eyes, suspended in the distance, while he smoked out his hotel balcony. To looking down at him now, completely and entirely his. 

"Good," Shane had said, serious. Before Ilya could respond, Shane blinked, and returned to talking to the ceiling. 

"Anyway, we had been filming all day, and they still needed three more takes of me just running down this beach with the watch on my wrist." Shane rolled his eyes. "I had been sprinting up and down the shore for like an hour when I saw this man."

Shane smiled wistfully. "He was up on one of the balconies of those really expensive beach clubs by the sea. While I was staring he shrugged off his shirt, undid his pants…  and just… took off from the balcony, in this perfect arch, like he had done it all his life. When he landed, the water barely moved. The sea had been perfect. The sun was just about to set." 

Shane hummed. "And then, he just swam away until I couldn't see him anymore."

Ilya had stayed silent until he could not. He bent down so he could meet Shane's eyes. "I don't like this story," he growled. "I don't like hearing about you staring at other men." 

Shane scoffed, and reached up to lightly tap Ilya on the cheek with his hand. "Just listen okay? Because I had spent so long staring at this random guy, I missed my cue and I had to do the whole commercial over again. The entire time they pissed this perfect day away, shouting the same instructions over and over at me, I just kept thinking—I would do anything to just unbutton my shirt right now, and disappear into the water." 

Shane had this look of far away stupor as he spoke. Ilya stayed, hunched over him, as the night continued all around them. "Anyway," Shane cleared his throat. "From that moment on, I promised myself the second I was rich enough I would vacation in the South of France. Like, a real vacation," Shane insisted, "where I would swim whenever I wanted, do whatever I wanted."

Ilya had been to the French Riviera a number of times. He had been to Cannes when he was sleeping with that actress. He used to go to Monaco every year for F1 races and car shows in his early twenties, the city flashing by him in a drug-fueled haze at night. 

"Let's go," Ilya had said, instantly. The answer seemed obvious. "Let's go after the season."

"What?" Shane laughed. But Ilya could tell with Shane—he was putting on an act of disbelief. He was overjoyed. At the thought of France, at the thought of Ilya still being with him next year. He didn't need a lot of convincing to push him over the edge. 

"Right after season ends. In the summer. We do not need to go too long. Just a week."

"What if someone sees us together?" Shane had said, but only because he had to. Because Ilya had seen it in his eyes. The happiness Shane felt overpowered his paranoia. 

He wanted this more than he was scared of getting caught. 

The second the logistics seemed even remotely possible, Shane had agreed. 

He had folded for Ilya, like a deck of cards. 

****

And yet, looking at Shane, yammering away on the phone, listening to this beautiful fantasy he was concocting, Ilya could not even begin to remember the person he was last summer, when he suggested this to his boyfriend. 

Even stranger, Shane had not brought up hockey once, and cup finals were only a month and a half away. 

Someone had abducted his boyfriend. 

Shane was tripping over his words in his excitement for his itinerary for France. He told him about this beautiful villa his mom found for them, isolated and private. He told him about the different scenic routes he had marked. Shane even told him about the Vespa he could rent, if Ilya was into that, a suggestion he announced with a magnanimous smile. 

Shane had shown him photos of paradise after paradise, and Ilya could only gaze upon them with deep, suicidal dread.

After a brutal season, it felt so out of touch with his reality. As Shane kept talking, Ilya wondered if Shane stopped discussing hockey with him because he didn't want to embarrass him. The thought made him angry, because he was angry all the fucking time these days. 

For the first time in his life, staring at Shane, who was always so lost in his own world, completely clueless, Ilya felt real, genuine resentment toward him. 

It wasn't the playful, sexually combative aggression he felt when Shane bested him in a game or a ranking. He realized, outside himself, that he genuinely did not want Shane to win the cup this year. He wanted Shane to come back to him as defeated as he was—a hateful wish that choked his lungs black. As Shane rambled on and on, taking Ilya's silence as permission to send him a link to a woman's travel blog, Ilya thought that, if he had to watch Shane lift another trophy over his head, the cup all but handed to him now that he had no real competition holding him back, Ilya was going to actually kill himself. 

Shane, pulled out of his reverie, told Ilya he had to go. Before he went, he frowned, and said that Ilya should get more sleep. Ilya replied that if he was so worried about Ilya's health, he should come over and see to its success himself. Shane shot him a rueful smile, and then the call ended. 

Ilya looked through his phone. He had 125 unanswered text messages from Svetlana. He knew it was shitty, but he didn't really feel like making her deal with him like this—it felt unfair to her. He scrolled through his 4,563 other unread text messages from various acquaintances and group chats people had shoved him into, before he got bored. 

Ilya shut off his phone. His room plunged into darkness. He fished out another cigarette, lit it, and continued smoking, staring listlessly up at his ceiling. 

When Ilya was alone like this, it was an easy conspiracy to concoct. When they were rookies, Shane, in a fit of real anger, had shouted at him, on a Las Vegas balcony: all you do is beat me. Ilya controlled Shane with a learned and easy cruelty when they were kids. He was Shane's weakness in bed, his weakness on the ice—Ilya had Shane, the way Shane was never sure he had Ilya. 

But in the end, Shane had the last laugh. After all these years, Ilya had been reduced to a dog by Shane's side. Shane got him to give up his prime years. He nestled Ilya into a perfect container, just two hours away from his house.

Ilya Rozanov didn't party, he didn't talk to people, he didn't win games—all he knew how to do was love Shane like a man possessed. 

The last thought he had, before he plunged into sleep, was that Shane ruined him. 

Ilya had another dream that night. 

He was underwater, and Shane was holding him down, drowning him. A grotesque smile twisted his features into something unrecognizable. 

Ilya was no stranger to fighting against Shane, so this time it only took Shane holding him under for a little too long for Ilya to suddenly lash out with anger, more fucking anger. With one movement he yanked Shane in, throwing him into the water as Ilya fought his way back on deck. As Shane struggled to get back onto land, Ilya, still fueled by his fit of rage, grabbed him and shoved him back under. 

He didn't let him surface for air. His arms locked in place. Shane struggled underneath his fists, but Ilya held him down with a vengeance. Shane gave one final thrash, before he stopped moving entirely. 

When Ilya pulled him up, Ilya screamed, throwing the body back into the water.

Instead of Shane, Ilya had held, in his hands, the body of his dead mother.

He woke up. He was drenched in sweat. His head was pounding. That dream was so fucking scary and weird, what the actual fuck. He ran to his bathroom and threw up. 

When he was done, with pure resignation, he picked up the doctor's note and dialed the number of the psychiatrist. 

****

The psychiatrist prescribed him antidepressants, fifteen minutes into Ilya's practiced spiel about his sordid family history. 

She explained the potential side effects. It felt like a laundry list of terrible things no normal human would want to happen to their body. Nausea. Insomnia. Headaches. Ilya's brain screeched to a stop when she then mentioned sexual dysfunction. 

"What?" Ilya accused, "like my dick won't work?" 

She emphasized that everything she listed was potential side effects, but yes. A lot of people who go on this specific antidepressant do struggle with decreased libido. Ilya immediately resisted with frantic desperation. 

"No," Ilya had snarled. "I am not turning into a fucking Barbie. I need another option." 

The psychiatrist told him she sympathized with his concern. However, given what Ilya told her, she believed antidepressants that increased serotonin, that helped with mood regulation, and that reduced PTSD symptoms were what would be most effective for him moving forward. 

Ilya actually couldn't believe his ears. PTSD? Like shellshock? What the fuck was she even talking about? He wasn't a soldier or a war criminal, why the fuck would he have shellshock? 

Ilya took the stupid pills home, and refused to open them. Ilya was already a loser. There was no way in hell he was also going to be a sexually impotent one too. The second he got home, he FaceTimed Shane. Shane picked up immediately, already almost geared up. He looked bright-eyed, the way he always did when he was about to skate onto the ice. 

"Hey," Shane said, "I can chat for a sec, but I am about to head to practice soon. What's up?" 

Ilya didn't care how long Shane had. Without saying a word to him, Ilya shoved his hand down his pants, and grabbed his dick, hard. As he jacked himself off, he ordered Shane to go to the bathroom. 

Shane's blush brought out his freckles. The hunger Ilya felt when he saw Shane's face threatened to consume him. Without another word, Shane headed to the bathroom. He locked the door behind him. 

Ilya ordered Shane to touch himself. Shane listened. He told him to beg for it. Shane listened. Ilya told him to tell him how much he needed it. Shane listened. He told Shane to tell him how much he loved being Ilya's whore. 

Shane listened, gasping in desperation, and came immediately after. Ilya followed shortly. 

Shane rested there for a moment, head pressed up against the bathroom door. Watching him, with his lips parted, face red, Ilya missed him so much it felt like an actual gaping hole in his chest. 

He missed how hot Shane got after sex. Now that he finished, everything in his house felt cold. 

Instead, Shane gave him a fond smile, and kissed the camera. "I love you," Shane said, easily. Ilya, in a daze, repeated it back to him. 

Shane hung up. 

The emotional plunge after his orgasm was sudden and debilitating. 

The second Shane ended the call, Ilya burst into tears. He could not stop crying—it was fucking terrifying. The emotional meltdown went on for hours, with Ilya as its only witness. Every negative emotion hit him all at once. Shame, humiliation, guilt, sadness. 

When he came up for air, the sun had set. As his breaths finally slowed, his tears sticky against his face, he decided to finally give himself a break by looking at his phone. 

Shane had sent him a photo. It was a picture of the villa they would be staying at. It was beautiful. It had been followed up with another text, five minutes after. 

"miss you love you cant wait to see you!!!!!" with a million red heart emojis that followed. 

The surge of happiness he felt was as brief as the moment it took to turn his phone back off. 

He took the stupid pills the next morning.

****

The Metros win the 2019 Stanley Cup. Shane Hollander ended the season accomplishing the impossible—an all-time record of 71 goals and 190 points scored in a season. 

This year, the pundit commentary is now downright worshipful. Everyone says he's possibly the greatest hockey player in recent history. The game just ended, and there are already highlight reels of Shane's plays looping on most major sports networks. Ilya watches, far away from himself, as Shane lifts the cup over his head, for now the fourth fucking time in less than a decade, on his TV screen. Dynasty, Hollander, Dynasty, Hollander keeps getting repeated, over and over, until Ilya shuts TV off with a frustrated yell, throwing the remote hard against the sofa cushions. 

To make matters worse, Shane doesn't mention the win once when he picks Ilya up from Ottawa. 

The plan is to stay at Shane's cabin for a few days before they set off for France. Shane surprises Ilya with a deep, inappropriate kiss. When they take off for the road, he's humming along to the radio, fingers tapping along to the beat. 

There's no gloating, there's no smugness, no bragging. It's like the win didn't even happen. 

Five years ago, if Shane scored over 70 goals in a season, and Ilya didn't, Ilya would've never heard the end of it. If Shane won the cup, and Ilya didn't even make the fucking playoffs, Ilya would've never heard the end of it. 

Now, the only thing Shane wants to talk about is France, and wineries, and the science behind growing the perfect grape. 

He cuts harshly into Shane's rant about the French wine classification system. 

"New record for Shane Hollander," Ilya says, and he attempts to keep his voice light, but instead it just comes out mean and resentful. "How exciting." 

Shane doesn't look away from the road. "Oh, yeah," Shane shrugs, "Well, it's pretty easy to break records when the other teams suck so bad this year," he says, bluntly. 

Ilya's included. 

"What? Getting bored?" Ilya's tone feels like a cruel mockery of the playful dance they did when they were teenagers. He makes no effort to hide his malice. "Need someone to knock you off your throne?"

But unlike the Shane he knew in his youth, the Shane in front of him now doesn't take Ilya's bait. "Well," Shane says, eyes not leaving the road. He considers the question seriously. "At least there's some decent competition next year. The rookies next season look really promising. Have you seen the stats on draft pick number one this year? The kid from McGill? Actually unreal," Ilya bristles. He clenches his jaw, as Shane drones on.

"Not to mention, Pittsburgh's center finally recovered, so they are definitely going to be back in the game in a big way. New York too, but well." Shane smirks to himself. "I mean, it's New York. How hard can they really be?" 

The arrogant spark in Shane's eye seems alien compared to the serious boy Ilya met almost ten years ago. Now, Shane wears his confidence on his sleeve. He lets himself get cocky. He lets himself brag about his accomplishments. It's a bad habit he definitely picked up from Ilya. 

There is no mention of Ottawa. There is no mention of Ilya. 

"Unless Ottawa destroys you all next year," Ilya tries to joke. 

Shane looks over. He gives him a diplomatic smile. "Sure," he says brightly. 

And leaves it at that. 

Ilya is… fine, on the antidepressants. Not great, but better. He doesn't like how they make his emotions feel like one flat line, but at least sleeping and getting out of bed has gotten easier. He also stopped dreaming—thank fuck. More importantly, he finally stopped crying all the time. 

So he keeps taking them. 

Sure, it was exactly as the doctor says—his dick didn't really work. But Ilya just figured that the issue would just resolve itself the second he saw Shane again. It was a biological impossibility for Ilya Rozanov not to get hard around Shane Hollander.

Unfortunately for Ilya, his dick has managed to defy biology. 

Not even the sight of Shane, on his knees, eyes wide and reverent as he takes him into his perfect fucking mouth, is getting him hard. 

Shane's been down there for twenty minutes. He tries to continue, not saying anything, trying to pretend that everything's normal, when Ilya finally slams his fist against the wall in frustration, and pulls Shane off his dick. 

"It's okay!" Shane says, immediately, which only makes Ilya feel even worse. "It's not a big deal." Shane, on the other hand, is rock hard. But even though he is visibly so turned on, in classic Shane Hollander fashion he valiantly maintains decorum. "It happens to everyone," he tilts his head to the side, "If you want we can stop—" 

"Get on the floor," Ilya snarls. "On your hands and knees." 

Shane scrambles to do what Ilya says. Ilya grabs his hips, yanks him closer. He gives his ass a smack, watching as his stretchmarks redden with the pressure. Not even Shane's hole in his face, his perfect butt cherry red, is getting him hard either. Ilya buries the feeling deep inside of him, as he eats Shane out, pulling him in every time he tries to squirm away from the pleasure. When Shane's trembling, looking over his shoulder with tears in his eyes, begging Ilya to let him come, Ilya shoves his face back into Shane, enjoying the wetness and the lack of eye contact as he then reaches around and jerks Shane off, stuffing him full of his tongue as Shane fucks his hand. 

When Shane finishes, he flips over and Ilya sees he has a rug burn all over the side of his face, and all over his knees. 

The two of them lay there. Shane stares up at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath. Ilya immediately buries his face into Shane's chest, unwilling to look him in the eye. His heart at least purrs to life when Shane, in an unconscious motion, starts stroking Ilya's hair. 

"Hey," Shane asks. Ilya doesn't look up. "Are you okay?" 

"Great," Ilya mumbles, "Thanks." 

"Do you…" Shane pets Ilya's head, as if anticipating a resistance he needs to soothe, "Do you want to talk about it?" 

"Nothing to talk about," Ilya says, easily. "One of those days." 

This makes Shane tense, "One of?" Shane asks, catching onto Ilya's English like a hawk. "Has this been happening a lot?" Shane's frown deepens, "This never happened before." 

Ilya decides this line of questioning is a fucking nightmare, and he's changing the topic. "Who cares," Ilya lifts his head up, shooting him one of his trademark smirks that makes people of all genders furious and hopelessly turned on in equal measure. Shane, like a mark, falls for his trick easily, "I fucking rocked your world." 

Shane laughs. Ilya's heart lifts when he sees Shane's deciding to let this go, "Oh, you always do," Shane says. He starts to stand up. "Does the rockstar want to take a shower?" 

Showering together usually leads to round two, and Ilya really doesn't want them to try and have sex again. He definitely can't explain away his dick not working twice in a row. So he rolls off Shane, and stretches his arms high above his head. Shane tilts his head to look over him appreciatively. 

"I want to unpack, clean up," Ilya lies, badly but easily. Shane raises an eyebrow. 

"You want to clean up?" Shane asks, doubtfully. 

Ilya huffs. "Yes. My boyfriend is a good influence. I want to tidy the house. You turned me into a nice Orthodox housewife." He blinks up at him from under his lashes, and Shane rolls his eyes. 

"Okay, whatever weirdo. Are you cool with burgers tonight?" Shane starts heading for the bathroom. 

"I ate your burger!" Ilya shouts, to Shane's retreating back. Shane flips him the finger. "I love you!" he says. 

"Love you too!" Shane says, distantly. He closes the bathroom door. 

Ilya tosses the rug into the wash. For good measure, he picks up Shane's clothes, shrugs his own off, and tosses them in too. Ilya does as he promised, which is to unpack a little, when he sees his bottle of antidepressants, buried deep into his duffel bag. 

Ilya stares at it, traces the label. 

He should tell Shane. He can't bring himself to tell Shane. 

Ilya hears the water stop. When Shane isn't too busy getting fucked by Ilya, he showers like he's in a locker room with nineteen other men. Ilya doesn't have long before he comes out. 

So Ilya opens the pill bottle. He looks around the room, finds Kleenex on the side dresser. He stuffs as many tissues as he can into the opening, so that when he closes it and shakes it, the bottle makes no noise. He then takes three pairs of socks, and starts rolling them on top of the offending object. Once, twice, three times, four times. Ilya stares at this cloth ball he's made in his hand, tosses it around. Satisfied, he stuffs everything back into his duffle bag. 

Shane walks in, completely naked. He's using a towel to wipe his hair clean, and he smells so fucking good, the second he steps in. He smells like summer. He looks relaxed, surrounded by his home, the stress of yet another season behind him. 

Ilya smiles at him helplessly. He bounds over to wrap his arms around Shane's waist. Shane doesn't even complain that Ilya hasn't showered yet. Ilya leans in, kisses him deeply. His dick still doesn't react, but Shane's kissing him back anyway. The two of them tangle in each other, Ilya just enjoying the sensation of Shane tracing his fingers softly across his back, Ilya tangling his hands into his boyfriend's hair. 

Shane breaks away, with a gleeful look on his face. "It's going to be hot out tonight. We should get drunk off like six beers and go swimming." 

Ilya gives Shane's lips an obnoxious lick, which has him yelping, pushing away from Ilya even as Ilya traps him in his arms. "A perfect night," Ilya says, against his mouth. 

