Chapter Text
It starts as a teasing kind of foreplay, Hollander face down under him, obedient and eager as ever, hips rolling subtly against the mattress under him in a way that makes Ilya smile, turned on and endeared in equal measure. It’s always addicting: stiff, in control, polite Shane Hollander starting to unravel in front of him, chasing what feels good, not thinking about anything but how badly he wants to get fucked, how much he needs a cock to work the golden boy right out of him. It makes Ilya want to bite him, and he compromises with a kiss over the scar on his shoulder. Hollander twitches when he takes a solid palmful of his ass for good measure, inspiring him into something they haven’t actually tried together yet.
But something he has a sneaking suspicion Hollander will like very much.
The slap to his ass is measured, more noise than anything else as a little taste to let Hollander decide if he likes it or not, but Ilya still presses his palm to the area gently after it’s landed, soothing Hollander after he twitched with surprise. Ilya watches him carefully, looking for hesitance, for the subtle way Hollander brings his arms up under himself and tilts his head back slightly when he’s uncomfortable with something new, body moving to disengage before his mind has even started to think about it. It’s not always a signal that he’s completely turned off by what Ilya’s suggested–even in their limited amount of time together, he’s learned there’s very little that doesn’t turn Hollander on in a way he wants to explore–but it is a signal that they’re approaching the limit of what he’s comfortable with without some reassurance and a few kisses, gentle, unspoken promises that despite what his brain is telling him, he’s allowed to like something he thinks he shouldn’t, at least when he’s in bed with Ilya. Now, though, his arms remain to either side of him, though one moves to get a fistful of sheets like he needs something to hold onto. He doesn’t look like he disliked it, but his hips have gone still, so Ilya moves his hand to grip one reassuringly, massaging gently. He lifts himself up enough to rest over Hollander’s back, dipping his head down to kiss Hollander’s ear, his cheek, the side of his neck.
“Okay?” He asks softly.
“Um,” Hollander says, and Ilya nods to himself slightly, knowing it’s a “give me a little bit to think about if I liked that and a little bit longer to decide if I can tell you I liked it” even if Hollander would never actually say that. He smiles faintly and presses it into Hollander’s skin, wondering if this will be yet another situation in which Hollander waits a couple of hookups before shyly asking if Ilya remembers “that thing you did one time.”
For now, he releases Hollander’s hip with a parting squeeze and moves to straddle his waist instead. Even if he’s apparently not turned off by a little spanking, having to face being turned on by it means Hollander has gone a little tenser under him in a way he’d be flustered and annoyed about if Ilya called him on it, always so sensitive about anything that might read as criticism of his performance, as if he isn’t consistently one of the best fucks Ilya has.
(Not that he’ll ever tell him that, of course.)
“What are you-” Hollander starts when Ilya glides his hands up to his shoulders before pressing his fingers in.
“Just-” Ilya starts, intending to tease, the offer of a massage more about getting Hollander back in a more relaxed headspace than anything else, but then the wire-tight tension in the muscles under his fingers registers, and he frowns, pressing testingly before making a noise of disapproval. “Fuck, Hollander, you are secretly doing crime or what?”
“What?” Hollander asks, confused, starting to lift his head before Ilya pushes it back down absently, focused now on feeling out the knots Hollander seems to be completely made of. He’s felt tension in Hollander’s shoulders before, usually during coaxing little squeezes while coaching him through learning how to deep throat, but he’s always written it off as nerves from learning something new.
Now he wonders if Hollander is just nerves, period.
“How do you even skate the way you do when your body is fucked like this?” He asks, genuinely perplexed. He digs his fingertips carefully into a knot by Hollander’s shoulderblade, his eyes flicking up when Hollander makes a small, injured noise, but his face says that it’s a good kind of hurt, Hollander half-wincing but also leaning into it. Ilya presses a little harder, Hollander pressing up into him in return. “What, Montreal doesn’t pay enough for sports massage?”
“Fuck off-oh, fuck,” Hollander says, voice half a whimper when the knot releases. “What-” He sounds a little dazed in a way that’s distantly satisfying, but Ilya is now too focused on his task for much of anything but chasing out the other places Hollander has managed to fuck his body up in a way that would be impressive if it wasn’t pitiful. “What are you doing?”
“What does it feel like?” Ilya sasses absently, readjusting his weight until he’s perched over Hollander’s hips, bringing his legs in enough to squeeze him into stillness when Hollander tries to turn over and disrupt his work. “Stay still.”
“This is not fucking,” Hollander says, sounding a little annoyed now. “This is-”
“Foreplay, Hollander,” Ilya says, picking out a new area to work at, “you have heard of this, yes? Or do you not remember my tongue in your as-”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hollander snaps in a way that Ilya knows means his cheeks are going endearingly pink.
Right now, though, he has bigger concerns than enjoying Hollander’s fluster. He’s distantly judgmental that Hollander hasn’t taken care of this problem on his own before, and he’s more judgmental that no one else has ever made him. Surely someone else has to have noticed before that the primary thing holding Hollander upright is being tied tightly enough that it’s a miracle he isn’t constantly incapacitated. Really, he thinks, a little grumpy now, it’s no wonder Hollander gets regular headaches the way he mentioned once when Ilya teased him about having so many bottles of acetaminophen in his house. The question is how he manages to ever not have a headache if he’s walking around like this all the time.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Hollander says when he finds a cluster of muscle fibers that’s especially tight.