****

Except Ilya's dick keeps not fucking working. 

Day one, Shane doesn't try to sleep with him again. They go swimming, as promised they get drunk off a couple beers. The medication inebriates Ilya faster. Usually they'd try to fuck on the deck. Except Shane just keeps kissing him, the summer night colored only by their stifled laughter. They alternate between that and floating on their backs, staring up at the stars. Ilya, forgetting all his nightmares, feels a peace so total and foreign, that when he glances over at Shane, also bobbing along on his back, he thinks:

I would sacrifice anything for him. 

But then day two he wakes up. Shane's wrapped tightly against his back. Even though the sun is high in the sky, Shane is still dead to the world, breathing softly against Ilya's neck. 

Usually the sight would send his heart singing. Instead he feels totally numb. 

His brain hasn't caught up to the fact that he's supposed to be happy now. They are off-season. Shane's here. He will be here today, tomorrow, and however many days after that. They will be going to France together. It's romantic. It feels eternal.

So why the fuck does he still feel so fucking terrible? 

Ilya groans, quietly in frustration. Shane's dick is poking into his back. Ilya looks down, and he's still fucking soft. This only makes his anger with himself even worse. As silently as he can, he pads over to his duffle bag. He grabs his sock ball, and heads to the bathroom. He closes the door behind him. He unrolls everything. The four layers of socks, the tissues he's stuffed into the bottle. He takes his usual dosage. 

He crawls back into bed. He still feels underwater. The second he lies down, Shane wraps his arms around him again, pulling him in with a huff, his eyes still closed. When they settle back into each other, Shane starts sleepily pressing kisses to Ilya's neck, making small noises as he does. He starts grinding against Ilya's back, and Ilya's heart sinks. 

Shane reaches down, palms Ilya's flaccid dick. He stills. 

Jesus fucking Christ. 

So Ilya does the entire dance again. He turns around, and sees Shane's eyes are open, a little confused. He sees something in Ilya's face, and confusion turns into concern. Ilya doesn't want to consider the implications of Shane being able to see his sadness on him, so he flips Shane over, and he fucks him with everything that isn't his dick. When Shane comes, gasping and clenching onto Ilya's hair, Ilya tries to get up, maybe get the day started so they can leave the bed. 

Except Shane immediately tries to reciprocate, which Ilya shuts down a lot less gracefully than the day before. 

"I told you to not fucking worry about it," Ilya snaps. 

Shane blinks up at him, confused. "I like making you feel good," Shane says. He's still drunk after his orgasm. He stares up at Ilya, searching. "I want to make you feel good." 

Ilya can't take this. "I don't need you to." 

Wrong thing to say. Shane has moved on from concern to hurt. "Did I do something wrong?" Shane asks. 

Fuck. How the fuck can he diffuse this? Without another word, he buries his face in Shane's neck, centering himself on his boyfriend's smell, sleepy and sweet in the morning. Shane strokes his back, hesitantly, and Ilya melts into the touch. 

"Hey," Shane tries again. Ilya tenses up in Shane's arms. "I'm going to ask you again," Shane says, voice getting stronger, "Are you okay?" 

Of course he's okay. He's here with his boyfriend and he's in love. Everything's great. Shane visibly doesn't believe him, but once again he does not press the issue. 

Shane doesn't try to sleep with him again all day.

Then day three rolls around.

The same fucking problem. 

Ilya tries to brush it off again, but when he does, instead of being concerned, or understanding, Shane's mad. 

Ilya can understand. It had been such a nice day. They'd driven up into the mountains, and Ilya had filled the car with sudden, uproarious laughter when he found, in Shane's car drawer, a pair of binoculars and a field guide for wildlife in the area, tucked into a random compartment.

Shane had seemed embarrassed at first. He started with an excuse—"Come on! I forgot that was even in there." But then Shane looked at the guide again, back at Ilya, and shrugged. "Well, since we are here anyway—" 

He swerved onto a side road, and to Ilya's wonder, the two of them drove around, as mountains rolled by them. Shane's car slowed to a leisurely crawl as Shane started pointing out various animals native to the region, each more strange and majestic than the last. Sometimes he even leaned over, and flipped to the correct page in the field guide in Ilya's lap, so he could follow along. 

Ilya gasped when they'd driven out by the water, and he spotted a big, blue bird almost half their height, its proud head rising far above the waterline. 

Shane laughed. "Of course you like the Blue Heron. They are such conniving assholes." 

Ilya watched as the conniving asshole glanced at the two of them. The movement was so delicate, yet the severity of its yellow eyes made it look sharp and predatory. Ilya stared at the bird, his heart singing with something unidentifiable, as the heron shot Ilya a look, and without another sound, spread its wings, sharper and bluer than the water it nested on, and took off for the sky. 

It was dark when they finally pulled into the cottage. They'd been driving all day. Ilya barely made it into the house before Shane pressed him up against the wall, and kissed him. 

Ilya lets himself sink into the feeling of Shane dragging his hands over his body, his lips against his, when suddenly, Shane reaches down to try and touch him.

Only to find Ilya completely unresponsive, again. 

This time, Ilya actually shoves Shane away from him with his full strength. He's startled, embarrassed, and angry. Shane stumbles and just barely manages to catch himself on the opposite wall. He responds to this about as poorly as can be expected. 

"No, I'm done," Shane finally snaps. Ilya's heart breaks at the words. "No more excuses." He looks beyond angry. "You've been hiding something from me for the past three days. Tell me the truth right  now—why don't you want me to touch you?" 

Ilya struggles to come up with a good enough excuse. "Is nothing—" he starts to say. 

But Shane jumps in with viciousness. He's clearly been a lot more upset about this than he had let on.  "Stop lying to me." He glares at him. "You are really bad at it." 

Ilya, vindictively, thinks that he's been lying to Shane pretty well for the entire season. 

"Maybe I don't want it as bad as you," Ilya drawls. His plasticky mask of arrogance draws over him like protective gear. "You are so fucking desperate for it all the fucking time." 

Shane flushes, but not in a sexy way. He just seems hurt and embarrassed. 

"You know how much I need you," Shane says, shaky yet building in anger, "So, it's really fucking shitty when you make me feel stupid for feeling that way by lying to me and pushing me away." 

"Nothing to tell," Ilya lies, easily. Shane's hurt does not move him. He feels numb to it. His cruelty, passed down to him through the Rozanov line, fashions itself easily onto Shane now. 

Ilya's next words are spiteful. "You are overreacting. Sometimes I find you unfuckable. Get over it." 

There's a beat when his attack lands. 

Then Shane bursts into tears. 

Shane cries like the action surprises him every time. He's not like Ilya. He doesn't give himself into the emotion. His body is clenched tightly, like he's trying to brace himself away from hurt.

"Um," Shane says, in a wobbly voice. "Okay." Shane looks away, and he quickly wipes his tears with the heel of his hand, as if trying to hide them from view from Ilya. "I'm…" Shane's eyes dart wildly around, like a hurt animal, trying to find a place to retreat. "I'm going to go somewhere else. I want to be alone right now." 

"Okay," Ilya says, outside himself, "I can leave. I can go back to Ottawa."

When Ilya says this, a horrible noise rips itself out of Shane's throat. Then, without warning, Shane grabs a decorative pillow off the couch, and throws it as hard as he possibly can at Ilya's head. Ilya ducks just in time, but the pillow collides into a lamp behind him, and sends it crashing to the floor, shattered glass flying everywhere. 

"What the fuck—" Ilya starts, but when he turns to face Shane again—

Shane's eyes are feral with rage. 

"You are such a fucking asshole!" Shane actually shouts. Ilya's stunned. He's never seen Shane this mad before. He actually looks out of control. "How the fuck are you going to get back to Ottawa huh? I fucking drove you here!" Shane laughs, and it sounds maniacal. "Yeah, you heard me, you are trapped here Rozanov! You can't go anywhere! You want to leave so fucking bad? Good luck getting an Uber to pick you up in the middle of fucking nowhere!" 

When Shane finishes, he huffs deep, hungry breaths, in an attempt to regain some semblance of calm. He runs a hand through his hair, wide-eyed and upset, throat clenching and unclenching in panic. 

Ilya blinks, wordless. He stands frozen in place. 

"Stay in any of the four bedrooms I have in my massive house, and leave me alone." Shane demands, final. 

And with that, Shane puts on his jacket, and without even looking back he heads for the backyard, shutting the door behind him. 

Leaving Ilya alone in his massive house.

Ilya gets the broom from the kitchen, and the dustpan. He sweeps up the broken glass from the lamp Shane destroyed. He picks up the pillow, sets it back into place. He cleans up the best he can so Shane Hollander's living room can go back to normal. 

He sits down on the sofa, and just stares at nothing for an hour. His brain stays nice and empty, so the time flies by like it's nothing. There's no movement from Shane either, so there's nothing to distract Ilya from the total silence that descends upon the home. 

Then, the anger, directed entirely at himself, begins at around hour two. 

You are ruining his life. You sick fuck. You say you love him, but you can't even fuck him properly. Shane says he loves you, but you give him nothing to love. You're bad at sex. Bad at love. Bad at talking. Bad at hockey. You are mean. You are distant. You lash out, and you know exactly where to make it hurt.

You didn't get that from your mom. That's all your piece-of-shit dad. You act more like him every single day. Maybe one day you'll die like him. On second thought, you have too much pain inside you to die old. So maybe you'll actually die like your mom—

His brain does this on a loop. Over and over and over. And Ilya just sits and takes it. Because he's right. Who knows him better than himself?

When the door to the house opens again, Ilya jumps. He checks the time. It's midnight. 

That means Ilya has been sitting on this couch for three hours. Just staring at nothing, muttering hatred to himself in Russian. 

Jesus Christ. What the hell is wrong with him?

Shane reappears in the living room. His eyes are a little red, but he's not crying anymore. Ilya turns to him, and tries not to look too pleading. The two of them stare at each other, not saying a single word.

Shane's face shutters, and he starts heading toward the main bedroom, with no clear instruction whether Ilya is allowed to join him. 

"I'm on medication." Ilya blurts out. 

The confession falls like an anvil between the two of them. 

Shane still looks upset, but he stops walking away. He even comes closer, moving over to the couch, sitting on the opposite end of the sofa from Ilya. 

"Medication?" Shane asks. "Like, for an injury?"

"For my brain, Hollander," Ilya snaps. Shane can be really dense sometimes. "I fucked up on a stupid form, so team doctor makes me go to other quack doctor, some pill pusher who thinks I have shellshock or whatever you call it in North America—"

Shane looks horrified, which is great, because Ilya already regrets telling him any of this. "PTSD?" Shane says, far away from himself. 

"PTSD, and other stuff too. They have no fucking clue, I can tell. Most of time they are scared I'm so sad I kill myself," Ilya barks out a humorless laugh, that makes the horror in Shane's face more severe. "Anyway," Ilya says, "So I take pills for a month." He looks at Shane now. "And one of the side effects is total poison to my dick, so." 

"Ilya," Shane says, voice barely above a whisper. Yeah, Shane looks like he's going to be sick. This was exactly what Ilya was afraid of. "Back up," Shane says. "What… what form?" 

"You know," Ilya waves his hands. "Do you find it hard to get out of bed every morning? Do you feel disconnected from others? Do you feel down, depressed, or hopeless some of the days, few of the days, or all of the days—" 

"Well?" he asks. "Do you?" 

Ilya meets Shane's eyes for a long moment. "I do." Ilya confesses. "Yeah." 

Shane nods to himself. He stares down at his hands for a while. When he looks up his brown eyes are all shiny and bright. 

Shane sucks in a shaky breath. "For how long?" 

Ilya grits his teeth. This is fucking painful. "All year."

Shane curls in on himself. He hides his face in his hands, and stays like that for a really long time. It is a similar stance to the one Shane took when he got overwhelmed telling his parents he's gay. 

No one says anything. Ilya just stares at the trembling line of Shane's back as he tries to calm down. 

Shane suddenly jerks back up. Ilya jumps. 

"Can we—" Instead of finishing his sentence, Shane tentatively holds his arms out. 

It's like Ilya's strings have been cut. 

Ilya crashes into him, burying his face into Shane's chest. Shane wraps himself around Ilya protectively, as Ilya grabs fistfuls of Shane's shirt, his jacket, both of which still smell like firewood, and sucks him in, with hungry, shaky breaths. 

"I know," Ilya says, into Shane's shirt. "I know I should have told you." 

"I—" Shane doesn't argue with that. But Ilya just grabs him tighter, so Ilya feels, quite literally, the remains of Shane's anger melt away from him. "Ilya," Shane says, and his name feels like a lance through his heart, every single time. "Can you please tell me what's wrong?" 

"I don't know," Ilya says, except of course he knows. He made a choice that he thought would make him happy, and instead it is making him miserable. 

Shane swallows, and Ilya can feel his boyfriend's heart beat faster at these next words. "It's Ottawa, isn't it?" Shane says, voice hollow. 

Yes. No. I don't know. "I want to be with you," Ilya says instead, shoving his face deeper into Shane's shirt. He says this part quieter. "You are the only thing I look forward to." 

Shane doesn't respond. 

Last season, after Montreal knocked Boston out of the running for the cup, Shane had called Ilya a "winner at heart." When Ilya confessed his fears about The Centaurs, Shane reassured him that, no matter what, Ilya would always find his way to triumph. 

Ilya finds himself at a crossroads. He doesn't feel like a winner. He feels like his heart is made of poison. But Shane claims to know him. So who's right? Him or Shane?

Shane doesn't say anything else. Ilya doesn't dare look up, but Ilya suspects he's tired and overwhelmed by everything that happened tonight, so verbally he's checked out. He just keeps comforting Ilya, combing his hair even though Ilya called him unfuckable. They stay like that for another hour. 

Ilya feels Shane's breathing slow, like he's about to drift off to sleep. Ilya's wondering if he should try to carry Shane to the main bedroom, and whether he's invited to sleep with him, when Shane speaks up again. 

"We don't need to have sex, if you don't want to." Shane says, sleepily. 

Ilya jerks up, self-hatred ramping back, cyclical like a wave. 

Ilya knows Shane likes sex. Scratch that, Shane is obsessed with sex. Good sex helps him play better and it helps his brain work better. So Ilya doesn't know why Shane's lying now. He's about to snap, to tell Shane he doesn't need his pity, but Shane keeps talking. 

 "We can kiss," Shane smiles, dreamily, eyes closing. "I love kissing you." 

With his last stroke on consciousness, Shane says, into the night, "Kissing you feels as good as sex." 

And then Shane passes out, right there, on the couch, leaving Ilya breathless.

The two of them fall asleep on the couch, wrapped up in each other, for the entire night. 

****

They leave for France in a day. When Ilya wakes up, Shane is cooking breakfast, and when he sees Ilya pad in he stabs his spatula in his direction, without even looking up. 

"Your meds, do you like them? Do you think they help?" Shane asks. No hello, no good morning. He has two omelets running on two pans. This had clearly been weighing on him since he woke up. 

Ilya could tell that Shane still thought Ottawa was too much of an emotional landmine to try to address, so his brain has instead fixated on the science, the tangible. The medication.

Ilya thinks about it. When he wanted to kill himself, yeah, maybe they helped a little. But most of the time they are just fine. 

Ilya doesn't want to settle for fine. He wants to fuck his boyfriend and be happy and be in love. "Sometimes," Ilya settles on. 

"How do they help?" Shane asks. He turns back toward the stove, and in one smooth motion flips their omelets over. 

Fuck, is this how it is going to be the entire summer? Shane interrogating him and treating him like broken goods?

"When I took them I didn't want to kill myself," Ilya snaps.

Shane freezes, entirely. Ilya's heart sinks. He can tell Shane feels in over his head with what Ilya confessed to him last night. 

So Ilya does him a favor and keeps talking. "But they also make me feel like I have no emotions," Ilya says, which is the truth. "I feel numb and I am not a numb person." 

When Shane turns around his face finally softens into understanding, "You've been taking them for a little under a month right? You should stay with your current prescription until we find you another doctor. One you trust better." 

Ilya tenses up. We? "You are not finding me shit," Ilya snaps. 

"Oh come on," Shane shoots back. "We have the same insurance under the league, and I've lived in Ottawa all my life. We can find you a Russian-speaking psychologist, and we can get you a better psychiatrist, since you think your current one is like… weird? Or whatever? You don't trust her." 

Ilya realizes with horror that Shane's trying to manage him, like he's just one of many tasks that Shane needs to shift around in his head until the pieces fit together and he can put him away. "Are you going to be like this the entire time?" Ilya snaps. His anger comes to him in full force. "I do not tell you for you to treat me like I am a fucking invalid. Is my problem, I can find my own fucking doctor—" 

Shane slams the spatula on the counter. Bits of egg go flying everywhere. He whips around, eyes burning with the residual anger that didn't resolve itself yesterday. "I am your boyfriend!" Shane raises his voice. "I am your fucking boyfriend and you hid from me that you spent the entire year wanting to kill yourself! How can you do that to me?!" 

This effectively shocks the two of them into silence. Ilya stares at Shane, Shane stares at Ilya. Shane whips back around, grumbling to himself, and cuts the heat off the omelets. "Come on," Shane says, not making eye contact with him, as he plates their breakfasts. He slides the one with yolks, butter, and bacon over to Ilya. "We can talk about this later okay? Let's just eat." 

They eat in complete silence. Ilya finishes first. He shoves the dish into the sink, with the intention of washing it later. Instead, he goes back up to the main bedroom. He looks at the ridiculous sockball he made, and decides to just unravel it, freeing his medication out into the open. 

He takes his dosage, swigging it back with old tea he left on the dresser. He brushes his teeth, gets ready for the morning. He comes back to Shane. 

Shane looks sheepish. He did all their dishes. 

"Look," Shane says, calmer. "Can I just say something?"

Ilya stays quiet. Shane takes this as his cue to continue. 

"I came on way too strong," Shane says, talking to the countertop, not meeting Ilya's eye. "This is something you seem to have been dealing for a while, so I guess the right thing to do would be to trust you to figure it out."

Ilya still doesn't say anything. He just keeps staring at Shane.

"I should've noticed," Shane says, voice hard. He's still staring at the countertop. "I never checked in as seriously as I should have. You made a big change for us. It would've been obvious to just about anyone else."