“Too hard?” Ilya asks, but Hollander shakes his head slightly, face still pressed into the pillow, and Ilya feels the movement under him when Hollander pushes into the pressure.
“No, it-it hurts good, if that makes sense,” Hollander says, and his earlier complaints appear to have faded into acceptance. Ilya, smiling slightly, leans forward to press a reward kiss to his temple.
And then he gets back to work unfucking Hollander’s body for once.
*
Shane wakes feeling vaguely confused-
-and also looser than he ever has in recent memory.
“Hello.”
Frowning, Shane turns his head sharply to find Rozanov lounging on his side, head propped on one fist, grinning like he's won something in a way that immediately makes Shane want to shove him off the bed with a hand over his face.
“What…” He starts, still half-asleep, stretching slightly and finding the movement looser than it usually is.
He frowns deeper.
“Your team's physio doesn't care you are made of knots or what?” Rozanov asks, tilting his head slightly. “No wonder your team sucks.”
“Shut up,” he says, a reflex before he's even fully registered what was said before the chirp. He feels his face go a little warm.
“I thought you did yoga,” Rozanov says, sounding judgemental. “Is miracle you can even touch your toes if you are always so tense.” He smirks. “Or is just because you were so ready to get fu-”
Now Shane does give in to the impulse to shove Rozanov away by his face.
The honest answer is that he knows he'd probably benefit from massage–more than a few guys he plays with have mentioned how they regularly schedule sessions–beyond targeted treatments from the sports massage therapist the team contracts with, but he's always gotten tripped up at the idea of actually trying it out. He knows from reading a Reddit post–thank God for other people who like a heads up about what to expect in new social situations–that he'd get a choice of male or female massage therapist, but asking for a woman specifically would feel like being a creep, and asking for a man, laying naked under a sheet while strong hands work on-
Well. Best not to risk it.
“You going to keep being an asshole?” He asks, lifting his brows. “Or can we fuck now?”
Rozanov snorts, but he also shifts himself to lay over Shane with all of the muscular grace of a jungle cat, mouth smudging kisses along his neck in a way that makes Shane shiver involuntarily.
“You are one who fell asleep,” he says. He pulls back enough to fake pout. “I am this boring to you?” The roll of his hips against Shane’s is definitively not boring, but Shane makes a considering noise anyway.
“I mean, you usually put me to sleep on the ice, so-” He laughs when Ilya growls and presses teeth to his throat in a threat that has Shane’s breath catching in his chest.
What comes after is certainly anything but boring.
*
Like a scab, the knowledge that Hollander tends towards being knotted up like a rug is hard to not pick at the next time they see each other. He refuses to let himself consider why Hollander under him, loose and relaxing thanks to his efforts, is so satisfying, but it’s on his mind the next time they meet, though it skitters between thoughts of how good Hollander’s mouth feels on his cock, so it isn’t a constant thought.
“Fuck, Hollander,” he grits out, managing to restrain from thrusting forward into the wet heat of the mouth on him only through experience and a reluctance to push Hollander harder than he’s ready for.
(No matter how much he seems eager to ignore his own limits at every opportunity.)
“Yes, like that,” he praises, and he smiles faintly when it makes Hollander puff up like a happy bird, eyes still closed to focus on his task. As much as he loves seeing those beautiful dark eyes looking up at him, he knows Hollander prefers to work with his eyes closed, so he leaves him be. He smooths his dark hair back with gentle hands, palming the back of his skull, not pushing, just holding. “God, your mouth,” he groans, hand sliding down to cup the back of Hollander’s neck and reflexively squeezing, feeling tight muscles strain under the pressure-
-and prompting a moan that has Ilya hurtling right over the edge when the vibration of it hits him.
“Fu-fuck,” he swears, barely managing to pull Hollander off in time to avoid cumming in his mouth without warning him first. Hollander’s swallowed a couple of times now, but even if he won’t mention it, Ilya knows he doesn’t particularly care for the texture in his mouth after he’s no longer in the moment, always subtly rubbing at his lips with the back of one wrist and wrinkling his nose faintly afterwards. It’s cute, obviously, but they have a rare full night together, and he’d rather not have Hollander uncomfortable so early.
Not when he has such excellent plans for them both.
“Remind me,” Hollander says, sounding smug and pleased as he flops himself back beside him on the mattress, “who is it that can’t last?”
“Still you,” Ilya says, the dryness of his tone cut by the way he’s still catching his breath. “Or have you forgotten that time you came before you even got your pants off?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hollander says, punching his shoulder and making Ilya grin.
“Ow,” he says, as if it was even enough to sting. “Abuse! Cruelty! I am-”
“Being fucking annoying,” Hollander says, but he’s grinning when he says it, pushing himself up and straddling Ilya’s waist. He hesitates only a moment before grabbing for Ilya’s wrists and resting them at his hips, pressing enough that Ilya knows he wants to be squeezed.
He obliges, of course, and feels an immense satisfaction at the way it makes Hollander’s stomach go tight with arousal, hips shifting slightly before he leans down for a kiss.
It’s newer, this, Hollander openly taking charge in small ways, and Ilya congratulates him now by kissing him in a way that always has Hollander grinding against him with want. Good work deserves a reward, after all. Hollander makes a beautiful noise when Ilya uses the hold he has on his hips enough to tilt them to a better angle to rut against his stomach. He slides a hand slightly further back, taking hold of a cheek and pulling him open just to hear Hollander groan into the kiss, pulling back to catch his breath and let out a quiet “fuck” at the sensation.
“Getting there,” Ilya says with a grin, and Hollander pulls back enough to roll his eyes.
Only to shut them when Ilya’s fingers press against where he’s sensitive and wanting, Hollander swallowing hard and pressing back into the pressure, enough to press the tip of Ilya’s finger inside.
“More,” Hollander says, the word a plea that Ilya is helpless to leave unanswered.
“Hm,” he still says, mostly just to tease. He kisses Hollander once, a quick, chaste peck. “What do polite boys say when they want something?”
“Fuck me or I’ll leave,” Hollander says flatly, and Ilya tsks.
“No, no, this is not nice,” he scolds, shaking his head. “Where is my sweet boy who asks so nicely when he wants-”
Impatient with the teasing, Hollander reaches back to press Ilya’s hand further himself, clenching tight when it gains him a full fingertip. It can’t feel that good, really, not as dry as the movement is, but Hollander makes a noise similar to the one he does when Ilya gets a hand on his cock after teasing him, and the sound makes teasing him less important than giving him what he wants.
Ilya’s nothing if not a giver, after all.
*
Shane goes easily when he’s rolled to his side, letting out a whine without meaning to when he loses the faint stretch of Rozanov’s finger inside him, barely anything at all and yet still so good that he mourns the loss immediately.
“Shh,” Rozanov soothes, mouth against his jaw, lips followed by tongue in a move that would be annoying and disgusting if he was just a few degrees less turned on right now. “You’ll get what you want.”
“Before or after I die of old age?” Shane snarks, primarily to get Ilya to do exactly what he’s in the mood to receive.
Sure enough, the sass gets him a slap to the ass, and he hides his smile against the pillow when Rozanov leans over him to retrieve the bottle of lube on the side table. He gets a second slap when Rozanov drops back down to the mattress, this one more affectionate than disciplinary, but the sting still doing good things for him. When Rozanov pushes him onto his stomach without giving him a third, he almost complains, though the words die in his throat when strong, slick fingers start pressing right where he wants them.
“Fuck, Roz,” he grits out into the safe darkness of his face against the pillow, rocking his hips into the mattress. He doesn’t usually use the nickname–and Rozanov never uses Hollzy–but with strong, skilled fingers angling right where he needs them, the fewer syllables, the better.
“Better,” Rozanov says, sounding amused, pressing a kiss to Shane’s hip. “Much nicer now.”
Shane would tell him off, but his breath seizing in his chest when Rozanov stretches his fingers out in a way that makes Shane’s head fill with static removes his ability to do anything but let out a low, airy noise in his throat, pushing back into the pressure. He hears Rozanov say something in Russian, the tone telling him it’s dirty talk even if he can’t understand it, and then there’s a different kind of pressure against him, thick and hard.
And wonderfully, deliciously familiar.
“Fuck, Hollander,” Rozanov groans into his ear, kissing the shell of it and taking the lobe between his teeth for a quick, playful tug. Rozanov’s hand comes up to his neck–Shane loves when he does that, not that he’s ever told Rozanov that, loves the warmth and pressure and strength behind it, the way it makes him feel claimed, stupid as it is when he and Rozanov are nothing but quick fucks and always will be–and starts to squeeze.
Only for Rozanov to go still for a moment in a choice that has Shane’s eyes fluttering open in disbelief.
“What-” He starts, but Rozanov just makes a disapproving noise and interrupts him.
“What is thing they inject in faces to make them freeze?”
“What?” Shane asks, turning his head back slightly and ignoring the faint twinge he feels in his neck in the process. His mom has been negotiating two big new sponsorships for him, and he’s felt the tension of them weighing on him, but uncomfortable or not, it hasn’t impacted his playing, so it’s not an issue worth pursuing.
Or at least it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t currently making Rozanov pause while fucking him for some unknown fucking reason.
“Rozanov,” he prompts, bucking his hips back a bit.
“The thing,” Rozanov responds, holding still in a way that now feels deliberate.
Asshole.
“I don’t fucking know,” Shane snaps. “Botox?”
“Yes, ‘Botox’,” Rozanov says, kissing his neck in thanks. “You are injecting Botox in your muscles or what?”
“Fuck off,” Shane says, and he would shove him off if he wasn’t still currently inside him, even if he’s choosing not to do anything about it. “Not like it kept me from kicking your ass tonight,” he says smugly.
Rozanov growls and closes his teeth on Shane’s shoulder for a moment before releasing him.
“Is painful to even feel,” he complains, fucking finally starting to move his hips once more. “It cannot feel good to be rubberband all the time.”
“What are you doing?” Shane asks, when the hand on his neck shifts just slightly, pressing testingly at the muscles there before Rozanov’s thumb commits to true pressure, stretching the muscle in a way that feels so good Shane almost feels his eyes roll back in his head.