If there's one thing Ilya cannot abide by, it is Shane flagellating himself for things that don't need to be his fault. "Blaming yourself is useless behavior, Hollander," he says flatly. "And unattractive." 

Shane's head jerks up, his eyes finally meeting Ilya's. "You, keeping something like this from me, it can actually never happen again," his hands ball into tight fists. "You have to tell me and you have to let me help, even if you think I'm really bad at it, okay? You have to talk to me or else I—" Shane rubs his face with his hands, frustrated, "Fuck like, I am not losing you, do you get me? I actually wouldn't be able to survive it." 

Ilya falls quiet. After a while, he nods, dumbly. "I understand." 

"Okay," Shane nods too. Mostly to himself. "Okay good." His face spreads into a smile. "Wanna go swimming?" 

The conversation about Ilya's shitty brain gets tabled, just like that. They spend another day together, in a dreamlike bliss. Shane kisses him languidly in the water while they swim, letting out soft keening sounds whenever Ilya cups the back of his head, caresses his cheek, to bring him in closer. 

Shane always kissed him like he was starving for it. 

Shane gets hard, but he stops him when Ilya reaches down to take care of it for him. "Wait," Shane murmurs. But it seems like he's forgotten what he had to say, because Shane can't help but duck back in to keep kissing him, lips soft and tangy from the lakewater. Ilya tries to palm him again but Shane's firm, "No come on," Shane whines, against his lips, "Let's just keep kissing." 

"You are hard," Ilya insists, a little put out. Shane doesn't need to keep treating him with kid gloves. Ilya's good at sex. Shane should just reap the benefits. 

"Yeah, well," Shane says, before kissing Ilya again.  "That's just my body reacting to you. I want to keep kissing you. I don't want to have sex," Shane hums, diving back in. Ilya brings him closer with a strong hand cupping his jaw, and Shane follows like he's under Ilya's thrall. Ilya catches Shane's bottom lip, a little rough when he pulls on it a little, but quickly soothes it with a lighter kiss, and then a gentle press of tongue. 

"God, I love kissing you," Shane murmurs, drunk against his lips. 

His boyfriend is so fucking weird. Ilya keeps kissing him, even though he's unsure if Shane is using mind tricks to get him to stop thinking about his broken dick. Either way, Ilya tilts Shane's head back with a yank, so his lips can invite more of Ilya's tongue.  

They spend the entire day like that. When they are sick of the water, they climb up onto the deck, where Ilya pushes Shane onto his back, so they can keep making out in the sun. After a while Shane insists on re-upping their sunscreen, so Shane does that while spreading kisses down Ilya's neck, into the crown of Ilya's wet hair. Ilya feels showered by affection when he decides to push Shane up back against the dock and kiss him again. 

It's late afternoon when Shane bobs up to Ilya in the water. 

Ilya had been sitting out on the dock, just watching his feet move under the ministrations of the lake. He wasn't thinking about anything in particular. Maybe about how beautiful Shane is, but that thought is so commonplace Ilya doesn't register it as sentience anymore. Shane swims up to him, folding his arms and propping his chin on top of the dock as he floats in the water. 

There's a flash where Ilya remembers his dream, the one where he hurts Shane. But the Shane out in front of him looks so unfamiliar to the monster Ilya created in his head that Ilya just feels silly for even thinking about it.

There's a glint in his boyfriend's eye. "Can I try something?" 

"What?" Ilya asks. He leans back lazily on his forearms, watching as Shane's freckled face pokes up above the water, floating between Ilya's legs. 

"Can I keep your cock in my mouth until you get hard?" 

Ilya jolts up. Can he?! The disorientation is only made more intense when his dick, his stupid fucking dick, suddenly jumps up in interest, even as Ilya's even stupider brain tells him what if you never get hard? Will Shane just suck your dick forever? 

"Huh," Shane smiles, teasingly, "I think you like that idea." 

"Like, now?" Ilya chokes. 

Shane shrugs. "Now, whenever," his eyes lower. "Just tell me and I'll do it." 

Ilya grips the side of the dock. When he returns to himself, he looks at Shane with heat in his eyes, "I want you on the bed."

Shane pulls himself out of the water. Before he gets up all the way, Ilya yanks his boyfriend into his lap to kiss him again, since Shane likes it so much. Because Ilya feels like showing off, as Shane's lips melt into his mouth Ilya stands up and swings Shane up into his arms, carrying him bridal style. 

Ilya thinks Shane's going to make some stupid joke about being treated like "one of Ilya's girls." Instead Shane stares up at Ilya with wide, adoring eyes, fingers caressing the side of his neck as Ilya carries them into the bedroom. Ilya wonders if Shane will always look at him like this. A stupider part of him wonders if Shane would ever want to get married. 

Before they lie down Shane spreads two towels onto the bed, methodically folding the corners down. With that out of the way, they keep kissing. Shane rolls so he's on top, but his back still arches sweetly into Ilya's touch, letting himself get pulled and pushed around so Ilya can angle their lips even closer, even hotter. 

Shane looks down at him with bright, brown eyes, as he breaks them apart to kiss down Ilya's body. Shane is quiet and reverent, and Ilya feels his eyes slide shut, as his head falls back. 

Ilya starts breathing harder as Shane peppers open-mouthed kisses along his stomach, the dip of his waist, his inner thighs. 

The entire time he's stroking the outer curve of Ilya's ass, so that anytime Ilya arches up into Shane's touch, Shane draws circles along his skin, like he's calming him. 

Shane kisses the tip of his dick. Ilya squirms, starting to feel himself tense up. But then he feels Shane's sweeping touch again, drawing his hands along Ilya's outer thighs, his hips, his calves. Shane repeats the motion, as if he's petting Ilya to sleep, when he takes his dick in with a tentative lick. 

Ilya groans. His eyes flutter until they are half-closed. He feels sensitive. 

Shane works more of Ilya's dick into his mouth, his pink lips stretched around him. Shane looks up at him, his eyes big and obedient, as if telling Ilya to use him the way he's offering to be used. The sight makes Ilya grit his teeth. He curses in Russian, but says the next part in English, for Shane to hear:

"You're perfect."

Shane moans, pleased, and the vibrations make Ilya's dick stir. 

Ilya's not quite sure what to call what he is feeling. Maybe it is not quite sexual pleasure, but it's pleasure nonetheless. In fact, Ilya feels overcome by it. Every sensation Ilya can possibly feel is being managed by Shane—his touch calms him, his tongue brings him in closer, his smell, outdoorsy and floral, lulling Ilya into a head-numbing sensation of quiet arousal that buzzes just below his skin—like the slow crawl of a fever.

Ilya doesn't think he falls asleep. He's a gentleman like that. He would never fall asleep with a beautiful boy's lips wrapped around his dick. But it feels like he's fading in and out of consciousness a little, as he lets the sensation of Shane slowly but methodically work his dick out of stillness. Every time Ilya comes back to himself, he's a little bit harder, and Shane is always here, with his face in his lap, eyes closed, long lashes sweeping across his cheekbones as he laps at his cock, tightening the suction with a teasing pull of lips before letting go again when Ilya groans back into wakefulness. 

"You are so good to me," Ilya murmurs. Shane's eyes flit open, lidded. He looks overwrought with pleasure, just from getting to keep Ilya's dick in his mouth. The sight gets Ilya even more aroused, as Ilya's head falls back against the bed. The next part is in Russian: "You're so good to me and it fucking ruins me everytime." 

Shane looks at Ilya, and he moans, desperately, as Ilya's words lance through him. The vibrations are what it takes for Ilya's dick, for the first time in a month, to finally get hard. 

"Holy shit," Ilya curses. Shane's lips open all the way as he feels it, Ilya's dick standing to attention in his mouth. Ilya tries to thrust, slowly at first, but then Shane presses his hand insistently against Ilya's thigh, as if pushing him to move faster, so Ilya gives Shane exactly what he wants, which is exactly what Ilya wants. To fuck his mouth, to fuck his throat, since he warmed it up so nicely for Ilya. 

Ilya is suddenly so hard, and the head rush it gives him makes him laugh. He actually can't believe it. Shane Hollander fixed his dick. He grabs Shane's hair, hard, and Shane moans, wildly when he does, as Ilya shoves him deeper, deeper onto his cock. 

"You fucking love it," Ilya groans, "Fuck you can't get enough can you?" 

Shane nods his head, insistently. He sucks Ilya's dick harder, tongue pulling him in desperately. Shane's lips are red and covered in spit, and Ilya's done with having his eyes closed—he's going to make sure he's here to see the entire fucking thing. He's going to watch as he fucks Shane's mouth, he's going to watch as tears pool in his eyes, as he takes too much in at once. He's going to watch as spit starts to drool out of the side of his mouth, messy and desperate as Shane closes his eyes and moans, loud and wanton, at the feeling of Ilya's dick hitting the back of his throat. 

Ilya comes, hard, down Shane's throat, and he shouts. "I love you," Ilya says, desperate, "I love you, holy fuck, I love you—" 

He finally finishes, and when he does he falls back onto the bed, feeling dazed. 

After a while, Shane gets up, and crawls over to Ilya, burrowing his face into Ilya's chest. Ilya's arms immediately wrap around him, pulling him close, petting his hair.

Into his ear, Ilya whispers, "What about you?" 

Shane blushes, and mumbles something into his chest. Ilya frowns, and nudges him up, so he can hear him. 

"I came already," Shane says, in a small voice. When Ilya hears this he smiles helplessly. After all these years, Shane's still so shy about how much he loves sucking Ilya's dick. 

It's okay. Shane ruined Ilya. He can never have sex with someone who isn't Shane ever again. Ilya has hooked up with upwards a hundred people, yet only Shane's ever wanted him like this. With desperation. A red desire. 

Ilya kisses Shane again, and Shane whines because his lips are so sensitive—rubbed raw, red,  and full. When Ilya strokes his cheeks, he feels tear marks drying against the sides of Shane's face. So Ilya's gentle with him, all light touches with his lips until Shane starts pushing himself toward him, making out in earnest. He feels Shane get hard again, and in time with his tongue thrusting into Shane's mouth, he jerks Shane off until he finishes for a second time. 

They lay like that, with Shane curled on top of him. They pant into each other's mouths, trying to catch their breath. 

"Did you just fix my dick?" Ilya jokes, just to break the tension. Shane laughs, the sound surprising him. 

"Where's my M.D., you know what I'm saying?" Shane says. He places a quick kiss on Ilya's lips, and Ilya tastes himself in Shane's mouth. "Hey," Shane says, giving Ilya a shy smile. "I love you." 

"I love you too." 

"Let's shower. And then I'm going to show you the Powerpoint presentation I made for our trip tomorrow. You better have it memorized or else I'm going to be pissed." 

"Oh?" Ilya says, playful. "You will punish me?" 

"Yeah," Shane says, smirking down at him. "I'll punish you." 

****

They leave on separate flights. 

Ilya really doesn't like it, but Shane says they have to so they don't get spotted together. When Ilya looks upset at this, Shane gives him another kiss, deep and longing, and he tells Ilya he'll arrive there first so he can be there to pick Ilya up. 

Ilya lands in Nice, with his baseball cap pulled lower over his face. It's summer, so the airport is already packed with tourists, almost all English-speakers. The sun is high in the sky, and it's hot, it's humid, and the energy of the crowd is frenetic with the excitement of leisure. 

The second Ilya turns his phone back on, and his e-SIM kicks in, his WhatsApp floods with message after message from Shane. 

He skims the rambly stuff. Shane watched Crazy Rich Asians and three superhero movies on the plane, and had sent each sentence of his reviews for each in a separate message. Ilya imagines his boyfriend bored, waiting in line through customs, typing idly on his phone. The thought brings a smile to Ilya's face. Then he scrolls down to find the information Shane would actually want him to read. 

Shane's already waiting for him in the parking lot. He sent him the make, model, and license plate of the car he's in. 

So once Ilya blows past the winding lines, past the baggage claim, and out past public transport, where English-speakers who travel in packs of ten or greater stand in front of doorways and ticket machines to consult their phones. He gets to the parking lot, and when he spots the Renault Clio tucked into the corner his heart already starts thrumming with excitement. 

He matches the childish verve of all the vacation-goers around him when he runs to the car, duffel bag swinging behind him, and wrenches the door open.

Shane is waiting for him in the driver's seat. He's in a loose button-up and shorts. He's donning a pair of stylish sunglasses Yuna got him for his birthday. 

Shane shoots him a wide smile. The Mediterranean sun makes his skin glow. 

His boyfriend looks really good.

"Have a nice flight?" Shane asks. 

Ilya slides into the passenger seat. Shane doesn't even take a second to look around, to see if people are watching. He pulls Ilya in for a long, passionate kiss. 

"I can't believe we are actually here," Shane says, when they break away. Ilya wants to keep kissing, but Shane already starts the car, pulling out of the parking lot in a well-practiced swerve. 

"You can finally show off your French," Ilya says. 

Shane snorts. "Yeah, coming to the richest part of France speaking Canadian French will make me really popular with the locals," he shoots Ilya a conspiratorial smirk, "But anything is better than English though, right?" 

Ilya smirks back. "English sucks." 

Shane laughs. "English sucks," he agrees. 

As they drive through Nice, Shane tells Ilya a little bit about the villa they are staying at. It's a little more inland, but water is a pretty short drive away, and is in a more secluded area than say, St. Tropez or Nice. Shane mentions that Yuna really did them a solid, because apparently the owner is a good friend of hers, and was honored to let "the son of Yuna Hollander" stay the week there entirely for free. 

"During the summer? Did Yuna kill someone for him?" Ilya drawls.

"Legally, no." Shane grits his teeth, wincing a little. "Financially… maybe." 

Shane explained that his mom helped the owner recover from the brink of financial ruin, and soon, the villa had transformed from an inherited money sink into a romantic getaway that promised the rich and famous privacy, luxury, and discretion. Distance from their stressfully glamorous lives. 

Ilya likes Shane's parents way too much. Yuna especially. He knows this. He feels too strongly for what he is to them on paper—Shane's boyfriend slash former archnemesis who has dinner at their house sometimes. To temper this urge, he's been pushing himself to notice smaller flaws in Yuna and David, to discourage his brain from imprinting too hard on the unsuspecting pair. 

For example, he doesn't like how much they enable Shane. Every obsessive impulse their son has gets magnified under the exuberant machinations of Yuna, and the clueless passivity of David. He doesn't like the bloodthirsty way they treat money and their son's fame. He doesn't like the way the entire family covets luxury. 

However, if Ilya faulted Shane's family for liking money, for liking big, ridiculous houses, then he would be quite the hypocrite. North American money had a corrosive quality to it, because Russian rich was one thing—North American rich was domination. Ilya realized that early on when he got his first check in the U.S., because he found himself with the means to get, quite literally, whatever he wanted. The biggest penthouse in Boston. A basement full of ridiculously nice cars. Private parties with hot famous people that let him snort their designer drugs. 

He siloed tens of thousands to his greedy family, just as corrupted by the dollar as Ilya was. 

"Hey," Shane says. Ilya must've fallen quiet, because Shane takes one hand off the wheel to nudge him on the shoulder. Shane has a mischievous glint in his eye, "Want to learn some French?"

Ilya snorts. "I do not need more annoying languages in my head, thank you." 

"Come on," Shane says. "I've been learning Russian." 

"Is not learning if you never want to speak Russian with me," Ilya grumbles. 

When Ilya glances over he realizes Shane looks a little shy, all downcast eyes and worried lips. "I'm just waiting until I suck less before I start speaking out loud," Shane insists. "It's just a really hard language. I want to make sure I'm not embarrassing myself." 

His boyfriend is adorable, sometimes. "The only way you suck less at language is if you speak out loud and embarrass yourself. Especially to me."  

Ilya gets temporarily lost in a daydream of Shane fumbling over simple phrases in Russian, and how hard he might blush every time Ilya corrects him. Maybe Shane is naked too, sprawled out on their bed. Maybe he's staring up at Ilya, and Ilya's touching him, gently, but never where he wants, until he gets the pronunciation just right. 

Ilya smiles to himself. That would definitely improve Shane's Russian very quickly. 

"I know, I know," Shane says, completely unaware of the ways Ilya is defiling him in his head. "I just—I'm almost there, I promise. I've been practicing everyday. I just need a little more time." 

Ilya shrugs. "Sure." 

Shane smiles. He smacks Ilya on the shoulder. "So, come on, humor me. Learn a little bit about the language of looove," Shane says, drawing out the last word with dramatic flair. It really bears repeating—Shane is in an unbelievably good mood. They should go on more vacations together. "Repeat after me." 

Shane sounds out a bunch of random syllables that Ilya has no hope to follow. "What?" Ilya asks, confused. Shane's lips are poutier, and move a lot more when he speaks French and it's really distracting. 

"Come on," Shane repeats himself. Ilya begrudgingly humors him. He says it, over and over. 

"Close," Shane says. "Break it up." He sounds out each individual syllable, slowly. Ilya repeats after him again. By the pleased expression on Shane's face, Ilya can tell he got a lot closer this time. 

"What did I just say?" Ilya asks. 

Shane repeats himself again. There's a soft smile on his face as he does. 

The car starts to pull out of the city, and the change is startling, and sudden. One second, Ilya had been looking ambiently at buildings, dilapidated and old like ones that Ilya could've seen in Moscow, Ottawa, or Boston, all while dodging pedestrians and bad European drivers. 

And then, the next, exploding into view—

The bluest sea. The brightest sun. Pink-orange cliffs, as the car begins its ascent up rolling green mountains. 

When Ilya had gone to Monaco, he'd taken photo after photo with countless models, posed over the side of very expensive boats, with the famous sky blue Mediterranean sea glinting covetously in the background. But everything Ilya did and saw there suddenly seemed mundane in comparison to what he was looking at now. Maybe it's because they are on a different part of the coast. Maybe it's because he's here with Shane. 

Or maybe it's the way the landscape seems to draw them into a protective embrace, as if holding only Shane, Ilya, and their car in its palms, offering them sight of the sun, dancing playfully with the waves, rolling leisurely along the sea's crystalline surface. 

It's a part of Shane Ilya never got to see when their relationship was kept to just hotel rooms. Shane has so much love in his heart for the natural world. Even though he's driving, Shane's face lights up with total awe when he sees the view of water. The joy completely transforms him. 