“Good?” Rozanov asks softly, thumb now stroking along the muscle, coaxing it into softness in what might be a funny reversal of what he usually does with Shane’s body when coaxing is involved if Shane wasn’t currently receiving a confusing yet intoxicating combination of sensations at once.
“Wha-what,” Shane manages to pant out, “just fucki-oh, fuck, just fucking me isn’t enough? You need a sidequest?”
“I need,” Rozanov rumbles against his skin, “for you to not be so tight it makes my neck hurt just feeling it.”
“You’re the one who deci-oh fuck, right there, please,” he says, losing his train of thought for a moment when Rozanov hits just the right angle.
“Hm, yes,” Rozanov says, sounding smug but also flatteringly a little breathless. “This is better. More pleases. Less annoying.”
If Shane’s mind wasn’t currently busy going fuzzy through the combination of Rozanov’s cock and hand, he might say something back, but a warm, hazy kind of feeling is slowly creeping over him. It’s not the first time he’s felt something like this with Rozanov, but it usually takes longer before it hits him. He exhales with pleased relief when his mind goes perfectly, blissfully blank, quiet for once in a way that feels like weight lifting off of his shoulders even as the warm goodness of it drags him down. Without even needing to consciously make the effort, his body goes loose.
“Good,” Rozanov says, voice a warm purr that just makes the swirling goodness in Shane’s head burn brighter. On some level, he feels Rozanov’s fingers press harder, and the pleasure-pain of it knocks loose something that would be embarrassingly close to a whimper if he had the capacity to feel things like embarrassed right now. As it is, the relief of muscles stretching loose combined with the sinfully good pressure inside him hits like what he imagines drugs must feel like, and he feels his breathing come slower and deeper.
Even after he finally comes, he stays in the comfortable, warm floating place, his only anchor the steady motion of Rozanov’s fingers on his body.
*
Ilya thinks that what he and Hollander are currently doing might be perilously close to cuddling.
But Hollander is also out cold, so it’s not like he can call him on it.
He’d blinked like he was in a daze after they both came, Hollander’s limbs slack and boneless the way they sometimes go when the sex is especially good. It’s flattering, really, getting to take Shane Hollander to pieces like this, to leave him soft and sweet and quiet, head heavy on Ilya’s arm after Ilya put him there, a gesture meant to live in the careful space between affection and plausible deniability of offering any affection, an important balance in this thing between them.
Apparently all it takes to get Hollander to relax into some afterglow cuddling is an orgasm and working out some of the knots he’s apparently made of.
Ilya makes a metal note of it.
For no reason at all, of course.
*
Shane has the sneaking suspicion that Rozanov enjoys the way it flusters him when he wakes up from a nap he didn’t mean to take courtesy of Rozanov’s possibly-magical fingers working out knots in his muscles. The suspicion only grows stronger when Rozanov keeps doing it semi-regularly when they meet up, as if their time together isn’t already limited enough without having to try and make it stretch to accommodate a post-surprise-massage nap.
“I’m gonna fall asleep,” he complains today, pinned under Rozanov’s weight. “And I have to leave in-”
“An hour,” Rozanov says, sounding bored. “Yes, you have said. Repeatedly and loudly.”
“Okay, then stop-” He twitches when Rozanov pops the hand Shane reaches back to try and push him into motion.
It’s much less pleasurable than when a smack lands on other parts of his body.
“Is no fun to fuck you when your head hurts,” Rozanov says, pausing for a moment when Shane lets out a sound at pressure against a tight spot right at the join of his neck and shoulder but resuming when Shane doesn’t tell him to stop. “So: first no headache, then we fuck.”
“You’re fucking ridiculous,” Shane grumbles.
The comment gets him a reprimanding squeeze of Rozanov’s thighs on either side of his hips but no verbal rejoinder, the other man apparently too busy doing his best to put Shane to sleep.
Shane sighs but leaves him to it, knowing by now that he’s not going to be released until Rozanov is satisfied with his work.
*
Ilya wonders, sometimes, in the little snatches of time he uses to work Hollander’s muscles loose in ways beyond sex, what Hollander thinks about it, this little routine of theirs. He almost always falls asleep–probably not helped by the way Ilya’s begun starting to do it in the middle or right after sex when Hollander has less frame of mind to fight him about it–but he’s never actually asked why Ilya is so diligent about it.
This is convenient, given that Ilya couldn’t actually give him an answer.
He’s given and received “massages” before as a regular part of foreplay, but the damning fact about the ones he gives Hollander is that they aren’t really sexual. (Well, beyond the way that seemingly everything turns Hollander on, and Hollander being turned on always turns him on as well). It’s satisfying, yes, but it’s satisfying in a way beyond just being hot, seeing Hollander soften bit by bit right in front of him, knowing after he leaves that Hollander will be tangibly different because they were together for a stretch of time, like Ilya’s leaving fingerprints on him with every muscle he works loose.
“Are you asleep?” He asks today, when Hollander’s complaints about how this isn’t fucking go quiet for just a bit too long.
“Mm-mm,” Hollander disagrees, but the way he doesn’t bother with words and the way his eyes stay shut says he isn’t far off.
Ilya smiles faintly, softening his touch a bit, which he knows will only lull Hollander more. He does want to fuck him, of course, and letting him nap like this cuts into that time.