When Shane glances back on the road, he shoots Ilya another smile, like he can't believe they are here together. He repeats the phrase he was trying to teach Ilya one last time. "It was one of the first sentences I learned how to say in French," Shane says. He rolls down his window, and the sound of waves, the howl of humid wind, and the distant chirps of cicadas pour in. He repeats himself one last time, and translates the phrase for Ilya. "After rain comes fair weather." 

****

"This is ridiculous," Ilya says, and when he does his voice actually echoes. 

The inside of the villa is all orange clay, stone, and terracotta, layering higher and higher over its occupants until the materials enshrine them in what feels like an artful cave. The back wall is replaced entirely by floor-to-ceiling sliding windows, bursting out into a rich, stone-laid backyard that precedes sprawling cliffs tumbling into sky blue water. 

He turns to Shane in disbelief. "Your mom knows the guy who owns this?" 

Shane plays with the keys in his hand. He admires the property and its furnishings with a critical eye—like mother, like son. "It's been with this family for three generations. The man who met us at the gate?" Shane places a hand on the wall, as if testing the stability, memorizing the material. "That's the owner—Mr. Reynaud's—son." 

Ilya rolls his eyes. The owner's son did not make a good impression on Ilya. He greeted both of them in English with a smile, and the second that obligation was fulfilled he spent twenty minutes standing way too close to Shane as the two of them chatted away in French. 

Luckily, Ilya's persistence in being an annoying asshole made it so Shane was quick to cut the guy loose. Ilya had spent the entire time they were talking making goofy faces behind the son's back, right in Shane's eyeline. The mocking increased in cruelty when he watched the man cup Shane's elbow, and then throw his other arm over Shane's shoulder, in an attempt to direct his vision at something beyond the horizon. 

Even though the son buzzed off quick, Ilya doesn't appreciate the omen he bodes for the rest of the week however—attractive guys flirting with Shane in a language he does not understand. 

"Oh my god," Shane's laughter echoes somewhere in the giant house. "Hey, you have to come look at this." 

Ilya walks aimlessly around the house, a little lost until he finds where Shane's standing. 

When Ilya walks into the den, he also bursts out laughing. 

Over the fireplace is a gigantic, oil painting of the scariest looking man Ilya's ever seen, with an almost exaggeratedly dour expression on his face. His chest is decorated with war medals, similar to that of Ilya's father. The man depicted looks a lot like the owner's son, but without any of the warmth, and when Ilya narrows his eyes, he notices that the insignia detailed on the medals are too old for the man to be the owner either. Maybe a grandfather. 

It's a terrifying, out of place portrait for a house sold as a vacation getaway. Weirdly enough it makes the place a touch more habitable to Ilya. 

"Captain Reynaud," Shane says. "The grandfather. He was the first in the Reynaud family to own this place." he cuts Ilya a conspiratorial glance, "Want to hear a scandalous story?" 

"Always," Ilya responds. 

Shane leans in, the way he does when he gossips with Ilya at galas. "The property was gifted to Captain Reynaud, from his extramarital lover," Shane says, wagging his eyebrows. "An artist from a very rich family." 

Ilya scoffs. "Did she paint this?" He nudges his head toward the massive portrait towering above the two of them. "Must not love him very much. She makes him look very stiff and sad," he cuts Shane a devilish smirk. "If I paint someone I love I make them look much happier. Less clothes too." 

Shane, however is completely unaffected by Ilya's charms. He actually looks really pleased with himself, like he knows something that Ilya doesn't. "He." 

"Hm?" 

"The artist was a man." 

Ilya tries to hide his surprise, but he's unsuccessful. Shane laughs again, bumping him on the shoulder. "Don't tell my mom I told you. It's one of the reasons why the family needed my mom's help so badly. It was a huge secret back when they were together, so inheritance was such a shitshow because the next-of-kin paperwork claiming Captain Reynaud's tie to the land was so sketchy and legally unsound. But my mom being my mom, she was able to figure out a way to help the family." 

"And now Mr. Reynaud respects his father's memory by renting out his lover's home to vacationers," Ilya says, acerbic. "How lovely." 

Shane hums. The painting stares, beseechingly, at the two of them. Ilya thinks it would be hilarious if the portrait came to life. "According to my mom, the love Captain Reynaud shared with this artist, the life they built together in this home, it took him away from real life. He neglected his wife, he neglected his children. So the way Mr. Reynaud put it, he loved his father enough to try to save something he cherished, but not enough to respect it, if that makes sense." 

There's a thoughtful expression on his face, as Shane talks, and this pisses Ilya off. Surrounded by this man's home, of course Shane is drawing the obvious parallel between his situation and theirs. Ilya wants to wipe that look right off his face, maybe by defiling every room in this mansion. Starting with the room they are standing in right now. 

"Happy ending," Ilya says, sarcastic, "Dead father, beautiful house, and cold hard cash." In Ilya's opinion, the owner, or Mr. Reynaud, sounds like a whining baby. There were worse things to have than an absent father. Especially a rich one. 

Shane fixes his eyes on Ilya. "Soo…" Shane shoots Ilya a smile. He points to the portrait. "Should we find something to cover this guy up while we make out, or?" 

This shocks Ilya back to his good humor. He laughs, and, with the luxurious house expanding all around them, he lunges toward Shane, grabbing his hips in one smooth motion so they are pressed together. His hands already ruck up Shane's loose shirt, fingers digging into the dip of his waist, "We should let him watch," Ilya whispers into his ear. 

Shane tries to wriggle out of his grip, but Ilya holds him still. "Absolutely not," Shane says, "The painting makes this guy's eyes look crazy. There's no way I'll be able to finish with him staring at me." 

Ilya's eyebrows rise, as he slowly drags Shane toward the couch. "There is no way?" Ilya asks, as he pulls Shane on top of him. Shane topples over, hands flying out with a yelp, so Ilya has to grab his waist to support him and yank him up right. With Shane straddling him, Ilya treats himself to watching Shane's laughter slowly give way to desire, when Ilya drags his hands further up Shane's loose shirt, drawing slow circles in the dip of Shane's hips with his thumb. Shane hums, savoring the sensation, when Ilya leans in to kiss him. 

They make out, each press of lips getting more and more heated, and Ilya can't get what Shane said out of his head. Kissing you feels as good as sex. Ilya really liked the whimper he draws out of Shane when he pulls back a little to say: "I think you'll finish wherever I tell you to." 

They stay like that forever, gasping and licking into each other's mouths. And the longer they kissed, the more sensitive Shane's lips got. He whines when Ilya does as much as brushes his mouth against Shane's, and Ilya is getting that feeling underneath his skin again, like pleasure is vibrating just below the surface. He stops, and makes Shane chase his lips when he leans back to cup Shane in his shorts. Ilya barely gets to leave for a second when Shane, with an indignant whine, immediately reclaims his lips again, throwing himself at Ilya, begging him with his mouth to please, cup his neck harder, pull him closer.

"You can do whatever you want with me," Shane gasps, "Just please let me keep kissing you." 

Fuck. Okay. Ilya shoves Shane's shorts off, yanking them down in a hurry so he can get his hands on him.

Shane comes like that, with Ilya, shoving his tongue between Shane's lips, the two of them panting into each other's mouths, in time to the rhythm of Ilya jerking Shane off. 

Ilya stays soft the entire time. But when Shane finishes and collapses into Ilya's arms, he doesn't comment on it. He just holds Ilya, in this stranger's mansion halfway across the globe from real life. Shane has his chin hooked on top of Ilya's head as Ilya buries his face in Shane's chest, letting Shane pull absently at his curls. 

"You are such a dick," Shane mutters, mouth buried into Ilya's scalp. 

"Am I now?" Ilya murmurs. Ilya thinks he gets it, when Shane says that kissing feels as good as sex to him. Because this—Shane, just touching him like he knows him, has no comparison to any sensation Ilya has ever felt. 

"You had me facing the painting the entire time."

Ilya lifts his head a little, smug. "Come on Hollander, we must pay our respects to the man if we are to christen his home." 

Shane scrunches his face up at him, and leans in, biting Ilya's lips in protest. In return, Ilya sits up, flips them so Shane straddles his lap, and pinches his perfect ass as hard as he can. Shane yelps, tipping backward until Ilya, laughing, catches him just before he could smash his head through the very expensive glass table. The two of them take that as their cue to get up and clean up. 

Ilya didn't come, but he still feels light and airy—like the first three seconds after an orgasm, where everything just feels good, and nothing reminds him of real life. Except the feeling stays with him and doesn't leave, as Shane suggests they go to the beach. It's a short drive, he explains, but to be honest, they should just walk. He's antsy after the plane ride, and he wants exercise. 

It's the most normal things have felt between the two of them since the summer started. Ilya wonders how much easier things might have been if Ilya had just been honest with Shane from the very beginning. 

It's hard to beat himself up too much though, because Shane's bounding ahead of him on the cliffside trail, the two of them carelessly walking along the main road with the absence of any cars or people. Before Ilya started dating Shane, Ilya didn't know there were still walks of nature that hadn't been completely overrun by people or civilization. Yet, Shane, almost like a sixth sense, seems particularly adept at finding just the right location, just the right place, that's undiscovered until he sets his sights on it. 

As they walk, humidity causes Shane's bangs to curl into his eyes. Ilya grabs Shane and wraps him into a headlock, so he can rub his sweaty forehead and hair into Shane's face. Yelling, Shane blindly grabs whatever he can—Ilya's face, his arms, his shoulders—to wrestle himself off, laughing the entire time as he does. The two of them make their way forward by chasing after each other, Ilya running as fast as he can the second Shane breaks free, his boyfriend promising revenge. 

Their progress takes them to a particularly clear stretch of cliffs, giving them a full view of the water below. The only people around are tiny, distant shapes swimming in the water, with only the suggestion of civilization somewhere off in the horizon, on a beach too far to see.

It's only a blurry memory now, but the sight reminds Ilya of a summer vacation he went on once with his family to Sochi, when Ilya was much, much younger, when his mom was still alive and Alexei still liked him. His father drove them all there, and he'd been smiling. 

Then, as he recalls this memory in his head, he stares wordlessly at Shane's back. A sudden question interrupts Ilya's thoughts: Why are you keeping this to yourself? 

He tries to justify it with a million reasons. He doesn't want to ruin the day with his depressing family. The memory, in and of itself, is very mundane, and insignificant. Shane wouldn't really know what to say. Shane wouldn't really care to know. 

Except, Ilya knows, in his bones, that the last part isn't right. Shane likes learning new things about him. Maybe he won't always know what to say, but he will always care. 

So Ilya tells him. "This reminds me of vacation I spent with my family in Sochi." 

Shane turns to look at him. He hides it, but Ilya can tell he's surprised. Ilya doesn't offer up these parts of himself very often. "In a good way, hopefully, right?" 

Ilya snorts. "Yes," Ilya finds that, in a beautiful, foreign land, all alone with Shane, he doesn't need to try that hard to figure out what he wants to say. "I remember beach with my family, looking over Black Sea. When you are a child, you experience nothing yet, so you will think things like 'this is the happiest I will ever be.'"

Ilya confesses this all to the sea, finding himself unable to look Shane in the eye. "But it means too for the first time you fear something that makes you happy will end. So you stare very hard at everything around you, to make sure you remember everything for yourself in the future," Ilya turns away from the sea, to look back at Shane now, "So the happiness will never stop." 

Shane stays quiet for a very long time. It's as Ilya suspected—Shane doesn't really know what to say. But, after dating Shane for two years, for the first time, instead of getting defensive, Ilya finds he takes no offense in Shane's silence. 

Ilya looks down over the cliff, assesses it for a moment. He points to the water below. When he turns around, he sees that Shane is still panicking, still wracking his brain, so Ilya shoots him a dangerous smile. 

"We should just jump," Ilya says. 

Shane mouths, starting and stopping repeatedly, before he finds his voice. "But this isn't where the beach is." As if realizing in real-time how annoying he sounds, he adds, "Also, what if there are rocks at the bottom? And we die?" He frowns, eyes glancing up and down the environment. "And how do we get back up?" 

Ilya looks around, shrugging. "We have a clean drop. Cliff curves inward. And—" Ilya puts his hand on Shane's back, to guide him to where he wants him to look, "Beach is still about ten kilometers away. That means water here is deep." 

Shane glances up, nervously at him. He looks over the edge. 

Ilya nods understandingly, "Is okay. You are chicken. Let's walk to the beach then." Ilya turns, pretending as if he's going to continue further. 

Shane's face turns red. He isn't moving. "I'm not a chicken." Shane insists. 

Ilya grins. He suddenly feels very young. "Will you prove it?" Ilya asks, "Or will you just keep talking? Chicken?" 

Before Ilya even finishes, Shane unbuttons his linen shirt, and throws it at Ilya's head. He stands in his board shorts and water shoes, because he is a dork. "I like that shirt," Shane insists, when Ilya peels it off his face. Ilya likes this shirt on him too. "So you better make sure it doesn't get lost." 

And then, in a flash, Shane backs up. There's a look of pure concentration, telltale to the Hollander name, and then in a shot, he runs, and leaps off the side of the cliffs, disappearing from view. 

Then, after a while, a splash. 

Ilya throws Shane's shirt over his shoulder. He scrambles toward the cliff's edge. His face splits into a gigantic smile when he sees Shane Hollander, alive and well, tiny head of black hair poking up in the blue water. When Shane looks up, and spots Ilya, even though he's so far down, Ilya sees Shane smile. His boyfriend then cups his hands, and shouts, as loud as he can, "What are you waiting for?!" punctuated by giddy laughter. 

Ilya looks at the clothes he has on him. He grabs his t-shirt, yanks it off. He ties it together with Shane's linen shirt, the material pliable in his hands. He loops the conjoined fabrics around his shoulders, and ties it around his neck, covering his chain protectively. He leaves his shoes behind. 

He runs as fast as he can, and then jumps. 

****

Day one of their vacation they spend at sea, swimming so far out they repeatedly lose sight of land. The only thing tethering them to reality is other swimmers and boats, bobbing up and down in the distance, too far away to be anything more than scenery. 

Shane challenges him to a contest, to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater. In a fit of dark humor, Ilya thinks in my worst nightmare, I won, and I killed you for it. But Shane counts to three, and in a splash the two of them sink into the sea. 

When Ilya opens his eyes, first he sees Shane, shooting him a smile, bubbles floating up and out of his mouth. 

The next—Ilya can only meet the sight around him with wonder.

Around him, smaller fish, in large schools, silver and quick, cut around them. They tickle Ilya's skin, which makes him laugh, sending huge gusts of air over and out to the water's surface. Wild plant life shoots up from distant rocks, so far down that Ilya can only wonder how tall the fauna had to grow to reach him now. 

Ilya starts to run out of breath. But it is such an alien feeling from the choking he'd experienced in his dreams. As he runs out of air, his body feels buoyant, like it wants to float to the top. As Ilya looks up, the sun welcomes him in a shine of white light at the very surface. So Ilya chases the sun, and surges out of the water, breaking into open air.

He watches as Shane pops out, just a second after him. But the two of them were too pleased with what they discovered underwater to really care who won or lost. 

When they get back to the villa, it's night, and they are dripping wet, syruppy with sweat from the humidity. Ilya, on their road home, found his sneakers still waiting for him, so he had put them back on his feet. 

They are starving, so Shane drives out to the nearest town to pick up some food. He comes back with a big bag of halal, like the kind that Ilya got in New York. This makes him laugh, as well as the wine that Shane clearly bought at a supermarket. 

They eat everything Shane brings back, and Shane doesn't mention anything about health or nutrition the entire time, which makes the food taste particularly blissful to Ilya. 

Once they finish, Ilya and Shane walk into one of the many bedrooms, staring at the space for a very long time. The bedrooms require guests to wander deep into the cavernous house, which makes Ilya feel unsettled, like he might get lost when he wakes up tomorrow morning. Ilya turns to Shane, perturbed, and finds himself deeply relieved when Shane has a matching expression of discomfort when he looks at their lodgings. 

"I have an idea," Shane says. He yanks all the blankets off the bed. With a nudge of his head, he motions for Ilya to help. So Ilya grabs the pillows, grabs a couple extra sheets from the cupboard, and follows Shane out, back into the main area, where the windows open out into the backyard, overlooking the sea. 

Without even saying a word, Shane lays the thickest of the blankets right on the floor. He smooths all the wrinkles out with precision, and walks over to Ilya, plucking the sheets out of his waiting arms. He layers them on top, and once the sheets meet his standards he presses his foot into the makeshift futon to test if the construction passes his metrics of comfort. He tosses one pillow, and then two, onto the floor, along with another loose sheet as a blanket—if they even need it. 

Making their bed for them, parked in front of the stars.  

Ilya has no choice but to kiss him when he turns around. 

As they entwine, Ilya thinks about how all the ways Shane's changed in the last two years. He's more confident. He's more relaxed. He's a lot more self-assured, not just on the ice, and Ilya knows he's the reason for that. It's a total head rush, knowing he changed Shane for the better—it's a form of ownership only Ilya will have on Shane, even if everything between them crashes and burns.

Ilya doesn't have an easy answer for if Shane changed him for the better. The people Ilya loves rarely do.   

In his darkest moments, in a year full of dark thoughts, Ilya wondered if Shane's changed too much from the boy he fell in love with to be recognizable anymore. 

After the 2019 season, Shane has surpassed Ilya, by just about every metric. Shane has now become a titan that warrants no comparison, because no one's accomplished what he's been able to do in less than a ten year career. 

But in small moments, like egging Shane on to jump off a cliff and succeeding, like wrestling with him in the open sea, and watching him, almost a decade after they met, fold and manage sheets and clothes in the exact same way he did as a kid, all Ilya can see is Shane, as he was and as he is. 

As they have sex, Ilya watches as Shane's body arches in the moonlight. When they finish, the two of them sleep, collapsed into each other, for the rest of the night.

****

Two days go by as the two of them pretend nothing else exists but the slice of paradise they've tumbled into. 

They swim for hours. They fuck for even longer. Ilya doesn't come a single time, but he doesn't even care, because he still leaves Shane desperate and gasping, clutching onto him like he's scared Ilya's going to float away if he lets go. Ilya's desire to make Shane feel good transcends sexual pleasure—it's something he needs to feel like a person. 

Shane is still too paranoid that tourists would recognize them in the main cities, so they don't go out in public. This means no restaurants. Shane seems upset at himself that this is the case, but Ilya secretly doesn't really like a lot of the cuisine in this region anyway. What he covets is the region's produce—fruits, meat, pastries, jam, spices—everything fresher and brighter than anything he could find in Ottawa or Boston. 

Every morning, Ilya would come back with bags full of food, either from the market in town or the grocery store, and he would chase Shane around the kitchen, mess all over his hands, as he waited for dinner or breakfast to cook, Shane's delighted shrieks echoing throughout the cavernous home. 

He bullies and whines until Shane agrees to pick up the Vespa with him. The second he gets the keys, he zooms down cobbled alleyways, beach boardwalks, and winding city roads, dodging pedestrians with finesse, laughing wildly. He bursts out of the city, and he turns and finally catches up with Shane, who had been driving on the main road back to the villa. He thinks he hears Shane yell "Look at the road oh my god!" through the car window, as Ilya turns his head to wave at Shane, his fierce smile hidden beneath his helmet. 

As Ilya clears the cliffside going almost 160 kilometers per hour, the sea cools him with weak gusts of wind, the speed sending goosebumps all along his arms, even as sweat trickles down his forehead. He has the pleasure of beating Shane to the villa, skidding to a stop in front of him, shaking his short curls loose from his helmet. Shane can pretend all he wants, Ilya knows he finds it unbelievably attractive. 

Ilya tosses Shane another helmet. "For you," he says, smirking.

"I am not getting on that thing," Shane says, instantly. 

But Ilya is not so easily dissuaded. "Come on. End of driveway. To the gate," Ilya swears. "Just try." 

It's as easy as convincing Shane to jump off a cliff overlooking water. Shane grumbles, relenting, and wraps his arms around Ilya's waist, his head pressed tightly against his back. With Shane, warm and real behind him, Ilya takes off with a shout. 

He feels Shane reflexively tighten around him in fear. But very quickly, as Ilya zooms down the already sloped driveway and picks up speed, Shane starts to shake behind him. Ilya gets concerned, about to pull over—until he hears it, unmistakable over the wind. 

Shane, laughing, wild and loud, and it's such a delightful sound that Ilya decides to be an asshole and forgo his promise. 

He slows down a little as they reach the end of the driveway, but before Shane can even let go, Ilya suddenly revs the engine, and launches for the main road. 

Shane screams, over the howling in their ears, that he never agreed to this. 

Ilya's corresponding grin is delightedly mean. "Better hold on tight! You do not want to fall to your death!" 

Shane calls Ilya every terrible word in the English dictionary, but because Shane doesn't, in fact, want to die horribly, he wraps his arms as tight as he could around Ilya's waist, pressing himself against Ilya's back. Ilya, no longer beholden to city roads or driveways, shoots up the cliff at speeds that feel faster than light. 

They spend the rest of the day tangled up in each other, Ilya climbing determinedly up the riviera, revealing more and more of the sea as he ascends in altitude. 

Ilya only takes them back home when the sun starts to set. When they finally pull back into the driveway, Shane throws his helmet to the ground. In one quick motion he walks over and yanks Ilya's off his head too. Ilya is about to protest, saying that he thinks Shane scratched his ears, when Shane pushes him up against the Vespa and starts kissing him angrily.

The complaint dies in Ilya's mouth. He smiles victoriously against Shane's lips. 

So the Vespa becomes their preferred mode of transportation. Shane had mentioned that there were a few drives he wanted to check out, so Ilya looks them up on his phone, while Shane carefully labels every route out on a physical map. The two of them very quickly orient themselves with the area, breaking the region apart into careful sections, just like how they'd divide up the ice. 

And from there, Ilya spends the next two days, with Shane pressed up against his back, his quiet gasps and delighted laughter ringing in his ear as he speeds down roads lined with terracotta, tangerine, and blazing red volcanic rock. They course through gorges full of rich blue water, limestone cliffs dripping stalagmite as they tower above glittering rivers. They fly over vineyard after vineyard, vibrant green crop stretching over luxury castles, stylishly rustic cabins, and imposing family estates. 

To say it feels unreal would be an understatement. It is such a violent divorce from how Ilya spent most of his days, that every night, when the two of them clamber home, awed and wondrous from everything they'd seen, Ilya expects that when he closes his eyes, he will never wake back up. 

One night, when Shane falls asleep, Ilya walks out onto the backyard and lights a smoke. He flops onto the deck chair, head resting against the back, and stares up at the stars.

He wonders how long he can keep feeling like this. It's like a bad high. The best week of his life, followed by what, exactly? They'll be going back home in a couple days, and then what will happen next? Ilya waits out the summer, and starts all over again with The Centaurs? The thought makes him nauseous. 

Ilya can't keep spending eternal summer days, where all he feels is beauty, awe, and freedom, floating through a dream-like paradise with Shane pressed so close next to him. It would make the comedown when they have to leave far too painful for Ilya to bear. 

What Ilya needs is some damn stimulation. 

On their second to last day in France, Ilya comes up with a terrible idea that he knows Shane will hate. 

"No," Shane says, immediately. 

Shane's sitting on the kitchen island with his arms crossed, the remains of their breakfast piled on top of the counter next to him, by his knee. 

Ilya rolls his eyes. "Got it. We only do what you want to do." 

Shane tenses up. They still haven't brought up Ottawa, or Ilya's shitty brain, but Ilya can tell the subjects simmer in the back of Shane's head with every loaded comment Ilya makes, like a hot brand of guilt he is entirely unsure how to address. 

"I—" Shane pinches his nose, "Come on Rozanov, you aren't actually being serious."

"Dead serious. I want to go to Monaco. I want to wear nice clothes, dance all night, and throw money around." 

Shane does not find Ilya's insistence amusing. "I really hope I do not need to tell you why the two of us partying in Monaco is a horrible idea." 

Ilya knew Monaco would be a hard sell, but he's willing to double down until he seals the deal. Maybe it's the resentment he'd felt over the season, rearing its head up again as their vacation draws to a close, but he feels like testing Shane. Pushing the boundaries of his love. A year ago, Shane had said all he wants is to make Ilya happy. So, what is the extent of that want? 

Ilya smiles. He leans up against the kitchen counter, right next to Shane, his elbow just barely ghosting against Shane's knee. "Come on. Do you ever surprise yourself, Hollander?" 

Shane scoffs. He bats Ilya's hand away when he tries to sneak it up Shane's thigh. "Hooking up with you is enough surprises for me for a lifetime." 

Ilya's eyebrows shoot up. "A lifetime?" he grins, as Shane stammers, caught. "Is that how long you have me?" 

"You—" Shane looks away, "You know what I mean." 

"I don't," Ilya blinks, innocent. Shane moves to elaborate, but Ilya, just to get Shane out of his head, pokes a single finger into the meat of Shane's thigh. Shane glares at the point of contact, but doesn't move to nudge his hand away. "Come on Hollander. We will be poorest, lamest people there. No one will care about us." 

"So we are dressed in stuffy clothes, surrounded by people richer than us?" Shane asks flatly. "That sounds like a fucking nightmare. That sounds like an event I would try to blow off during the season. Why would I want to subject myself to that on my vacation?" 

"Because I ask you to," Ilya says, easily. "Because I want to." 

"Ilya," Shane says. He suddenly gets quite serious. "Monaco has too much… everything. It has sports people, it has tourists, and if it has celebrities it will definitely have photographers—"

Ilya snorts. "You think richest place in the world is going to let a bunch of money-hungry vultures bother and upset their precious billionaires?" 

Shane glares at him, "There were a lot of paparazzi the last time you were in Monaco." 

Ilya waves his hand. "That was Grand Prix. Grand Prix is fucking crazy. Now most hotels and casinos have informal rules that ban paparazzi from business." 

Shane doesn't relent, "It still doesn't change the fact that people can still take photos with their phone, and it doesn't mean that people are banned from talking to each other. Not to mention, hockey people, sports people, are definitely here on vacation, especially with all the seasons wrapping up." Shane shakes his head. "It's too risky." 

Ilya sighs. He crosses his arms, narrowing his eyes, and decides to bring up something he's been questioning for the past two years, ever since he agreed to Shane's elaborate plan. 

"The goal of this," Ilya says, slowly, "Of me moving to Ottawa, of working to start a foundation together, is so we appear more in public as friends, correct? So there is less intense rivalry in the press." 

Shane cringes when Ilya mentions Ottawa out loud, but Ilya doesn't give a shit. Ilya has a point and he knows it. 

Shane looks down, cowed. "Yes," Shane says, but doesn't elaborate further. 

"So would it not be a better idea for people to see us together more instead of less?" 

Shane exhales a long breath, one that he'd probably been holding since the conversation started, "That's for like, official events. It's just too many things to think about if we just randomly go out in public. We can't control anything, and," Shane looks up at him with wide, terrified eyes, "People are unpredictable, and the two of us, together in Monaco, I don't know. Conclusions are drawn, and I don't…" Shane lowers his eyes, "I don't want anything bad to happen." 

Ilya shrugs. "Then we go with other people." 

Shane gawks at him. "What?!" 

Ilya waves his hands, "Other celebrities, other athletes." 

"Ilya, no," Shane says, vicious. But Ilya is steadfast. He'd been turning this over in his head all night—like Shane might be more likely to agree if Ilya shows he's already thought through all the logistics for him. 

"Your issue is people see us alone, they will pry into our life and think we are dating. So why not go with other people? Throw some girls in there, if you are scared we will look gay." 

Shane looks upset. "You aren't taking me seriously," Shane snaps.

"No really. Surround ourselves with famous athletes, famous models. If people talk or take our photos in secret we would not even be main event. They will just see a bunch of celebrities, hanging out together, having fun, and they will also have record of us, together as friends," Ilya shrugs. "Who knows, we might even look cool." 

Shane stares at him, horrified. He tries to come up with another flaw in Ilya's plan, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to—"I don't want to go," Shane insists, one last time. His eyes are hard. "I think it's a terrible idea. If you want to go that badly, you should go by yourself." 

These past few days, being the happiest he's ever been, has really given Ilya time to clear his head. For the first time all year, Ilya finds he can finally separate the messiness of his horrible feelings from his actual thoughts. 

Even better, he realizes, with a startling amount of clarity, what he needs from Shane. Ilya pushes himself off the kitchen counter. He walks over to Shane, boxing him in with his arms. Shane looks down at him from his perch, stubborn and set in his ways. 

Ilya is serious when he says what he says next. "Shane," Ilya approaches, carefully. "It cannot be this slow." 

Ilya holds strong as he watches every facade of Shane's face fall. "What?" Shane says, as if he'd been punched.

"You say, to be together, it has to be slow, careful. We are in dangerous position, so I agree with you. I want to be with you, so I agree with you. But Shane," Ilya laughs, humorless, "This is too slow. I cannot spend years of my life this way."

Maybe in Boston they could've. They would fight on the ice, fuck every few months, here and there in random motels. When Shane's gone, Ilya would have his city, he would have his teammates. He'd have Svetlana.

In Ottawa, Ilya only has Shane. 

Shane looks like he's been slapped. "Are you fucking kidding?" Shane lashes out, hurt beyond belief. "Then why agree to be with me at all?" 

Ilya keeps his cool. It always came back to this with Shane—that because Ilya is miserable in Ottawa, it means he doesn't want to be with him. "You are not listening," Ilya says, evenly. "I make choice, yes? Boston for Ottawa. I do that to be with you. Is my choice, and I make it again and again." 

Ilya swallows. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. "But Hollander," Ilya looks at him, "Ottawa is too small for me to be… so scared of my own shadow." 

He continues. "I am not saying we pull Scott Hunter and tell the world. But if we hide like this, where we cannot even stand next to each other in public, where we can only be us when we are alone, people will always control what we are to each other. We will never escape. Not in five years, not in ten, not when we retire. Never. It will be worse than when we were kids." 

Shane looks away from him, some heady mix of betrayal and upset twisting his sweet features into a state of shock. Ilya doesn't care. He needs Shane to know this. "I give up too much for my choice to mean nothing." I give up playing against you, so I can be with you. 

Shane stays quiet for a very, very long time. To give him some space, Ilya pushes off the counter, picks up the dishes by the side of Shane's knee, and takes them over to the sink. He washes, dries, and sets them aside. Shane's still staring at the exact same spot he was ten minutes ago, so Ilya decides Shane will probably need a while before he wants to talk again. So Ilya walks out into the backyard, collapses into that same yard chair, watching the outdoors roll by. 

He wonders the likelihood that Shane will agree. Probably low, if Ilya had to put money on it. It was an objectively batshit proposition—Ilya never did anything by half-measures. Maybe being with him would be easier, if he did. But if Shane wanted easy, he should've just kept it with Rose Landry. 

Just as Ilya is about to stand up, and grab the keys to the Vespa, Shane walks outside. He stares at Ilya with a blank expression. Ilya returns the look, expectant. With a loud sigh, Shane reaches out and drags a lawn chair closer to Ilya, and sits down in it.

Once he does, he scrunches up into a ball, and buries his face into his hands. "This is such an insane idea," Shane mutters, muffled, to himself. "This is such an insane idea," he repeats again. Ilya watches him, as, once he got that out of his system, Shane pulls himself up, turning to him with tired eyes. 

"So. Who are these famous, rich people you can just summon at a moment's notice?" 

Ilya smiles, victorious. He pulls out his phone, opens Instagram. He rapidly swipes through everyone's stories until he finds what he needs: a geotagged photo in Monaco of Boston Shamrocks' power forward Devin Hornett and his famous model girlfriend Jesamine Hookes, smiling on a yacht together, posted twenty-three minutes ago. 

He swipes up. Types: 

lol. rip nba finals 

Hornett replies instantly. 

bro dont even start with me such a stupid year im gonna kill my dumbass coach 

also keep your nose out of boston business canuck 

Shane watches him, bemused, as Ilya's fingers quickly fly over his phone. 

i also had shit year. drown our sadness in money and booze tn??? 

tf??? you in Monaco rn?? 

As easy as that, Ilya gets an invite to Hornett's plans for the evening. 

"My NBA friend and his model girlfriend," Ilya says. He shows Shane the photo of them on the yacht together, where they look wholesome in the way that he knows Shane would respond well to. "We will meet them tonight. Maybe Jesamine will bring another girl. Even out the ratio a little bit." 

Shane peers at the photo, staring at the pair critically. "He won't think it's weird if we arrive together?" 

Ilya actually laughs, "Dude, he is NBA. His life is fucking nightmare. He does not give a shit about hockey." 

"But—" Shane starts again, but Ilya holds a hand up.

"Hornett only cares about basketball, his girlfriend, and partying. Is why he is such a chill guy." 

Shane sighs. He follows it with a rueful laugh. "Wow," Shane says finally.

Ilya looks up, wrinkling his nose, "What?" 

"You like…" Shane trails off, still laughing a little to himself. Ilya's confused as to what's so funny. "This used to be what you did huh?" 

Ilya doesn't understand what Shane means. "What I did?" Ilya asks. 

"Like… you had people who knew people who could always get you into something cool and exclusive, no matter where you were," Shane says. He laughs, a touch self-deprecating. "And now, you just like, hang out with me in the woods all day."

Ilya looks up from his phone. "I like hanging out with you in the woods," he says. 

"No you don't. You just told me it makes you feel lonely," Shane says, voice hollow. 

Ilya runs a frustrated hand through his curls. He doesn't know how to stop talking in circles around Shane. The way his love for Shane both ruins and redeems him is something that Ilya struggles to even articulate in his own language, much less the clumsiness of English. 

A part of him wishes he just ignored his feelings, and stayed having nightmares alone in his apartment. But he's not sorry for letting Shane know how horrible Ottawa has made him feel. He's not sorry for saying that keeping their relationship, as secret as it is, while living in a place as lonely as Ottawa, has hurt him in horrible ways. But he wishes he could just talk to Shane without making him doubt his love for him. 

Ilya puts his phone away. He walks over to Shane, pulls him up. Shane's expression is sad but unreadable otherwise, and it weirds Ilya out enough that he jerks forward, hoping to kiss the look off his face. But before he can, Shane reaches up, stops him. He cups his cheek, stroking Ilya's face with slow, deliberate circles. 

The two of them reach for each other, at the exact same time. 

They tumble back into the house, falling on top of each other on their makeshift futon. Ilya tries to communicate everything he's struggling to say out loud with his lips, his hands, skating across Shane's body adoringly. 

He moves down Shane's body to try and suck him off, but Shane gasps. "Wait," Shane says, breathless. "Wait. Switch with me." 

Ilya frowns, but he listens. They flip, and Shane moves so he's hovering on top of him, hands on either side of Ilya's waist. He looks at Ilya, laid out under him, with a muted, wistful expression. This pisses Ilya off, because Ilya is right here. Why is Shane staring at him like he's going to disappear? Ilya tries to jerk up, kiss Shane again, but with a gentle hand, Shane guides him back down. 

"Hollander," Ilya snaps, impatient, "What is your game?" 

Shane struggles around the words he wants to say. Ilya decides to give him exactly ten more seconds before he will try to take over.

Finally, Shane swallows. He looks up at Ilya, shy. "Can I try something, and if you don't like it, tell me? Or…" Shane blushes, "Tell me what I can do to make it better?" 

Ilya has no idea what Shane is talking about, but it's always hard to say no to Shane, especially when he asks him so nicely. So he nods, confused frown on his face. 

Shane, trembling, scoots lower down his body. He takes Ilya's soft dick into his mouth, like he did back at the cottage. Ilya huffs, and lays his head back down on the makeshift futon. They will actually be here for hours if Shane's going to try to get Ilya hard, but Ilya lets him try. Shane drags his tongue sweetly along Ilya's length, bringing his dick little by little into the suction of his lips. This feels nice at least, so Ilya closes his eyes, tries to make himself get lost in the feeling. 

But then, just as things were getting good, Shane pulls off Ilya's dick. He hikes Ilya's legs over his shoulder, which makes Ilya tense up. He doesn't usually like being in a position this vulnerable, but he trusts Shane, so he doesn't say anything. Shane must still feel Ilya's apprehension however, because he presses a comforting kiss against Ilya's inner thigh, then another, while his thumb strokes his knee, like he's calming a spooked horse. 

It works pretty well, until suddenly, Ilya's eyes jolt open. He jumps, pushing himself up onto his forearms—

—as he feels something wet kiss tentatively at his entrance.

"Shane," Ilya snaps. "What the fuck?" 