…and yet, Ilya can’t quite bring himself to stop.
He tells himself firmly that it’s just because he hates leaving a job half-finished and refuses to think about it further.
*
His first time being at Rozanov’s house also being the first time he’s asked to stay overnight means Shane feels a little off-balance. Pleased or not, this wasn’t his plan for the day, wasn’t something he’d already neatly slotted into his mental schedule for the correct order of events. The more he sits in it, though, the easier it rests on him, still novel, still a little uncomfortable like the first time shoes are worn, but at the end of the day, he’s spent more time wanting Rozanov than he’s spent with Rozanov, so some extra time together isn’t unwelcome.
Shane pauses now, a question on his lips he’s never asked before because today containing multiple firsts is a temptation he’s apparently too weak to resist. He always takes what’s offered to him, but with the way it usually ends in Rozanov having to shake him back awake, he usually tries not to fall into the trap of a Rozanov Massage too often for the sake of his pride. If he’s going to be staying the night anyway, though…
“Can I ask you a favor?” He asks, getting the question out before he loses his nerve.
“Hm?” Rozanov prompts, pressing another kiss to his shoulder.
“Can you…get some knots out of my shoulders?”
The question hangs in the air for a moment, and he opens his mouth to take it back, to apologize for pushing for more when Rozanov already offered him spending the night, to hope that he hasn’t fucked this all up by getting greedy when-
“Roll over,” Rozanov says, nudging at his hip.
“You don’t have to,” Shane starts, even as he obeys.
“I know,” Rozanov says, sounding amused as he straddles Shane’s hips. “But you asked so nicely.”
Shane is still a little tense when Rozanov starts pressing, not used to receiving it after asking for it, and Rozanov lightens his touch, bending down to nuzzle at Shane’s head with his own.
“Relax,” he says. “I am not mean sports massage therapist. Do I ever hurt you?”
“You mean besides slamming me into the boards?” Shane asks dryly, wincing but leaning into it when Rozanov presses down on a particularly tender area.
“Hm,” Rozanov says, and Shane can hear the smile in his voice. “You do it to me, too. At least I apologize after by making you actually able to move your head.”
Shane wonders if that’s a hint, Rozanov saying that he’s tired of always accommodating Shane in a way that isn’t reciprocated. He starts to sit up.
“Do you want me to do you?” He asks. “I can-”
“This is why you have such fucked muscles, I think,” Rozanov says, pushing his head back down gently. “Too much thinking all the time.”
“I just mean it doesn’t have to only be you doing it all the time,” Shane says, rolling his eyes even if Rozanov can’t see. “I mean, I’ve never done it before, but I’m a quick learner.”
“Yes,” Rozanov says. “You have learned many fun tricks. I am very proud.”
“Fuck you,” Shane says, even as he barely resists the urge to moan in relief when Rozanov works on a particularly bad knot and coaxes it loose. “I’m just saying, I can-”
“Stop worrying,” Rozanov says. “You will ruin my good work.” He must sense Shane’s lingering unease, though, because he leans forward until he can look at him. “Is fine,” he says, kissing Shane’s cheek. “You are cute when your body isn’t fucked up, and it makes you almost fun to play against.”
“You’re such an asshole,” Shane says.
“Maybe not a good idea to insult guy who has his hands on your neck,” Rozanov says dryly.
Still, his touch remains gentle, and between one breath and the next, Shane is asleep.
*
If the game wasn’t coming right after Ilya was left covered in cum and confusion 24 hours earlier, he might admire Sh-Hollander’s ability to somehow avoid making eye contact at all in a game that has them in close quarters so often. Hollander is never one for eye contact under normal circumstances, but in this game, he’s really doing his best work in avoiding it.
No matter how many times Ilya checks him into walls in the hopes that he’ll at least turn to glare at him.
Look at me, he thinks every single time he has him pinned to the wall. Look at me the way you wouldn’t when you ran away yesterday.
Hollander doesn’t.
Pathetically, Ilya had half-expected (and half-been-humiliatingly-desperate-for) Hollander to reach out after a couple of hours, to get out of the heat of the moment and calm down and text Ilya a sheepish “sorry I freaked the fuck out and ditched you out of fucking nowhere after we had a good day together.” He’d even toyed with the idea that Hollander had left with his shirt and forgotten his own as a way back in, a guaranteed ticket through the door again, as if he would need one, as if Ilya has ever been good at keeping him out no matter his best efforts.
Not that he was trying to do it this time.
You said my name, too, he thinks at Hollander when they’re both on their respective benches, Hollander apparently fucking fascinated with the other side of the arena right in front of him, so much so that his gaze isn’t slipping anywhere else, even when he tilts his head slightly to acknowledge Pike at his ear saying something now and then. I said your name, yeah, but you said mine, too. Why? Why would you do that and then run? What happened? What sparks misfired in that head of yours?