Shane immediately pulls back. There's drool falling out the side of his mouth, a string of spit connecting his lips to Ilya's hole. "You don't like it?" Shane asks, eyes wide and earnest. 

That's… not it. 

"I…" Ilya groans, frustrated. He runs a harsh hand down his face.

He could tell Shane the truth, which is that he hates it when men play with his ass. Nothing nauseates him more than being dominated in that way by a man—it makes him just want to turn around and deck him, like he's an opponent on the ice. Women, on the other hand, are a different story. It's pretty rare, but sometimes he loves it when a woman forces him down, makes him lie back and take it. It usually has to be a woman he trusts of course, like Svetlana, but a girl, wearing a toy, fucking him, and yanking at his hair gets him going like nobody's business. 

Probably nothing he needs to examine psychologically. 

The problem with Shane however is that he defies categorization. He's just Shane. It's never humiliating to be intimate with him. 

So Ilya, after a long, and loud sigh, lies back. He waves his hand in Shane's direction, as if to say, please continue. 

"Ilya," Shane insists, "We don't have to." 

"I want you to," Ilya snaps again. "Stop asking permission." 

Shane stares at him, for a beat, like if he looks at him long enough he can read what Ilya's hiding from him. But then, Shane acquiesces, and lowers himself, down, down, until he's back in front of Ilya's hole. 

"Tell me when it feels good, okay?" Shane says, in a small voice. Before Ilya can nod, or say anything in response, Shane gets back to it. 

He starts frustratingly gentle. Tender kisses. Light licks. Ilya needs him to put more pressure, immediately. So he reaches down, and yanks Shane's hair, shoving him in deeper.
"I am not a doll," Ilya orders, "Harder. Spread me open." 

And Shane just listens to him. He uses his finger to spread Ilya's cheeks apart, so he can bury his tongue in further. Feeling the vibrations of Shane whining, worming his tongue into Ilya—Ilya gasps as his stomach drops, a freefall feeling he gets when pleasure starts to build, too distant, too far away, for Ilya to do anything about it. He groans—"More," Ilya demands, and Shane does exactly as he says, "Open your mouth wider. Don't—" he hisses, "Don't suck. Lick me open. Fuck. Like that. Keep going." 

Shane adjusts, and it's fucking head rush, watching Shane, between his legs, following his orders to the letter. Ilya feels arousal, hot and real, shoot down his spine now. Shane was always a quick study, especially when it came to Ilya's body. Ilya can't help but gasp, when Shane pushes his tongue further into his hole, a touch too rough and impatient now that Ilya's starting to loosen up, drool trickling down his mouth and wetting Ilya's entrance.

Ilya tries to push down harder, chase that feeling, but then Shane pulls back. 

"Why—" Ilya tries to maintain control, but he's breathless, and staring down at Shane half-lidded, chest rising up and down, "Don't stop." 

Shane wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, watching Ilya with awe. Without taking his eyes off Ilya's face, he fumbles around the sheets, and Ilya's stomach lurches when he realizes that Shane's grabbed the lube. 

"Shane—" Ilya interjects, frantically, "What are you—" 

Shane squirts lube on his fingers, slow and careful. Not the messy, impatient way Ilya does whenever he wants to fuck Shane.

Watching the mess trickle down his hand, his arm, Shane scoots back between Ilya's legs, hoists them up again. 

He takes Ilya's dick into his mouth, slightly harder than when he began. This time however, Ilya's warmed up, his entire skin buzzing with arousal. 

Shane pulls off again, which makes Ilya groan in frustration. Shane looks intently somewhere underneath Ilya, as he then takes his fingers, lines them up and starts working them into Ilya's ass. 

Ilya shouts, and grabs onto the sheets above his head. The entire makeshift bed shifts with how hard he arches up into the touch. 

Shane looks up, wide-eyed, stilling his motions, as if checking to see if Ilya's okay, "What the fuck—" Ilya snarls, "Don't stop, are you insane?" 

He feels Shane laugh, and the vibrations go straight to his dick. Shane starts with only two fingers ("Curl them," Ilya orders, "Not that much. Move them up. Higher, higher, Shit—right there, fuck,") but as he listens to Ilya's careful instructions, the rough pads of his fingers, still callused from the season, brush up against Ilya's prostate, and Ilya gasps, vision almost whiting out. 

"Right there—" Ilya moans, his voice breaking. "Right there, holy fuck—don't you dare move." 

Now that Shane's been given all the instructions he needs to make Ilya feel good, he follows them with dogged obedience and focus. Ilya feels himself literally get overworked with pleasure as Shane starts fucking his fingers right where Ilya needs him to, each thrust forcing Ilya up into Shane's gasping and drooling mouth, his pink lips stretched hungrily around his dick. He plays Ilya's body with a startling familiarity, as with a sudden and unexpected jolt, Ilya comes, shaking apart with an intensity that surprises him. 

As he does, he grabs Shane's hair. It doesn't matter what the fuck he was saying before, a mess sounds that don't make sense in Russian or English. But he makes Shane understands him when he gasps, "Fuck, you're so fucking perfect, holy fuck—" and "I love you, I love you, I love you, holy fuck you are made for me—"

He empties himself into Shane's mouth. He collapses onto the bed, seeing stars. Shane pulls himself up with a whimper, his face poking up between Ilya's legs. Before he gets a chance to do anything else, Ilya all but drags Shane up toward him, capturing him into a hungry kiss. 

Fuck, Shane's face is dripping with his wetness, his come, and Ilya's tongue pries Shane's lips wide open as he jacks him off, Shane moaning sweetly into his open mouth until he finishes. 

Shane collapses into Ilya's chest with a final gasp, and he buries his face into the safety of Ilya's armpit. Ilya's hands immediately reach out to brush Shane's hair out of his forehead, carding the fine strands reverently through his fingers. 

The two of them lie there for what feels like forever. Ilya stares up at the cavernous home, the impossibly tall ceiling, in actual shock. Shane is panting on top of him, boneless and nonverbal. 

"Shane," Ilya says, breaking the silence, just because he has to. He feels cracked open. 

Shane says something muffled into his armpit. He's avoiding eye contact with Ilya, and considering that Ilya feels a little vulnerable himself, he lets him. 

"What?" Ilya asks. He sounds hoarse. Maybe he'd been screaming out in pleasure the entire time Shane was down there, and now his voice is shot. He didn't notice. He had other things to think about.

Shane looks up. He wears Ilya's favorite expression on him, where his brown eyes, wide and serious, give Ilya all the devotion, want, and desire Ilya had been missing—everything he didn't get that he now needs to feel whole. 

"I said," Shane says, in a thin voice, "Okay." 

Shane gazes up at him, precious in how he's wrapped in the protection of Ilya's arms. 

He looks like he's handing Ilya his heart on a silver platter. "I'll go with you tonight." 

****

Ilya greets Monaco like an old friend. 

The last time he was here, he was twenty-one and arm candy of a model much more famous than him. The night of the Grand Prix, people of celebrity, industry, and wealth had milled around, carefree and relaxed, as an entire city-state catered to their every want of beauty, glamor, and luxury. 

Now, he has Shane. His boyfriend is in a suit that Ilya yanked off the rack on the way here. It is a little oversized, but Shane wears it well, with his sleeves rolled back, shirt tucked and tapered at the triangle of his waist, the fabric slouching stylishly off his shoulders. 

Shane is currently holding onto the cuff of Ilya's Alexander McQueen button down, the nervous touch hidden just out of view as a security guard leads the two of them through a dark, ornate tunnel below the casino. The guard doesn't entertain conversation, he doesn't ask their names. He's paid to not question the who or why of the people in front of him. 

They board an elevator, just as extravagant as the underground corridor they entered in. The three of them ride in silence for a very long time. 

The doors open, and Shane actually gasps. 

"Holy shit," Shane says. 

Having spent the past ten minutes in the dark, the gigantic ballroom, decorated entirely in diamonds and gold, nearly blinds the two of them. 

Chandeliers, elevated high from a domed glass ceiling, spray light across rich blue walls and life-sized canvases of Biblical and medieval art. When they exit, Ilya has to push Shane forward to stop him from staring up at the gold detailing the expansive skylight. 

"Your friends will be in the room down the hall," the security guard says. He is unphased by the sight. 

Ilya thanks him. The guard nods, and heads back down to the ground floor without another word. 

Shane tries to let go of Ilya's shirtsleeve, but before he can drop his hand Ilya reclaims it authoritatively, wrapping their fingers and palms together as he drags Shane down the hall with him. 

With Shane's hand in his, Ilya knocks once, twice, before the heavy wooden door to the casino's private rooms swings open. 

Devin Hornett, in all his 200-meter glory, stares down at the two of them. 

He cuts an intimidating figure. The mirage disappears however when his face busts open into a huge smile. 

"Roz, you fucking mother fucker." 

Ilya casually drops Shane's hand to dap Hornett up. Hornett pulls him in into a manly hug after, bumping their shoulders together. Shane stares at the two of them, baffled. 

"Hornett," Ilya says, slipping easily into the persona he adopts when he's around straight men. "Disappointing Boston without me?" 

"Fuck you asshole," Hornett says. He slaps Ilya hard between the shoulder blades, "What did I say before you got here? Keep Boston business outta your mouth." 

"Boston sucks at hockey now," Ilya says lightly. They do, though not as much as Ottawa does. "It can't also suck at basketball, the city cannot handle the heartbreak." 

"Oh," Hornett laughs, "Now you care about breakin' Boston's heart." 

He glances at Shane. He doesn't ask who Shane is, or question who he is to Ilya. He just gives him a nod, and sticks his hand out. 

"Hey. Name's Devin." 

"Shane," Shane says, shaking his hand.

"You a hockey player like Roz?"

Shane nods. 

"Coo." Hornett moves to dap him up, but maybe he sees Shane start to panic as he does, so he just transitions to a normal fist bump. 

Shane bumps him. With that, Hornett moves, and leads them inside. 

The decadence amplifies itself when they enter the casino's private room—the go-to way for celebrities to gamble with a lot of money without being bothered. The room looks like the designers managed to fit a miniature ballroom inside another ballroom. The air is thick and foggy, turned bright and spotted as yet another giant, diamond chandelier throws white light all around the walls, the smoke. Women, elegantly dressed, are giggling to the side, drinks and cigarettes in their hands, and men, gathered around a large poker table, suck on fat Cuban cigars, white and black chips littered all across the green felt. Bottles of wine, champagne, and hard liquor sit in melting buckets across various tables, some untouched, some completely wiped. 

Evening has kicked off in Monaco.

Shane has Ilya's shirt sleeve pinched discretely between his two fingers again, as Ilya leads them around the room. He first says hi to Hornett's girl Jesamine, giving her a friendly peck on the cheek as she slaps his arm hard, admonishing him the same way her boyfriend did—why the fuck didn't you tell anyone you were leaving Boston?! Instead of answering her, Ilya introduces her to Shane, to which she envelops him into a warm hug. From there, she introduces the two of them to her friend Pia, who Ilya thinks he recognizes from Instagram—one of those girls that get paid outrageous amounts of money to pose in front of expensive brands for social media. 

There's a fat rock sitting on Pia's ring finger. 

Ilya nudges Jesamine, gesturing toward the poker table. "Buy-in?" 

Jesamine scoffs, "1k per hand right now. Still early I guess." 

Ilya hears Shane suck in a shocked breath behind him. 

The last time Ilya found himself in a private room like this, he'd been snorting coke off to the side with his model girlfriend and her friends. There were men, just like now, smoking cigars in deathly silence, as each hand wiped 20,000-40,000 Euros in net worth between all of them. In a fit of drug-induced fancy, Ilya had played a few hands, laughing joyously every time dumb luck won him more and more money. Ilya, with only a few plays, had wracked up 100,000 Euros in winnings when one of the men finally lunged at Ilya, threatening him with violence if he tried to leave. 

Ilya smiles fondly at the memory when he claps Shane on the shoulder, "We should play." 

Shane shoots him a scared look. "No way," Shane hisses. "I've only ever played with friends at bars." 

"Is just like that. Come on," Ilya smiles at him, dangerously, "Don't you want a chance to make me lose money?" 

Shane still looks unsure, "Maybe I can just hang out with the girls—" 

"Hey!" Ilya shouts, in the general direction of the men. Their heads all jerk up, startled and suspicious. Ilya pulls out a fat stack of Euros and throws it on the table. "Deal us in." 

No one moves, apprehensive of this intruder, until Hornett nods at one of his friends, who lets the dealer bring them into the fold.  

It only takes a few hands for Ilya to realize that he has created a monster. 

It turns out, Shane is very good at poker. 

Ilya doesn't know what exactly it is. Maybe it's his tendency to speak in a polite monotone when he's around strangers. Maybe it's the fact that Shane has an unbelievably good poker face, the one that he keeps carefully blank for the cameras turned on in full force at the table. Either way, Ilya watches in horror as Shane obviously bluffs his way through a $5,000 hand.

Shane stares at the last man standing, across the table, narrowing his eyes. With a smile, he raises. 

The businessman Shane's fleecing swears, angry, and throws in the towel.

Shane stands up, unable to hide the smug look on his face. He sweeps an outrageous amount of chips over to his side of the table. 

An hour goes by, two hours. Hornett backs away from the table with a laugh after losing another 1,000 euro hand to Shane. He joins the girls, slinging a mournful arm around his girlfriend. Ilya stays next to Shane, as men's jaws set, glaring daggers at this Canadian do-gooder who keeps taking more and more of their money. 

Watching Shane for the past two hours, Ilya realizes what it actually is—Shane has no tell. It's like he's trained the response out of himself. Shane's winning streak gets so ridiculous that the girls start to saunter over, taking sentry behind the men they came with, and gasping in awe, laughing in disbelief. 

"Oh my god," Pia gasps, "That's all his?!" 

The men look like they want to kill Shane. They deal another hand, and very quickly, people's faces pale, and they all either fold or call to only to drop out after a couple rounds. 

Only Ilya stays in. 

He stares Shane down. Dance as old as time. Like the other men at the table, Ilya's lost a lot of money to Shane. 

Shane raises. 

Ilya matches. 

Shane laughs to himself. They reveal their cards. 

Ilya, Three of a Kind. 

Shane, a High Ace. 

The room explodes in an uproar, as they realize Shane raised the pot to almost $8k on a fucking high card. Ilya pushes his winnings over to his side, smirking, the only victor in the poker hurricane of Shane Hollander. 

"These guys are fucking cheating us!" one of the men shout. Hornett, who still has his arm slung over his girlfriend, laughs. 

"Don't be a sore loser man. Just because Shane plays the game with some damn balls doesn't mean he's a cheat," Hornett shouts. 

The men start arguing, loudly, with each other, with an unresponsive Ilya and Shane. Shane leans over to Ilya, laughing in disbelief at the amount of chips sitting in front of them. "Hey," Shane says, eyes sparkling. His shoe just touches the tip of Ilya's. "You called my bluff. We should cash out." 

Now, when Ilya cashes them out, motioning to a floor supervisor to take the chips downstairs, he thinks maybe Shane routed his winnings to a bank or something. 

But when the supervisor comes back, she plops three tightly bundled 500 euro notes stacked on top of each other. Before Shane can even count it, Ilya yanks it excitedly out of Shane's hands, laughing in disbelief. He flips through the money once, twice. 

"Oh my god," Ilya says, eyes wide. "This is 50,000 Euros in cash." 

"No fucking way," Jesamine gasps. When she sees the cash in Ilya's hands, her laughter echoes, loud and infectious. She jabs Pia to get her attention, "Pia you have to come look at this." 

"Holy hell." 

"He got all that from fucking poker?!" Hornett shouts. 

Shane stares at his winnings, equally as astounded. In a shaky voice, he says, "I just felt like the Euro to Canadian dollar conversion rate was really terrible, so I just told them to give it to me all in cash—" Shane says. He keeps flipping through the stack in bewilderment. "I didn't think it would come out to this much money." 

Ilya can't respond, because he can't stop laughing. Shane just looks so ridiculous. He slings a companionable arm around Shane, who stares at his fat stack of cash in horror. 

"Ilya," Shane says, turning to him. Ilya's arm is still slung around his shoulder, so the movement brings their faces closer together. Shane stares him down, deadly serious, "I don't need 50,000 Euros in cash. The tax paperwork is actually going to be a fucking nightmare if I take this back to Canada."

Ilya's smile only grows, when he pieces together what he thinks Shane is proposing. "Then what do you want to do?" 

"I think…" Shane tries the words out, as if he can't believe he's saying them, "I think we have to spend it all. Tonight." 

****

In an attempt to soothe hurt feelings, Shane buys everyone dinner. A pack of about fifteen or so people, all within semi-to-notable positions of industry and celebrity, crash through the door of a ridiculously expensive Michelin-starred French-Mediterranean restaurant, startling a room full of patrons. Shane, in calm, even French, over the pandemonium behind him, asks the hostess if there's any possible way the restaurant could figure out a way to seat everyone. 

Shane's either very charming, or maybe, by the wide-eyed stare in the hostess' eyes, she might even recognize who he is. Because even though it's midnight, with dinner rush showing no sign of slowing, she leads the group to the very back of a restaurant, at a long banquet table where they host private events. 

Ilya sits next to Shane the entire time. He eats dinner, he catches up with Hornett and Jesamine, he meets new people, actresses or athletes he didn't recognize until now. Ilya is charming in a way he's forgotten he could be, the natural muscle of talking and meeting new people.

It helps that he looks really fucking good. He chats with the executive sitting across from him about the business of hockey, but underneath the table, he brushes his ankle against Shane's leg, pushing his sock down so he can meet skin. He watches Shane blush out of the corner of his eye. 

Shane tips the wait staff double what the dinner cost. People are still eating, drinking the wine Shane bought them, when Pia and Jesamine slide up to him. 

"Hey," Pia says, "We should ditch this place. Go somewhere fun." 

"Uh—" Shane looks at Ilya for direction. Ilya raises an eyebrow, and he nudges his head to the persistently fat stack of cash Shane has tucked in his blazer pocket. Ilya doesn't let up the gentle pressure against the side of Shane's leg, Ilya now nudging the cuffs of Shane's suit pants higher so Ilya can press their calves together. 

Shane clears his throat, and Ilya smiles, delighted at his breathlessness. "Sure, where?"