He doesn’t know why it’s his fucking name of all things that set him off. Yes, they’ve never used first names before, but Hollander has called him Roz and even sometimes Rozy when he’s so drunk on pleasure that he can barely speak at all. He’s never reciprocated with Hollzy because he’s not eight years old and doesn’t really use anyone’s nickname on or off the ice unless he’s chirping, but he just can’t make it make sense, why a first name is intimate enough to have Hollander bolting like a spooked deer. Yeah, he’d enjoyed hearing his own said back to him, but he doesn’t understand how the same man who insists on asking him about his family no matter how many times Ilya has snapped at him before in moments of misplaced irritation draws the line at his own fucking name.
His one consolation is that it doesn’t look like Hollander slept well the night before, which Ilya can only feel so triumphant about when he didn’t, either, waking up repeatedly, painfully aware of the empty mattress next to him where there should have been a Shane Hollander.
Where there was a Shane Hollander only a few hours before, relaxed through Ilya’s efforts and sleeping peacefully in his arms, as if he wasn’t the same man who was going to initiate sex only to bolt a couple of hours later.
In a truly low moment, Ilya had even ordered delivery for dinner that night, unable to stomach looking in the fridge at the ingredients for the dinner he had already planned to make and share with Hollander. The excited-anxious anticipation in the grocery store, the cross-referencing with an interview Hollander had done a few months back about his diet during the season, had all been for nothing, and even thinking about looking at the pointless, unneeded food had made Ilya want to start throwing it and making a mess he would end up being even angrier about when he had to clean it up later.
A particularly vicious check gets him time in the penalty box, but it also gets him the faintest little flicker of eye contact from Hollander. Yeah, he thinks, hurting and vicious about it, look at me. You owe me that much at least. You don’t get to ignore me, not now.
Hollander’s lips press together, and his gaze flickers away.
Ilya ignores the dirty looks and hissed insults he gets from Montreal when he passes by on his way to the penalty box. His enforced timeout doesn’t make him feel any better, and he sits, simmering, eyes only on Hollander. He looks stiffer than he should, Ilya observes with the benefit of distance, like every bit of relaxation Ilya worked into his muscles yesterday is gone, like he gave it up at the door when he left.
Ilya wishes he felt more satisfied by it than he does.
Ilya wishes a lot of fucking things.
*
“Damn,” Shane observes, still breathing hard, “housekeeping is going to be pissed at you.”
“Hm,” Roz-Ilya hums, sounding amused, pressing a kiss to Shane’s shoulder where he’s still on top of him like a heavy, sweaty blanket, the A/C helping with the temperature but the general mugginess of Florida weather still making the room humid.
(Though Shane can admit that the way they just fucked with an energy that frankly bordered on feral probably didn’t help with that.)
“I will tell them is all your fault,” Ilya says, nuzzling his sweat-damp face against Shane’s in a way that’s going to feel disgusting in probably about five minutes. “I invited Shane Hollander to my room, and he made us fuck like wild animals.”
Shane snorts, settling in a little more comfortably beneath Ilya’s weight, unwilling to shrug him off just yet, not when it feels so nice despite the sweat slicking their skin.
“No one would believe you,” he says, reaching back and sinking his fingers through Ilya’s curls, damp skin meaning the hair sticks to his fingers in a way that probably tugs a bit. If Ilya minds, though, he doesn’t say it, just leans into the touch as Shane rubs at his head affectionately. “You’re the one who forwarded me that Twitter poll about winning ‘Most Wholesome Player’ in the NHL. Everyone’ll just think you corrupted me with your Rozanov-ness.”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “No one else knows you suck cock like your life depends on it.”
“Fuck you,” Shane says with a laugh, tugging at Ilya’s hair lightly before letting go.
“You just did,” Ilya says, sounding smug, and Shane can hear the smile when lips are pressed to his skin. “Enough to destroy my hotel room, in fact.”
“Yeah,” Shane says, grinning. “Why do you think I came to yours?”
“You are devious and evil person,” Ilya says, sounding delighted.
“Too much time with you,” Shane teases. “You’re a bad influence.”
“And yet you came and seduced me anyway,” Ilya says, and there’s a slight edge to the words that hints at a question underneath. Taking a guess at what it is, Shane nudges Ilya back just enough to turn, holding him in place above him and tugging him back down when he settles, cupping Ilya’s face with one hand.
“I missed you,” he says honestly.
“Yes,” Ilya agrees, “I gathered that from the way you almost cried when-”
“No,” Shane says, interrupting the attempt at deflection back into humor. He pulls Ilya into a kiss and then nudges him back again. “I missed you, a lot. Even if we hadn’t just destroyed your hotel room, I’d still be happy, just because I got to talk to you again.” He shifts a little, uncomfortable under this new kind of honesty but willing to play through the pain for what he hopes waits on the other side of it. “You’re, like, my favorite person to talk to. I kept taking my phone out to send you stuff and then having to put it away again. I didn’t realize how much we texted until we weren’t anymore.”
Which is Shane’s fault, but Ilya apparently chooses not to comment on that.
“Well, your other option is what, Pike?” Ilya asks. “You could talk to a random wall and probably have a better conversation.”
“You’re such a dick,” Shane says fondly.
“Yes,” Ilya agrees, glancing down suggestively. “One you like a lot.”
“You’re the worst,” Shane says, laughing. He goes easily when Ilya tilts them both to the side, turning and then wriggling back a bit until they’re spooning. He can’t stay much longer, and he knows it, but he missed this, Ilya’s warm, solid weight behind him. For a moment, they don’t speak, but it feels comfortable in a way silence only ever really does with Ilya.