Hornett, Jesamine, and Pia pile into Jesamine's limo after Ilya and Shane. The trio drags along another girl and her much uglier boyfriend, who they'd deemed worthy to join. 

It had finally gotten dark, the last of the summer sun suppressed by night. In the black, the city-state comes alive in a field of yellow-gold lights, beaconing all who deem themselves worthy to bathe in its riches.

Staring at the window, Ilya realizes, his fingers just close enough to Shane's for plausible deniability, that he's never done this—partying, sober. With Shane next to him, his head resting against the limo's seat, Ilya smiles. It's like his most ridiculous dream came true. A night of partying, danger, and thrill, all with Shane by his side. It is so much better than what he used to do, which was burying his sorrows in drink, drugs, and women, sometimes in an attempt to forget his past, more often, in an attempt to forget Shane.  

"Hey," Pia pulls out her clutch. She whips out a metal tin full of ecstasy as casually as she would a tube of lipstick.  "Do you guys want any?" 

"Wait, what is that?" Shane asks, before Ilya can stop him. Ilya can't help but burst out laughing next to him. Very quickly Hornett, the girls, and the random boyfriend join in, but Ilya quickly shoots them all a glare before they make Shane feel too awkward.  

"Ecstasy," Ilya explains, turning back to his clueless fucking boyfriend. "You seriously never seen before?" 

"What does it do?" Shane says, eyes trained on the pills outstretched in Pia's hand. 

"It just makes you really happy, I guess is the best way to put it?" Pia says, "It makes dancing feel fucking awesome. You feel like, very one with everyone around you. It just wipes every bad thought you have in your brain."

"It makes you feel sooo good," the random girl beside them says. "I swear." 

"Like," Shane wets his lips. "How good?"

"Oh," Pia laughs. Her dark eyes have a glint to them. "So good."

Shane looks deeply unsure, but his eyes don't leave Pia's outstretched hand. "I don't know, I don't want to get in trouble with the league—" 

Ilya cuts in, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Except it's off season," he says, just to stir shit. 

It would make his evening, no, his entire life, if he can get Canada's golden boy to do fucking drugs. 

Shane frowns. "Yeah," Shane says, emphatically, "But when they drug test us once the season starts—" 

"Molly's gone from your system after two to seven days," Hornett informs him. Shane whips around, surprised, as Hornett raises his hands up, as if in surrender.  "Hey, no peer pressure or nothing, but I'm just lettin' you know. Like, if the stiffs are the only reason you aren't doing it, don't let them hold you back, you know?"

"I think the only thing is," Jesamine chimes in, always the more levelheaded one of them during nights out. "If you do want to take it, drink a lot of water. Taking care of yourself the night of helps with the comedown in the morning." 

Shane still doesn't look convinced. But Pia shrugs, "Hey, no pressure, but if you want it later, just let me know okay?" With that, she hands a pill to Jesamine, and then to the girl next to them. The three of them giggle, conspiratorily. 

And then— 

Jesamine places the pill on her tongue, as does Pia. Then, they turn to each other, still laughing, when they lean in and start making out with each other. 

Ilya laughs, and leans his head back against the seat. He's been to too many of these things to care that much about girls doing drugs and kissing each other—that shit is as old as time. Hornett however, whoops, excitedly, as does the girl's random unnamed boyfriend, staring at them like a dog in heat. 

What surprises Ilya is when he turns around, Shane's staring at them too. 

His hands are fisted in the material of his suit pants, mouth parted in interest. This is bizarre enough for Ilya to jerk his head up, narrowing his eyes in disbelief, when he catches what Shane is actually looking at. 

The two girls roll their tongues together, passing the tablets between each other's mouths. Pia pulls away from Jesamine, resting her head against her forehead for a minute, the two embracing and giggling against each other's lips. Pia then separates from Jesamine, and does the same thing to the other girl, nails clinging to each other's faces as Pia then passes Jesamine's original pill into the other girl's mouth. They all laugh, staring into each other's eyes when they separate. 

When the three of them are done, the random boyfriend lets out a salacious whistle. 

"Damn! When's our turn?" 

"Fuck off, freak," Pia says, and meaning it too. She's a giving host however, and pops her clutch open to offer the drugs to the men. 

Hornett and the boyfriend pop them into their mouths. They do not kiss. Ilya, while Shane's busy shifting uncomfortably in his seat, swipes a tablet when he isn't looking. 

The nightclub, which advertises itself as a celebrity hotspot, hasn't changed much, even after eight years. The wealth pouring into it maintains it in amber. The second they pull up, the bouncer locks eyes with Jesamine and Pia, and lets their group skip the long line of people, pulling the rope aside to welcome them in. 

The pounding bass, the flashing pink lights, the wave of sweat slamming into him—they all remind Ilya inappropriately of the night he saw Shane dancing with Rose Landry. This makes him feel especially covetous of Shane now, as his boyfriend trails behind Ilya diligently, looking intimidated but not overwhelmed. His hand is loosely fisted in Ilya's expensive shirt, so he doesn't get lost in the crush of bodies. 

Ilya nudges him off, and unbuttons his shirt so it hangs open. Ilya then steps over confidently toward Shane, and with a firm tug, peels Shane out of his blazer, handing it off to coat check. This just leaves Shane, his white shirt half unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up his forearms, blinking up at Ilya with unfocused eyes. 

Ilya wants to devour him. Instead, he turns, taps Hornett on the shoulder. "Hey!" he shouts, "I have to take a leak. I'll catch up to you guys, yeah?" 

Hornett nods, "The girls say they got a table up on the balcony! We'll be easy to spot, or," he laughs, gesturing to his height. "I'll be easy to spot, at least." 

Ilya claps him on the back, affirmative, and with that out of the way, he wraps his hand around Shane's wrist. If Shane protests he doesn't hear it, as he drags him through the crowd, through the bar and lounge, his path guided only by the briefest flashes of neon lights and muscle memory from his early twenties. Following the labyrinthian path through the club, he locates the same private bathroom that, six years ago, he and his model girlfriend defiled after doing a shit ton of drugs. 

He slams on the door once, twice. He doesn't hear anything. He glances around, making sure everyone looks otherwise occupied.

He opens the door, shoves Shane inside it. He follows, closing and locking the door behind him. 

Shane stands in the middle of this bathroom,  watching Ilya, as if unsure of his next move. He looks like he's not sure if something bad is going to happen to him or not. Music pounds, people shout, muffled through the door, reminding the two of them of what's at stake. 

Ilya pulls the pill he swiped from his pocket. 

Shane gasps, pupils dark. 

"I saw the way you watched the girls," Ilya drawls. Slowly, he walks toward Shane, sliding one hand on his hip, just underneath his shirt, so he can smooth his thumb against Shane's skin. He backs him up against the bathroom wall, and Shane looks up at him with wide, hungry eyes, the way he did when he was a kid, like Ilya had the key to every good feeling in the world. "You're curious, aren't you?" 

"I—" Shane tries to find his words. "I've never done drugs." 

Ilya scoffs. "No one is surprised by that." 

"I shouldn't," Shane says, but his eyes tell Ilya he really, really wants to. He wants Ilya to kiss him, fuck him, and he wants to feel good. Shane pants, hot and confused, as Ilya squeezes his hips, just because he can. "I shouldn't do drugs with you in a club bathroom." 

"You shouldn't," Ilya smiles. He inches closer, "But you want to." 

Ilya brushes a knee in between Shane's legs, and Shane whines. Shane's been wanting it since the limo, maybe even earlier, since the casino, when Ilya had taught him the rules of a dangerous new world that Shane could win. 

"Come on," he says. He grinds his thigh slowly against Shane's crotch, so he can watch Shane's eyes darken, in the low light of the ornate bathroom. He leans in, so his lips brush against Shane's ear. "Don't you trust me to know how to make you feel good?" 

Shane whimpers, lips parting as he gasps, riding into the muscle of Ilya's thigh. As he does, Ilya slowly pulls away, watching Shane the entire time, looking completely debauched in the low light of the bathroom. Then, Ilya places the pill, right in the middle of his own tongue. 

Ilya's about to inch forward, and capture Shane's lips, but before Ilya can even move, Shane lunges and drags Ilya into a hungry kiss. 

Shane grabs at him like he's starving, moaning loudly into Ilya's mouth when their lips make contact. Ilya slowly wraps his tongue around Shane's, his hands squeezing Shane's hips to still him into calm. As he does, he flits the pill into Shane's mouth, unable to resist playing around with Shane a little as he makes Shane chase him for what he wants. Shane suddenly yanks him closer, as with an insistent gasp his tongue drags Ilya back into his mouth.

Shane takes the ecstasy with him as, with one, hard swallow, he claims what Ilya has given him. 

Ilya separates then, but Shane chases after Ilya's lips, desperate and hard. Ilya smirks, taking one hand off Shane's hips to cup his chin, squeezing his cheeks a little between his fingers. 

Shane goes pliant, as if his body is recalling another memory—of Ilya, at nineteen, mean and angry, just wanting to reach out and hurt something, making Shane beg Ilya to suck his dick on the floor of a dirty bathroom. 

"Good boy," Ilya murmurs, and at that Shane whines, his boner straining in his suit pants. "You are always so good at taking what I give you." 

"Will you take care of me if something bad happens?" Shane asks, in a small voice. 

Ilya tightens his grip on Shane's face. "I won't let anything bad happen to you," Ilya says, fiercely protective.

All Ilya wants to do is fuck Shane in this bathroom. But he knows that Shane would hate it, that, with so many people around, they would be taking things too far. The Shane right now, of course, horny and desperate to be touched, would let Ilya do whatever he wanted with him. But Ilya's talking about the Shane he's going to go home to, with his spinning brain and "serious consequences," and machinations for them to swan into their forever with as little trouble as possible. 

"Ilya," Shane whimpers. "Ilya—" 

"Not here," Ilya hisses. "Do as I say. You are going to leave the bathroom first, and you are going to stand outside, by the hallway. Do not move, do not talk to anyone. I will wait here for five minutes, and I will come out and find you." Shane seems to be sinking into the feeling of Ilya, so Ilya forces his head up by his chin, giving Shane a firm squeeze. Shane yelps, but it seems to at least bring Shane to reality. "Say you understand." 

"I understand," Shane gasps. 

Ilya smiles. He fixes Shane's shirt collar, petting the back of Shane's hair, matted with a thin sheen of sweat. "Now go." 

Shane stumbles, wobbling on weak legs, out the door. He turns back to look at Ilya, as the nightclub's flashing lights threaten to swallow him whole. Then, as if psyching himself up, he turns, and closes the door behind him. 

****

Shane is high. 

"I am high," Shane yells in Ilya's ear. 

Ilya's been tasked with holding onto Shane's ridiculous amount of cash, so every time a bottle girl comes over, Ilya stops and buys from her, tipping her double, especially when one of them comes over with the expensive kind of vodka Ilya rarely gets to drink. 

He knows the psychiatrist warned him not to drink on his medication, but Ilya can't understand how these doctors expect anyone to feel better after giving them medicine that won't let them get hard or let them drink.

So he drinks a little. Not a lot, as he finds his brain gets dizzy quickly. The girls, Hornett, and the random boyfriend are getting trashed however, as bottle after bottle gets cleared away. Shane's leaning hard into Ilya's arm, and Ilya does a commendable job holding him upright so he doesn't do something like nuzzle into his neck in front of everyone. Ilya doesn't let him drink anything. 

"I'm done sitting here!" Jesamine shouts. She drags Pia, the random girl, and then points to Ilya and Shane, "Come dance with us!" 

They teleport to the dance floor. Ilya watches as Shane closes his eyes, a giddy smile spreading across his face, as the bass starts to thunder in their ears. It's a feeling Ilya used to chase every time he went out when he was younger—complete and total oblivion. 

Very quickly, Shane and Ilya find themselves surrounded by three girls, all model height, backed by a literal basketball player and his equally tall friend. Ilya smirks, pleased with himself, as they all circle around them like an unconsciously protective shield. 

Giving Ilya the privacy he needs to stare, hungrily, at Shane dancing. 

Ilya has unfortunately seen Shane dance before—it's all jerky movements, self-conscious eyes darting around, hands shoved in pockets. But, with a little chemical help, Shane has completely loosened up. Shane runs a hand through his hair, bangs flopping into his eyes, as he turns to Ilya, shooting him a borderline seductive smile.

In the safety of their human shields, Shane hooks his fingers into Ilya's belt loops. 

Everyone none the wiser, with their eyes closed, jumping, hands waving, in time to music. 

Shane, his pupils blown, presses himself just a little bit closer to Ilya, nearing him with a blissed out smile. It's the expression Shane has after Ilya's fucked his brains out, except they are in public, just two out of hundreds of bodies, writhing and throwing themselves at the mercy of the frenetic music charging in the background. 

Ilya really wants to kiss him. He doesn't have the self control to stop himself. He yanks Shane closer, about to lean in, everybody be fucking damned. 

But then Shane does the job for him when he leans in, without even glancing around to see if anyone's looking at him, and presses his lips, for the briefest of seconds, against Ilya's neck. 

Shane separates from him, laughing a little, as he probably sees the sharp and sudden desire reflected on Ilya's face. Before Ilya can grab him, turn him around and force him to grind his ass against Ilya's crotch, Shane lets Jesamine and Pia drag him into a drugged-out girl sandwich. 

"Holy shit, you are so cute!" Pia shouts. Ilya's about to tell her to back the fuck off, except her pupils are completely blown, and she squeezes his cheeks, like she's looking at a particularly cute baby. 

"What's your skincare routine?!" Jesamine shouts, "Your skin is so soft and smooth!" 

"My Asian genes I think!" Shane yells over the music. Jesamine and Pia laugh. Shane reaches out, and also touches their faces with both his hands. "You two have beautiful and soft skin too!" 

"It's the melanin!" The two of them shout at the exact same time, and the three of them press their foreheads together and start crowing in laughter.

"I love you guys!" Shane shouts. 

"No we love you more!" the girls yell back. 

Ilya must be pouting, because Shane, all tangled up in this girl huddle, looks over at him and reaches out, dragging him into the pile. "Hey, say I love you too Rozanov," Shane says to the girls, still laughing. 

"We love you too Rozanov!" the girls say. This catches the attention of Hornett and the random unnamed boyfriend and his random unnamed girlfriend. 

"Yo!!!" Hornett is completely wasted. "Love you Roz!" 

"We love you Roz!!!" Everyone yells at once, just loud enough over the music. Ilya, despite himself, can't help but blush. 

"You guys are wasted," Ilya says dryly. He's never been the most sober person on a night out. 

After dancing for another two hours, Jesamine and Pia unilaterally decide its time to take this party somewhere else. 

So Jesamine's limo pulls up again, and their group piles into the car, wobbly and wasted. Ilya wants to smoke, so he politely asks Jesamine's permission to open the skylight so he can stick his head out. Jesamine, completely blasted, of course lets him. 

Ilya sticks his head and body out of the limo skylight, as the car rushes down the main road. His feet balance precariously on the limo's seats, just managing to light his cigarette without falling as the midnight air cools him into a rare sense of peace. He stares up at the stars, feeling himself relax into the warm hug of nicotine, when Shane worms his way up, also poking out of the roof of the car, cheeks flushed with exertion and chemical rush. 

"Are you having fun?" Ilya says, smirking. Shane watches the golden city-state fly by with wonder, his brain stimulated to pure euphoria as he flies with his head and body out the roof of a limo. Monaco, from the buildings, to the boats, bobbing out at sea, comes alive with the sound of people, the distant, shrieking thrum of club music, and the thrilling chase of glamor. 

"Every night you went out," Shane shouts, over the wind. "Did you feel like this every time?"

Ilya takes another drag of his cigarette. Below, he hears the driver shouting at them to sit back down. "Is much better," Ilya says, quieter. "When I do not spend the entire night trying to forget how much I miss you." 

This puts a stupid smile on Shane's face. But before he can say anything more, Shane gets dragged back into the limo. Ilya also feels someone grab at his ankles, so he lets himself get pulled down, flopping down next to Hornett and Jesamine, as Shane falls down next to Pia, her friend, and her friend's boyfriend.

Ilya puts out his cigarette. He doesn't take his eyes off Shane.

Even though it's now 3 a.m., Hornett drags them to a yacht party one of his NFL buddies is throwing. Pia makes a face at mention of the NFL, and asks if this is a normal yacht party or a scary yacht party. Hornett says that they wouldn't be caught dead at a "scary yacht party," and to please never invite him or Jesamine to one. 

It's a normal yacht party, except there are ten times the drugs out in the open than at the nightclub. Also, with a thicker veneer of privacy, Ilya's eyes widen as he sees celebrities, businessmen, and other people of note doing things they'd never do in polite society. For example, Ilya sees a prominent NBA player making out with a famous actor and another girl, even though everyone involved is definitely married. He turns his head, and he sees a 21-year-old teen heartthrob snort coke off another girl's body. A CEO throws up neon purple over the side of the boat, and as Ilya walks further, piles of people, indistinguishable from each other, kiss and touch each other, debauched and uncaring as they completely shed their public personas in the safe haven of money and power. 

So after a while, it doesn't seem that overindulgent to find Shane, who is standing at the bow of the yacht, blazer shrugged back on over his shoulders, and link their hands together.

The pollution from the golden city, the raucous shouting and partying from the yachts lining the water, turn the pristine blue sea into a multi-color miasma of hedonism. 

"Hey," Ilya says. 

"Hey," Shane says, softly. He has a bottle of water twisted in his right hand.

"We should ditch soon," Ilya says. "This place sucks." 

Shane snorts. "I agree." 

"How are you feeling?" Ilya asks. Shane looks at him, gives him a reassuring smile. 

"I feel good," Shane says, and he means it. "How much money do we have left?" 

Ilya pulls the packet of cash from where he kept it tucked against his breastbone. He peeks in, flips through it, "10k." Ilya says, laughing to himself. 

Shane sighs, "Jesus Christ." 

Ilya claps him on the back, "Give it to the Reynauds. As thanks for their hospitality." 

Shane huffs, "That's not a bad idea." 

Shane glances at his lips, looks back up into Ilya's eyes. There's a flash of emotion on Shane's face as he cups Ilya's cheek, touch lingering before he drops his hand. Shane then turns his head around, trying to be casual about it. But Ilya knows what he's checking for. Ilya clears the perimeter much faster than him, and when he doesn't see anyone he drags Shane in. Their faces, this close together, brings attention to how blown Shane's pupils still are. Ilya tips Shane toward him, meeting him with a deep, longing kiss, one that he's been craving all night. 