“I missed you, too,” Ilya finally says, ducking his head down to kiss Shane’s shoulder. “A lot, maybe.”
“I’m here now,” Shane offers softly.
“Yes,” Ilya agrees dryly. “I am impressed there has been no running yet. Big improvement from last time. Good work.”
“Asshole,” Shane says, turning to face him. Feeling a little silly thanks to the combination of a recent orgasm and the relief of them talking again, he holds his pinky out. “No more running. Pinky promise.”
Ilya glances at his pinky and then at his face, lips quirking before he holds his own out in return, linking it with Shane’s.
“Does this mean I also promise no running?” He asks. “Because I haven’t had a turn yet. That feels unfair, Mr. Sportsmanship.”
“You being a dick to me at Sochi counts as your turn,” Shane says wryly. “I left, but that one was your fault.”
“Hm,” Ilya allows. “Fair. Should I say sorry?”
“I mean I literally came on you and then ditched, so I think we can count that as your punishment and call it fair.”
“This is how Canadian legal system works?” He asks, sounding amused. “I should start reading Canadian news, maybe.”
“Start with the New Yorker and work your way up,” Shane says, feeling almost drunk on this, the ability to tease each other again, the comfort of Ilya beside him.
The way he feels more like himself than he does around anyone else.
“You are trying to kill me with boredom?” Ilya teases. “Just when we have made peace?”
“Hm,” Shane says, breathing around a yawn and closing his eyes to soak up the scant amount of warm togetherness he has left before they’ll have to go their separate ways again. Ilya seems content to let him, fingers tracing gently along his back before they make their way up to his neck and he makes a disapproving tsking noise.
“All knots again,” he says, rubbing at the muscles, less tense than they were approximately forty minutes earlier but still tight enough that the pressure of Ilya’s fingers feels almost sinfully painful-good, touch confident in the way of someone who’s known Shane’s body for years. Shane leans into it, eyes still closed. “Rose Landry did not make you go to massage therapist? Don’t Hollywood people do that kind of thing all the time?”
“I tried one once,” Shane says, yawning. “It didn’t feel as good as when you do it.”
“Oh?” Ilya says, sounding pleased. “I have spoiled you for other people? No one else can do it right?”
“Yes,” Shane says honestly, half-asleep. “Nothing ever feels as good as you.”
The kiss Ilya gives him feels on the edge of desperate, and Shane returns it as best he can without moving away from the relief of Ilya’s fingers on his muscles, tension releasing one stroke at a time.
*
Ilya learns, only after years of experiencing it, that there is apparently one thing that can wake Shane Hollander after he’s been knocked out cold by actually having muscles that aren’t iron for once.
It’s deeply unfortunate that this thing happens to be his brother calling him on the phone.
His fatal mistake is that he only stares at the buzzing phone in his hand for a long moment, feeling a deep-rooted sense of wrongness at the idea of anything from his family existing in the safe peace of Shane’s cottage. It doesn’t belong here, anything from his family. He’d been glad when Shane dropped the subject before, stopped plucking at threads wound tightly enough to hurt when pulled. It had felt better, happening outside, like the fire burned away the bad and left only Shane, steady and gentle, fingers in his hair as he listened to Ilya talk about his mother for the first time in years.
The thing that jolts him from his foolish stupor now is Shane making a sleepy noise next to him, head lifting. He’s frowning blearily, eyes barely open, and Ilya is torn between soothing him back to sleep and the reflexive urge to flee, to take Alexei’s number on his phone far, far away from Shane the same way he would a bomb. Whatever he can read on Ilya’s face means that Shane makes the decision for him, pushing himself up and then leaning over, reaching.
“Hey,” he says, always his overture to soothing, a quirk Ilya has always loved about him, like he needs to make sure he has Ilya’s attention before he starts trying to make him feel better, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says, an automatic response that’s ruined immediately when Alexei’s call is sent to voicemail only for his name to pop up again immediately, setting the phone to buzzing once more. Shane cranes his head to look at the screen, frowning deeper when all he sees is A, something Ilya did years ago both as a precaution for anyone who might get into his phone and get nosy and a petty, childish way to create some feeling of distance from his brother, as if simply not giving him the dignity of his full name in Ilya’s phone would do anything at all.
Right now, the stark, simple A feels just as bad.
“A?” Shane asks, glancing back up at Ilya’s face. “Who’s A?”
“My-my brother,” Ilya grits out. “Fuck, I should…” The next words out of his mouth were supposed to be “take this,” the next action supposed to be him getting up and going outside, sparing Shane from what’s absolutely going to be something ugly. He doesn’t want even his brother’s voice near Shane. He doesn’t want his brother’s voice near him, either.
But it turns out that it’s very easy to say he’s done and a harder thing to actually be done, a voice in his head niggling at him that there might be an emergency, something wrong with his niece, maybe.
(An even quieter and more stupid voice in his head says maybe Alexei wants to apologize, to patch things up, that months of silence have given him the space to regret things.)
(Even in his own head, the wish behind the thought is pathetic enough that he shoves it away at once.)
“Fuck,” he says again, starting to get up-
-only to freeze when Shane’s hand lands on his knee, gently.