They separate after a moment, but they don't stop holding each other. 

"Thank you for coming with me," Ilya says, against Shane's lips.

Shane smiles, leaning his forehead against Ilya's. "I had fun." 

They lean in again, reaching for each other. They keep kissing, out in front of the open water, as an improbable, fantastical night closes in all around them. 

**** 

Jesamine gets her driver to drop them off. She, Hornett, and Pia stay on the boat—always chasing an eternal party.

Ilya embraces Hornett and Jesamine. The two of them envelop him into a tight three-way hug.

"Bro," Hornett says, a little mournfully, "You gotta hit us up more often."

"Svetlana too," Jesamine says, squeezing Ilya's arm, "We really miss you both. We need to all get together again sometime, it's been too long." They all separate, and Jesamine smacks Ilya on the shoulder. "And make sure Shane follows us all back on Insta." 

Ilya promises to do all of that, even though he's sure, just like before, it'll probably be another year or two before they try to hang out again. He'll definitely make sure Shane follows them back however. After he says goodbye to the two of them, he swings over to Pia, who is showing Shane something on her phone. 

Ilya peeks over. 

Shane has a small smile on his face, fond and surprised, as Pia shows him a carousel of photos she plans to post from tonight. The most prominent ones front-loading the post are just her looking hot, but as she swipes through Ilya sees a photo with the entire group, laughing joyously as they all pile into the limo. There's another photo of Shane, Ilya, and Jesamine, posing together during dinner. Toward the back, a photo of Shane, Ilya, and the rest, dancing—their heads are all turned away, candid, so no one can see that they are all high as fuck. 

Then, finally, a photo of Shane and Ilya. Maybe during dinner. Hornett and Jesamine are in the background, but the light brings the two of them into the fore, Shane's eyes sparkling as Ilya talks excitedly to someone off camera. 

"You're cool if I post this?" Pia asks. She looks up at Ilya too. 

Shane glances up at her, and Pia looks a little taken aback. Ilya watches as she, like a lot of people before her, get overwhelmed by the depth of Shane's gratitude, as well as the sincerity of his smile. It makes most people, cynical to the world, lurch in their step. 

"Of course," Shane says. Then, out of nowhere, he hugs her, and Pia, looking unused to this level of emotion and affection, slowly but surely embraces him back. "Thank you for everything."

****

They go back to the villa. Shane spends the remainder of his high making out with Ilya in their makeshift bed, before he passes out just as the sun is about to rise. 

Ilya decides to cut his losses and skip sleeping all together, opting instead to sit outside, staring out at the skyline, itching for a cigarette but forcing himself to not reach for one. 

They go home tomorrow. It feels like a death sentence. 

He wallows in self-pity for what feels like hours, before he decides the sun has inched to an appropriate height to cook breakfast. 

Shane's dead to the world. It's noon and he still hasn't moved, flopped face-down into their makeshift bed, even despite the noise. A couple times while he sleeps, Ilya pokes him just to make sure he is still alive. Shane grumbles and swats him away, pulling the pillow over his head so he can block out the sunlight. Bored, Ilya lays down next to him for a while, curling Shane into his chest. This Shane reacts well to, burying his face into the thin material of Ilya's shirt and passing out again. 

Ilya closes his eyes too, letting Shane lull him into sleep. 

They both don't wake up until 3 p.m.

When Ilya opens his eyes, Shane is sitting upright in a kitchen chair. His hair is wet, and he smells like he just showered. He has his sunglasses perched on his face, blocking out the sun, and he's devouring the breakfast Ilya made earlier with an uncharacteristic fervor, using the fork at first to cut up the egg, but deciding the process would be faster if he just used his hands and dropped the food into his open mouth.

It's a sloppiness and a hunger that Ilya had never seen from Shane, outside of sex. So Ilya has no choice but to sit, bleary-eyed, and watch. 

Shane turns, sucking his fingers clean. He jumps when he sees Ilya, sitting up and staring at him. 

"Jesus," Shane curses, "How long have you been awake?"

Ilya looks at Shane's sunglasses, his empty plate, scraped clean. "Hungover?" 

Shane laughs, dryly. "My head hurts." He jabs his fork in Ilya's direction, "Sex. Drugs. Partying," Shane says, his lips quirked into a smile. "All three I know now because of you." 

Ilya snorts, He stretches, feels his joints pop, and stands up, walking over to the kitchen counter. "Only three things make life worth living. I introduce them all to you." Ilya says, picking up Shane's plate, "You're welcome." 

There's a bout of silence, as Ilya does the rest of the dishes. He can't help but feel relieved. Shane doesn't look horrified at what transpired last night. In fact, it sounded like he enjoyed it. It sounded like he had fun.

The morning after still feels debauched, with last night feeling like foreplay, fucking, and climax all in one. Similar to sex, in the aftermath, Shane looks destroyed and seems to like it. 

He's about to ask Shane what he'd like to do with their last day of freedom, when Shane fixes Ilya with a serious look. 

Shane looks like he needs to tell Ilya something. 

"Please don't be mad," Shane says, words tripping over each other. His sunglasses hide his eyes, so Ilya can't read Shane's expression. Ilya's stomach sinks, his good mood popping like a balloon. He has a guess as to what this could be about. Ottawa. His brain. His meds. His obsession with dying. Shane can pick his poison. 

Ilya just wishes they could've saved this conversation for when they got back. It had been nice pretending all week. He wanted one last day. 

Shane surprises him, however, when he brings none of these topics up. 

Instead, Shane reaches down, and pulls out a plain notebook. He slides it across the counter, so it skids right in front of Ilya. 

Frowning, his heart beating in his chest, Ilya picks up the notebook. He flips to the first page. 

At first, he has no idea what he's looking at. It just looks like the scribblings of a madman, all random arrows and circles flying in different directions. But as he flips further, seeing the same strange notations over and over, he realizes, with horror, what's in front of him. 

They are all Centaurs games. 

The losses all come back to Ilya like a bad memory. Every page lays out the formations, positionings, and shifts for what Shane must've believed was the turning point of almost every game The Centaurs have played this past season. Ilya sees himself, a blue X, marked in the center of every diagram, every play. 

The only difference is, as Ilya follows all the angry red lines scratched all over the page, these arrows trace alternate paths Ilya and The Centaurs did not take, that Shane thought could've saved them from losing. 

Ilya pauses on a recreation he recognizes immediately from Columbus. His most humiliating loss yet. There are Shane's red arrows, snaking all around the play, pushing the blue x that marks Ilya's spot on the ice to so many different corners Ilya's not even sure where Shane wanted him to end up. 

He looks up at his boyfriend, whose eyes are still hidden by those ridiculous sunglasses. 

Without saying a word, Ilya walks over to the sunlit windows that overlook the Mediterranean Sea. Shane watches as Ilya fumbles, and then finds the switch to draw the blinds. Ilya pulls a thick curtain over the cliffs, the sun, the sea, and plunges the house into darkness. 

He switches on the singular lamp by the den, so they can still see each other. The space awashes with an eerie yellow glow. 

Then he walks over, and pulls the sunglasses off Shane's face. He gets a sick pleasure in the act of revealing him. 

Maybe Shane was telling the truth when he said he felt okay. Or maybe he was just saying that to make Ilya feel better.

Or, maybe Shane couldn't stand to see himself look this destroyed. 

Because Shane's eyes are bloodshot. The bags underneath are a dark and vivid purple. The second the glasses come off, his hands shield his face, hiding from the glare of the meager lamplight. 

Ilya doesn't let the patheticness of the sight stop him. "Your words," Ilya says, slowly, evenly. He holds up the notebook Shane threw across the island. "I want to hear your words tell me what this is." 

Shane swallows. "They are your games," he says, simply. 

"I know that." Ilya snaps, sudden and angry. Shane looks defeated, as Ilya's fury rises. "Why did you write them down?" 

"I…" Shane closes his eyes. His fingers dig into his temples. "I kept going back and forth. Whether I wanted to show this to you." 

The more Ilya thinks about the notebook's contents, the more nauseating they seem to him. How many hours of Ilya's shitty play did Shane watch to come up with this? Did he just stare, rewinding over and over the same three seconds, watching Ilya humiliate himself over and over again? Not only that, then to write notes? Picking apart Ilya's swing, his shot, areas where it's too clear his frustration is getting the better of him? Moments when Ilya failed to use the ice to his advantage? Moments when Ilya passed to the wrong teammate?

And then what? Find ways he could make it better?

"All the losses this season," Ilya says, far away from himself, "The only way I lived with the embarrassment is because I thought you weren't watching." 

The greatest hockey player in recent history looks up at him, resigned, but not sorry. "I don't know why I started doing it—I just—fuck I just wanted to help? I guess?"

"Help?" Ilya laughs, horrified. "You? Help me?" 

"Yeah," Shane says, defiant, voice rising. "I know you. You would never open your mouth and fucking say it, but I could tell—there's no way you'd be this okay with losing this much. So one night, I was bored, and I pulled up one of your games, towards the middle of the season—" 

"Holy fuck," Ilya buries his head in his hands. This wasn't something Shane did on a whim. This was something he deliberated on, watching, recording, hiding this from him, for over half a year, "Holy fuck, I am going to kill myself—" 

Shane steamrolls over him, ignoring Ilya's interjections, "And I just started writing. Weaknesses in positioning, weaknesses in lines. Moments when your shot could've saved the point, moments where if you got to free ice, you could've turned the game around. Moments where I thought your teammates could be better utilized," he looks at Ilya, measuring him with tired, red eyes, "Where I thought you could be better utilized." 

"You fucking cut my balls off," Ilya shouts, disbelieving, "For lying about my stupid brain and my stupid medication, and you hide this from me?" 

"Look," Shane says, crossing his arms over his chest, "I knew how deranged it looked, so I tried to stop. I knew that if you ever saw me doing something like this, you'd never forgive me. But every time you were on, I couldn't help it. It's like my brain wouldn't let me do anything else. So I figured as long as you never knew about it, I could just keep going, get it out of my system, pretend it never happened." 

"And you show me now—" Ilya can't control his volume. He feels like he's back in the psychologist's office, blinded by rage. He feels like he's back in that horrible dream, where he shoves Shane down into the water, and doesn't let him come back up for air. "To what? Hurt me? To make me feel like shit?" He bares his teeth now, "To put me in my fucking place?" 

The angrier he gets, the calmer Shane looks in return. "No. I'm showing this to you now because you tell me you're miserable in Ottawa, you hate your team, and it seems all your worst fears about leaving Boston came true," his voice finally cracks, "And because of it, you are suicidal and take medication you hate to stay above water." 

Shane glances toward the book, clenched in an unforgiving fist in Ilya's hand. He takes a deep breath, and continues, "So, since we are going home tomorrow, I figured I'd show you what I saw. Because it might help you make The Centaurs a better team," he levels Ilya with a look, "It might help you win." 

Ilya doesn't even have to think about it. He takes the notebook, and dumps it in the trash. Shane doesn't react. In another jerking, angry motion, Ilya whips around, gets right up in Shane's face. Without warning he slams his fist by the kitchen counter, loud and violent, right by Shane's elbow. 

"I am not your student," Ilya snarls, meaning every word. "I am your fucking rival." 

Shane looks up at him, unphased. "No, you're my boyfriend, and I want to help you." 

"You fucking benched me!" Ilya laughs, hysterical, "I was better at you at fucking everything so you fucked me and made me love you and now you have no one who can fucking stop you! Shane fucking Hollander, the forever champion, because you killed the only competition who stood in your way!" 

Shane's eyes flash with deep hurt, and Ilya relishes in it. Fuck him. Fuck him. "You need to make up your mind," Shane says, evenly. "Do you blame me for Ottawa or not? You chose to go. You chose to give up Boston. You told me over and over it was your choice. You can only blame me so much before it gets pathetic." 

"It was my choice to go to Ottawa, but I went to Ottawa for you," Ilya bites. "And you don't even give a shit. You play the same hockey you always did. You win the points you always did. And is like the games I played with you didn't even matter as long as you got to have me." 

"Look," Shane says. His voice is tinged with desperation, "I get it. Ottawa was a mistake, okay? But the reality is you can't go back to Boston. Do you want to trade to another team?" 

Given Ilya's stony silence, Shane assumes it's a no, and continues, "So we made a choice so we can be together, and it turned out to be a bad one. I know you are paying for it, and it isn't fair, and I'm sorry. But like the ice, when you make a bad decision, the only thing you can do is adapt." 

"Easy for you to say," the retort is sharp and quick on his lips, "You stay great. You adapt to nothing." 

Shane's eyes harden. "Do you remember, last year, when you had your reservations about Ottawa, and you told me you were scared I wouldn't want you if you didn't know how to challenge me on the ice?" 

Ilya flushes in embarrassment. He hates everything that he's confessed to Shane that he can never take back. All these weaknesses, all these humiliating insecurities. Shane now knows all of them. "No," he snaps, even though he definitely does. 

Shane gives him a flat look, unimpressed. But he doesn't press Ilya on his lie. "Fine," he says. "I think with you—" 

Ilya cuts in, viciously, "What I remember is when you told me you would've never looked at me, would've never slept with me, if I wasn't at your level." 

Shane starts. Deep sadness and unbelievable hurt bleeds from his eyes. "That's what you got from that conversation?" Shane says, softly. 

"You hate losers," Ilya says, angry, "You think they are fucking pathetic. You think I am fucking pathetic. Is only reason you would do something like this," he jabs a finger to the trash can, where the horrible fucking notebook lay, "Show me something like this. Give an opponent advice. You would have never, ever done something like this if I played for Boston." 

"Quitters," Shane says, distant. 

Ilya frowns, "What?" 

"I don't hate losers," Shane says. "We are hockey players—everyone is either a winner or a loser. You've been both, I've been both," he sighs. 

Shane is doing some English language bullshit Ilya doesn't have the patience for. "Don't say stupid shit you don't mean because you pity me," Ilya snarls. 

Shane ignores Ilya's interjection again, his eyes seeing something beyond Ilya's head. "Losers are better than winners in a way," he says, voice distant, "Because they need it more."

When Shane turns, and looks back at Ilya, the yellow light of the den sets his brown eyes ablaze.

"So yeah, what I actually hate, more than anything, are quitters," Shane says, the disgust in his voice entirely earnest, "People who aren't even in the game." 

Ilya finds himself stunned into silence. Shane lets him sit in it, chew on the meaning of his words. Ilya's only reaction is to clear his throat, aggressive. "I am not a quitter," he snaps. 

Shane's demeanor cracks open with warmth when he shoots Ilya a helpless, lopsided smile. "I know you're not." 

"I am not taking shit from your stupid fucking notebook," Ilya says, instantly.

"Fine," Shane says, "Then pick one." 

"What?" Ilya says again, this time a lot more exasperated. 

"You either let me help you with hockey, or you let me help you find a better doctor. You need to pick one." 

Ilya stares at Shane in disbelief. He gapes at his boyfriend, at his fucking audacity. "And if I don't pick?" 

Shane smiles at him placidly, "You will." 

Ilya laughs. He finds that once he starts, he can't stop. He laughs at the fact that he's in France with Shane Hollander. He laughs at the fact he's Shane Hollander's boyfriend. He laughs at the fact that he gave up Moscow for a better life, only to end up in fucking Ottawa. 

His life is completely unrecognizable from what he imagined for himself.

When he finally finishes, he wipes tears from his eyes. He looks up at Shane. He wonders if the glow dulls, after someone lifts the cup so many times over their head. He wonders if records mean anything anymore, when you are your only competition.

"I am your rival," Ilya repeats himself. "I am your equal. I am the only one in the league who can knock you off your throne," his smirk is vicious, "Who can end your fucking dynasty." 

And for the first time all year, the fire that blazes in Shane's eyes, the heat that only comes out when he talks about hockey, finally returns. 

"Not right now you're not," his smile is equally mean, reflecting Ilya the way he's been mirroring him all these years. "Your team fucking sucks." 

Shane sounds downright gleeful, when he continues. "Are you going to let it stay that way?" 

****

Their last night in France, Ilya fucks Shane, rough and angry. He can't get it up the first few rounds, so he fucks Shane with his fingers, over and over, making Shane finish again and again until Shane begs, in high, keening moans, that he can't come anymore. The desperation in his eyes, tears spilling out over his cheeks, finally, finally makes Ilya hard enough to shove Shane face-first into the sheets, and yank his ass up in the air. Ilya laughs, delirious on his victory, and spanks Shane hard, wanting to give himself something nice and red to look at when he grabs Shane's hair and fucks his oversensitive hole. Shane comes for the third time in a row, screaming so loud that all Ilya can hear, in the cavernous mansion they've hidden themselves away in, is his name, over and over. Ilya. Ilya. Ilya. 

When they collapse into each other, breathing hard, after a very long while Shane breaks the silence by telling Ilya that he's going to stay in Ottawa for the rest of the summer. Even better, he's going to stay in Ilya's apartment. 

Ilya winces when he thinks about the state in which he left things. The cigarette butts everywhere. His clothes, dirty and unwashed, flung all over the room. The glasses of half-drunk vodka. Fast food wrappers, littering the carpets. But Shane's insistent. He's staying, and he's already made arrangements with his team, his agent, his mom, so his other obligations don't bother him. 

He really wants Ilya to be happy. He wants Ilya to get better, as fruitless and pointless as both endeavors sound. 

The next morning, they leave France on separate flights. 

**** 

Ilya, against all odds, returns to the ice. He looks out at his team, his horrible fucking team. He was a terrible captain last year. He never went to team outings. He showed up to practice hungover. His moods made him violent, angry, and closed-off. His oversight only made their fundamentals, and their cohesion as a team, worse. 

The task ahead of him is, by all counts, impossible. In a rational world, there is no way the people in front of him will ever, in this lifetime, beat Shane Hollander. 

But, as he slaps his helmet on, the smile on his face grows. Ilya Rozanov was never a rational person. Like his mom, he believes in ghosts and God. Like his father, he worships at the altar of discipline and power. 

It's not enough to beat Shane once. To truly be Shane Hollander's rival, Ilya has to start from the fucking bottom, and chase Shane back up to the top. 

Shane doesn't know how to say it, but he needs Ilya to save him from his own greatness. 

Well, Hollander.

Challenge fucking accepted.