“Bad that he’s calling?” Shane asks, and if everything in his chest wasn’t a riot of conflicting urges and feelings right now, he’d be tempted to laugh, charmed by the way Shane always approaches anything involving emotions, tossing out tentative guesses or asking questions for clarification. So cautious, his boyfriend, but so eager, too, to help, to establish what’s wrong so he can start making a plan about how to address it.
He’s not sure even a Hollander Plan can fix this, though.
“I don’t know,” Ilya says honestly. “Probably.”
“Okay,” Shane says. “Do you…want to decline his call then?”
Yes. No. Yes and no at the same time and also he wants a third option that’s neither but better and will somehow make his brother not hate him.
He almost wants to say it all out loud just to see how Shane would respond.
A third call coming through ruins his brief, snatched moment of levity.
“I told him…” He stops himself, too ashamed for a moment to continue. He’s afraid, he realizes, afraid of how Shane will react when he says he’s cut his brother off, afraid Shane won’t think he did the right thing, afraid Shane will judge him for it, afraid this will make Shane change his mind and finally catch on to the fact that Ilya has never been worthy of him, of his love, of a place in his bed in his cottage in his lif-
“Do you want to talk to him?” Shane asks, and he’s Captain Hollander right now, calm, unflappable, completely in control.
Somehow, it makes Ilya settled enough to actually be able to answer.
“No,” he says honestly, and then he waits, tensing slightly, for Shane to tell him off, to remind him that family is important, to not understand that not everyone has loving parents and extended family that’s only annoying because they once stole whatever the fuck a beavertail is in a grudge Shane appears to still be carrying from childhood. He waits for the judgement, for Shane to understand that Ilya is damaged in ways that maybe can’t be fixed.
Instead, Shane just holds out his hand.
Ilya looks from it up to his face, finding Shane still wearing his Captain Hollander expression.
“I don’t want you to talk to him,” Ilya says, a little sick at the very idea. Shane might not be able to understand what Alexei would undoubtedly be yelling at him, but Ilya would, would understand every single hateful word directed at the love of his life by his own fucking family.
“I’m not going to,” Shane says. “I mean, I could if you want, but I’m not planning on it.”
“I don’t want,” Ilya says. Shane just nods, hand still held out.
“Give,” Shane says, in a playful, awful impression of his accent. When Ilya still doesn’t obey him, Shane softens slightly, his hand dropping to squeeze Ilya’s arm gently. “I’ll decline it. Then it’ll be my fault, not yours. He can be mad at me if he wants the next time you talk to him. I don’t give a fuck.”
You would, Ilya wants to say. You would give a fuck because you like people liking you. You get stressed when you think they don’t. Half of the knots I work out of your shoulders are probably from wondering if you didn’t tip waitresses enough or if not offering your plumber a coffee was rude.
The fact that Shane is still willing to be the bad guy here, then, hits almost embarrassingly hard, and Ilya hands the phone over partially out of obedience and partially out of the need to make Shane look at something that isn’t his face while he gets his shit together.
“There,” Shane says, swiping decline like it’s nothing. He leans over, sets the phone on the ground, and then slides it like a hockey puck out into the hallway. “He can go hang out with the loon sculp-oh.”
He’s stopped from rising when Ilya settles over him, filled with a sudden certainty that he’ll die if he isn’t kissing him. Shane makes a surprised noise, but he doesn’t resist, relaxing easily under him, one hand cupping his jaw and one hand sinking into his curls. Ilya doesn’t move to escalate things, just kisses him until he’s a little dizzy with it and then shoving his arms under Shane’s back to hold him like a stuffed animal, knowing he’s being pathetic but hoping Shane will take pity on him.
He does.
*
Shane half-dozes under the warm weight of Ilya squeezing him the same way Shane now knows he does pillows if they drift apart at night, like there’s too much love inside him to not snuggle something.
It’s something Shane can’t think about for too long without getting cuteness aggression, frankly.
“He didn’t always hate me,” Ilya confesses, and he sounds so young and hurt when he says it that Shane’s eyes sting. He keeps up the steady motions of his fingers in Ilya’s hair, hoping that his silence conveys that he’s open to listening. Whether he succeeds or not, Ilya continues. “I followed him everywhere when I was little. Mama used to ask him where his shadow was when she couldn’t find me.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane says softly, wishing he had more than useless words. He shifts enough until he can cradle Ilya a little more securely, nudging him until he can settle more completely, until he can stop trying to hold himself up and let Shane do it instead.
“It was-” Ilya cuts himself off and makes a quiet, frustrated noise that Shane knows means English is failing him.
“Tell me in Russian,” he says, kissing the top of Ilya’s head. “If you want.”
After a breath, he does, and if Shane is lost after “I”–and only catching that from knowing ya tebya lyublyu now–it doesn’t matter. He rubs Ilya’s back with one hand, and in a moment of inspiration from what makes him feel good and safe and cared for, he moves the other from Ilya’s hair to his neck, doing his best to gently rub at the muscles there the way Ilya does for him. Whether from his own clumsy attempts at massage or just from the relief of getting painful words out, Ilya slowly goes more relaxed in his hold.
They fall asleep like that, and Shane wakes the next morning to his fingertips still resting against Ilya’s neck.